A Holiday
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| Sunrise @BeachHut by PineForest |
I left on the 2nd day of Xmas for my long awaited holiday (anticipated for several years) & returned on the 13th day of Xmas.
I flew as far away as I could to the remotest, deserted islands within the region. I had a fabulous time every single day. Even the day I had a disagreement with a female trigger fish. I was snorkelling at a small island T, stumbled upon her lair and startled her. She attacked me, pursued and bit me on my left achilles heel.
Perhaps the most significant experience of my entire trip was the meeting I had with myself. I had decided to book a last minute escape from party island to a quiet island to spend New Year's eve in silent retreat. It was the most basic, rustic, authentic beach hut on a near deserted beach save for chickens & cows. No air-con, no hot water, no attached bathroom, no sink for washing. Just a fan, a mosquito net, a comfortable large mattress with hard pillows in a sturdy wooden hut on concrete stilts. After almost a week of people and activities on party island, I was yearning for some quiet time with myself on a deserted island. I was ecstatic at the idea.
On the second night, I awoke suddenly like a scene from a horror movie at 3.38am feeling fearful of my surroundings. I immediately sat up on my mattress, drank some water and sat in silent contemplation in my hut conscious of the huge banana tree in front of my door. I needed to overcome the gripping fear of Mara looming outside my door. I recalled childhood horror tales related to banana trees bearing young fruits & female ghouls dressed in white. I was all alone with no one around me and nowhere to go.
I took refuge in feeling what Siddhartha felt the night before his enlightenment when he sat to meditate against Mara's torments & temptations. He was under a bodhi tree and he finally succeeded. I was under coconut trees and succeeded too, two hours later Mara fled my life. I sat and meditated relentlessly and felt indescribable bliss at dawn. Despite the beach, the breeze and the waves, it was just the silent stillness that I felt.The stillness solidified into a thick immense cloud swathing me as I merged into it.
Perhaps I remember this episode most of all is the fact that it was the only spiritual experience I could intellectually recall.
The other intellectually exhilarating experience I can recall is the vibrant underwater life fringing the islands especially the remotest ones within reach by boat. The corals & underwater flora and fauna were tourist brochure worthy. While I am convinced that nature is very much alive & thriving, the threat of plastic pollution is real as sunset. It permeates every facet, phase and strata of human existence and excesses. Every morning, plastic debris of all shape and size wash ashore polluting the most pristine of beaches with waste excreted from the cluster of neighbouring islands. This is probably the biggest elephant in the room that the whole world is ignoring with apathy. I see native islanders themselves littering, children tossing candy wrappers as casually as pushing back hair from their sun-browned little faces. Plastic pollution, like most problems facing our world needs to be addressed from the grassroots by individuals not only government. The owner of my beach hut, Gun, a strapping islander who harbours ambitions of being a politician bent on improving the lives of his fellow islanders by mitigating the plastic menace. I wished him success as he, accompanied his wife and infant daughter transported me by boat to the main island and by car to my next destination.
I stayed on the main island for the rest of my holiday. Throughout, my trip was dotted with interesting meetings and connections with locals and individuals largely genuine. People and pets living in paradise and realising they do and those who wished they were somewhere else. I sat more with the former kind, shared stories and meals with them while nursing a swollen foot that seemed to have crept up on me exactly a week after the underwater altercation.
Doctors and nurses from two nations could do nothing except prescribe a cocktail of antibiotics and pain killers for the swelling. I ditched both after 5 days of no visible results and hobbled along while observing the phenomenon on my foot for several weeks. I resigned myself to the fact that there is no known medication for trigger fish bites. Yet.
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| Sunset in Paradise by PineForest. |
Happy New Year 2024.
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