End Point, Manipal

                                                                        Man in the World/ Pavel Filonov

I awoke early with a faint stench of Beer and Chicken lurking in my being. It was quarter to six. C was gloriously, happily asleep, and looked like to be in a Turiya of sort. After a few minutes of lazy ambivalence, I remembered the recommendation from many a friends to catch the sunrise or the sunset at the End Point.

I quickly refreshed, changed over to shorts and trainers, and decided to go for a run to the End point.

I was told it wasn’t farther than 2 kilometres (roughly a mile) from the place I was put up, But I knew neither the directions, nor the sunrise time. So I left immediately.

When I stepped out, the night was old with a leathery feel of a winter dawn in the beckoning, the air was heavy with fresh dew. The street was deserted and silent carefully concealing the promise of new day. A middle-aged lady covering herself in a cap, a muffler and long shawl walked past. Hoping to ask her the direction I let out an ‘excuse me’ into the cold air. As if she had seen my face on the Most-Wanted poster she hastened into the darkness without answering. Meanwhile, not far away a man and woman, presumably on the morning walk, under the advantage of the murk, were busy stealing off flowers from a nearby private tree. Not wanting to alarm them , I just turned right blindly. After a furlong of run, I came across a man riding a moped, who, upon gesture, was kind enough to stop and give me the much wanted directions, not only correctly but also succinctly, a trait most Indians lack.

It wasn’t far off, and to quote a friend, nothing is in Manipal. Past some Official Residences, Joggers, Walkers, Type 2 Diabetics, Mild Hypertensives, loud North Indians I was at End Point in about ten minutes.

End Point is a summit of mini hillock from where one can catch the tail of the western ghats laid out in an open valley shaped like a giant natural U turn; I waited for about 15 minutes, easing my limbs and mind. As I waited, dawn broke through slowly, colouring the scape layer by layer. The ghats were low and faint in the receding night with freshly sliced clouds hovering over them, taxi-ing slowly through the vast conventions of the greens.
Down in the valley, a rivulet named Suvarna, snaked past serenely reflecting all the magic in her wide shimmering arm. The birds chirped ceaselessly heralding the dawn. The sun started glimpsing through the mist and the day began to warm up. Needless to say it was beautiful – the fresh day and the immensity of the dawn being unwrapped by the endless sky. The moment was moving and beheld great promise, yet I found a tinge of heaviness inside me. In that instant I realised, I wanted to be a boy; younger and in the past– more ignorant, more naive and more able to innocently believe and appreciate the might of the tremendous infinity that lay before me. And I knew I would never be able to, as I did once, which seemed so distant and so difficult. Standing there, feeling like an obscure trivia, it occurred to me that growing up wasn’t progress after all. Aging, however glorified and virtuous, was decline– a slow and trickling loss of something we once had all for ourselves.
I came back, tired and hungry:less beautiful things that move the earth.