Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

Even as I write this my country is recovering from a Bomb scare. 2 weeks back bombs blasted in different parts of my country like flowers blooming in spring, another stunt from that group of insane sadists better referred to as terrorists. Rumors said that my city would be next (but thankfully nothing came of that rumor). For the same reason my city was on high alert and security during the last week and in between that I had decided to visit my grandma who lived on the other end of the same city. While I was returning home I saw a sight that I had never witnessed or maybe never noticed before.

The bus I was travelling in was going across a bridge that ran over a certain part of the Arabian Sea that I had to cross to get home. Now this was a bridge I had travelled through a million times and as usual I was gazing out the window on my left. I was deep in my own thoughts until I suddenly noticed that the sea looked weird with the water fuzzy and the sky fuming with anger. The air was misty and blurred out all the ship in that direction. This was an unusual sight for me so I turned to my right and ironically the sea was a total contrast here. The water was calmer than ever, the sky was as bright as on any normal sunny day, and the wind just danced with the relaxed mood of the boats sailing across. Now this was a dreamy but boring sight so I returned my focus to the ‘show stopping’ left side. The sea looked awfully dangerous and I slowly started noticing all heads and eyes in the bus turning that way.

I kept looking back and forth from left to right and the calmer it was to my right, the wilder it became on my left. The worst part was it looked like the whole thing (I dint know what to call it) was coming our way. Like the sea was coming on to us with a vengeance, it reminded me of the movie “pirates of the Caribbean”. I had to admit I was scared, I never saw anything like that and I wondered was it a tsunami or a tornado or something worse that my little general knowledge wasn’t aware of.

At that particular juncture it reminded me of life, like heaven was on my right and hell on my left. No matter what you did hell was heading your way and the devil was going to get you some day. No matter if you ran to a safer land (the right) he would still follow you till your forced to surrender.

As the deadly scene kept shifting closer to us the bus conductor started pulling down the sheets that covered the windows (yeah the windows didn’t have doors for some particular reason). We were told to hold the sheets close lest the strong wind take them away and I did exactly that. The thing I saw was the rain coming from that direction, not just ordinary rain but a storm. When it finally got to us, I realized the power of it. The bus wasn’t spared from the drama and water started entering inside through every loophole it could find. I held on to my part of the sheet like my life depended on it and it did save me from getting a free bath from nature. One time I tried to grab the sheet when it slipped from my grip and a speeding bus almost got my hand. But I had no time to get shocked for by now the wind had taken control of the bus too. As the bus swayed to its invisible master people were opening umbrellas to their sides so that the water would stop splashing onto them.

The rollercoaster experience lasted about 10 minutes and then I am not sure if the sea gave up or if it got too tried or got bored or received the intended pleasure, but it calmed down and except for the rain everything else was back to normal.

Well in the end I reached home safe. But if you think of it symbolically you could relate it with the situation I was living in at that point. I mean like the violent sea and the storm represented terrorism. It was almost as if nature was telling me terrorism was going to visit us all, but if we had enough faith, stuck together and had the will to move on we were all going to make it through. So maybe we should all just take the hint and not let this plague eat us!