Lefts and rights
Can you tell I’ve been re-reading Barbarian Days)
It was a perfect left. In those days, I delineated life between lefts and rights. Lefts being the smooth lines that carry you towards euphoria; the rights being the unexpected rumbles that could knock you down – the things that pulled you under.
This particular left could be found half an hour from our temporary home, where fans whirred noisily above us and the walls were once pink. Here, 5am wake ups were the norm: Varkala was up by then, the town soundtracked by the hum of mopeds, the honks of cars, the distant crashing of waves. To get to the hotel, you turn left once you step out of the driveway. It was a 10 minute walk up the road, past the shop where we usually stop to buy single cigarettes, opposite the chai man, past friends’ houses all the way until you hit the coast. But sometimes you were lucky and would hitch a ride on the back of someone’s bike, barefoot, the sky dimly lit, holding onto the back rail.
It was another left into the hotel, where a metal pot of coffee would be brewing and a few bunches of tiny bananas would be sitting on the counter. We’d huddle by the beach path, share a couple of cigarettes far enough away from the guests so not to raise any eyebrows about our early morning nicotine habit, chose our boards and loaded them onto the cars that we’d avoid sitting in, preferring to ride to the beach on our own bikes. By then, the sun would be hot and beating down on our bare backs, the road to Edava winding around hidden routes that we had come to know like the back of our hands.
Whenever I could get my hands on it and the conditions were right, I rode an 8 ft sky blue board emblazoned with the words ‘south coast’. It was wide and heavy and I loved the feeling of it under my feet, although that feeling was few and far between. After I came back from two months in Sri Lanka, surfing twice a day everyday, I at least could perform the basic ritual of board riding, paddling out past the fishing boats and fishermen. There are many elements in surfing that I found near impossible. It took me weeks to perfect sitting on the board without falling into the water, and my arms took a battering every time I was taken by a wave, swept out to shore and had to return to the line up to sheepishly try again.
But it was the turning that I found the most difficult to decipher. Or at least figuring out which way to turn. That’s why I loved Edava: it’s a left point break, perfect for someone who is goofy-footed and incapable of making the right (or left) decision. Eliminating this crucial part of the process allowed me to soak in the session. On quieter mornings when it was just two or three of us in the water (before the lesson started and the line up was overrun with turquoise rash vests and sun-creamed faces), we’d let each other take a wave one by one, following it until it tapered out. It was simply a relief to be carried.
Back then if the lefts felt like floating, the rights felt like the moment just before you come up for air. Now, things aren’t so clearly defined. Choosing between left and right doesn’t feel so obvious – or rather there are many lefts and many rights and rarely a path straight down the middle. These days the turning points can feel like going left or right until you’re back to where you started; only now I’m feeling the pressure to move forward and not around.
They tell you to look ahead at where you want to go and the wave will take you there. If you know it’s a left and your body has time to catch up with your mind as you scramble up onto your feet, your hips and eyes pointing in that direction, all the conditions met, everything aligning into a perfect smooth straight line, it all works out. With one look down, you risk falling.
But sometimes you just don’t know which way to go. You’re waiting for someone to yell it out to you, the wave cresting, the water percolating. Sometimes you don’t have time to choose and you just do whatever you can to stay up. And who’s to say that’s not a choice, too?
