Turtle Dance.

I died a month ago. I think I have, because I have none of the characters
which define life. I can not move. I do not want to eat or drink or bathe or make
love ever again. I do not want to work. Worse, I do not want to sculpt. I think
desultorily about suicide, but I honestly can not dredge up the energy. I meet a
psychiatrist who diagnoses 'endogenous depression.'
 "Depression?? I thought I was just tired.” I tell him, refuse the drugs he prescribes on the basis that it
might mess with my brain and return home to wallow in my misery. 

My friends do not leave me alone. They shower me with suggestions ranging from reiki to
marijuana to meeting new age gurujis. But the prize idea comes from Radha
who considers herself to have what she calls a green conscience.
"Come on Shyama. This will wake you up."
"I don't care about turtles." I mumble back.
"It's not about turtles, it's about this rut that you've got yourself stuck in.
We've got to pull you out of it."
 "Maybe I don't want to be pulled." I mutter, curling up tighter and turning away from her. "Maybe I am happy in a rut."
"Please Shyama." Radha tells me. 
I stare in to her face, see nothing but concern and love and I relent. 
"Ok, damn it, if it means so much to you, but if you think that walking in wet sand is going to cure my so called depression, you are madder than I thought.” I grumble.

So I am sitting on the Besant Nagar beach at midnight staring at Arjun -lanky
bearded Arjun - outlined against the backdrop of the Bay of Bengal and a
sky that holds the threat of a storm. The chatter of the group of young students
(“we call our group 'The Darwin Club'” the teenager next to me whispers) subsides when Arjun stands up to speak. It looks like they respect him, and when he begins talking, I realise why. He is a wonderful speaker; his voice pitched perfectly, his words well chosen.

"Ok group. This is what we are going to do tonight. We are looking for turtle
eggs. They are about as big as ping-pong balls. Also keep your eyes peeled for
flipper tracks that look like so." He holds up a chart. 
"Remember that the Olive Ridley turtle will be swimming all the way from Australia to lay her eggs here, so
let's treat her with respect. Our job is to find the eggs and transport them to the
turtle hatchery in Neelandarai where they will be safe from poachers. No photos,
no smoking, and always keep your eyes open. I'd like you to say hello to Ms
Shyama, our visitor for this evening." The students grin at me with friendliness
and I smile back self-consciously.

"Let's start walking." He says and I get up, sighing, thinking of the six
kilometre trek to Neelandarai. The students stride briskly ahead and their
enthusiasm is making me feel old and weary; I fall back a little. Perhaps Arjun
senses that I am friendless in this group and he slows his pace to walk with me.
"You don't really look the kind to trek for the environment." 
Arjun says tentatively. I'm a little surprised myself. It is very unlike me - the hedonistic
seeker of self gratification - to walk along a beach at midnight, salt wind making
my hair sticky, sand getting in my shoes. And for what? To save turtle eggs
from poachers?! Christ Radha, you've conned me in to doing some crazy
stuff but this takes the cake, I curse my absent friend.
 "Mmm, it's just something I thought I would do." 
He nods, accepting my non -committal reply and says,"Yes. Maybe it has some novelty value." I smile in agreement, though novel is not the word I would have chosen. Insane, unnecessary, waste of time maybe,
but not novel.

Arjun persuades me to walk barefoot and the sand slithering on my naked
feet arouses me. Arousal is one more emotion that has been a stranger for some
time, so I savour it - it is like meeting an old friend. I breathe in deeply and the
crisp air sends a wake up signal through my lungs. I smile suddenly, at the
strangeness of it all-who would have thought that I would be walking barefoot,
on a beach in the middle of the night with a man that I hardly know. This is fun!
But fun and arousal are small stars in a mainly moonless night and I am not
cheered much. From somewhere within me I must dredge up the motivation to
talk to this man who is passionate about the survival of turtles, the livelihood of
fishermen and the ozone layer. To me, whose concept of joy and sorrow does
not extend beyond my own body and mind, Arjun is fascinating, and I watch,
interested, as the starlight falls upon the chiselled planes of his face.  
His enthusiasm is weakening, however, battering against the concrete of my
unresponsiveness. He shows me a purple seashell and I pity him a little for his
disappointment when I fail to share his joy in it's shading and symmetry.


"I wonder, do you realise how amazing it is? These turtles make a three
thousand mile journey to get here. Would you travel that distance for anything,
anyone?" He asks me.
 "Yes I would, Arjun my friend, I would indeed." I say to
myself. I am flooded with desolation, unable to speak. 
"I would walk every step of your three thousand miles to feel wood move under my fingers again, to feel
the unbearable beauty of watching a shape come to life under my fingers, to be
touched by the act of creation." 
"Would you?" Arjun asks again.
 Some things are too deeply personal to be shared. I look at Arjun's ocean eyes, shake my head,
say "No."

" They return to the same fragment of beach every year to lay eggs. We do
not really know how they navigate. What guides them? What do they move
towards?" Arjun's question makes me begin to wonder about what guides me.
I'm not really sure but I think it is something to do with beauty. It is the search
for that perfect shape - something pure, self explanatory, with no superfluities,
no pretensions. Yes, I think beauty is what I move towards.


Back to the present. "So what is their map? The earth's magnetic fields, the
pattern of tides, the stars - I don't know." Arjun is saying. "It's just a homing
instinct, I guess. But here is a question - how does the turtle recognise home?"
I have been lost, thinking as usual about my inability to do what I love best,
and I'm not really listening to Arjun's words, but the mention of home brings me
back to the moment.


What do I recognise as home? The self consciously bohemian studio
apartment from where I work, with it's posters, the expensive stereo and the
fragrance of fresh wood shavings hanging over it all? Or is it the complacently
middle class dwelling of my parents with it's puja room and the mandatory show
case full of bric brac? I used to sneer at it's predictability and lack of taste, but it
was there that I fled in misery and panic, a month ago, when I laid my eyes and
hands on virgin wood and felt... nothing.


My parents greeted me with anxiety and affection and an utter inability to
understand what I was going through. 
"What are you unhappy about? Is it a man? Is it your job?" I shook my head.
 "You still do have a job, don't you?" My dad asked, disturbed. 
"Yeah, one I feel not much for."
 "You don't have to feel anything for your job, you just have to do it well." He says irritably. 
I turn away. There is no way I can make them understand that a hobby you love can mean
much more to you than a paying job ever will, that facing a future without
sculpting was …unimaginable.
They did not understand me, but their house was my home. A place I did not
have to deserve, a place where I received unconditional love.


I drag my attention back to Arjun. He is telling me about the turtle again.
"She swims all the way here, lays her eggs and hides them with sand. The
instinct for survival probably. We usually just spot the flipper tracks, dig through
the sand and find the eggs. But twice I've been lucky enough to see the turtle
actually lay the eggs. And then she dances. Watching that turtle dance has got
to be one of the high points of my life." Arjun says, turning to the ocean.

"Why do they dance?” I ask him.
 "We are not really sure. May be it is to hide the eggs. Maybe-" he grins at me, who is not responding much, "maybe it is a response to the sea and the sky and the world around her, or maybe it is just...
  Passion." 

The night is silent apart from the breakers that seem to echo Arjun's
words. Passion - isn't that what I was trying to capture in my sculpture? In those swirls of wood and stone, those frozen melodies? Is it not passion that has disappeared from my work and made it so lifeless?
Arjun is interesting, friendly but I would really rather be alone. I walk slowly
and lag behind. I am trying to see what these young biology students and their
teacher are seeing, walking by the beach in this not quite morning. The song of
breakers, the stink of seaweed and salt, a dark sky hanging low.

"Sshh, there is something here." Arjun whispers and the group stops walking -
suddenly, silently.
I watch as a huge turtle waddles up the sand and slowly starts
digging a hole. She settles in the nest, and head slightly raised, unaware of us,
lays her eggs. White spheres on the dark sand. 

Then she begins dancing. This turtle who has crossed half the world to come here flaps her flippers sending
sprays of sand flying. She moves with unparalleled grace, the dome of her shell
describing circles in the night air. The force of her body shakes the ground as
she dances on, heedless of the circle of entranced humans. 

And I, I am more moved than I have been in my entire life. There is no one else in the universe –just me and this dancer. Only this moment exists. My mind leaps across millennia of evolution and I feel what the turtle is feeling, here at the end of her journey –a journey made across the oceans where life began, a journey made so that life
can continue. 

She ends her dance, rests, walks back towards the ocean, disappears with a
soft splash. I release a breath I do not know I have been holding, wipe tears
from my cheeks with trembling fingers and kneel on the sand to collect the soft
eggs. We walk another hour to reach the hatchery, but I am aware of nothing
around me - the excited students, the warm drizzle, the cold beach.

 Arjun smiles at me with understanding, says "I'll see you in the morning."
We sleep on the beach, the sand holding my body like a lover, and I dream of
waves, of dancing. Also, my hands hold the memory of a shape which, I pray
earnestly, will be born on wood. 

Morning finds me at my workstation with a block of teak before me. A moment's trepidation, a short prayer. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and touch the wood. It touches me back.

Light slants upon the blood moving in my fingers, my fingers moving on the
wood. My living fingers mould the wood to which I will give life. Everything is
extraordinarily clear - the wood, the picture in my head of what the wood will
become. My hands dance upon the teak- shaping, reshaping. Nothing else
matters now - nothing but the mind to see a vision, the hands to change that
vision to a reality.

...And passion of course.