Life from a near-death

“Ding dong, ding dong”, the alarm went on in my mobile. Slowly opening my sleepy eyes, I laid my hand on my mobile and saw the time. It was 5-35am on 4^th of Nov 2010. Me, my cousins and one of my uncles were sleeping in a hotel room and had planned for a bath in the morning sea. So we had to get up early in order to enjoy the morning sea and return back just after sunrise. I called everyone to get up and then we were all set to move in next 3 mins. It was still dark outside when we started to walk towards beach. The beach was around 15mins walking distance from our place. So after 15mins, we reached the beach. For a moment, we stared at each other for a second. The vast Arabian Sea was beckoning us. The next second we were stripping our clothes and running towards the cold water. Recently I had learnt this new technique called floating on water with heads looking up towards sky. The beach looked very calm without much waves at the moment. I started my float immediately as I hit the water. “Aaaah… Awesome… it was a pleasure…” I thought. Indeed it was a pleasure watching the brightening sky upwards and then closing my eyes for sometime to listen to the wonderful calmness of the sea. Then got up couple of times and again went into my float. After what looked like a long time around half n hour had passed by.

“Hey come, its time to go home” – I heard someone shouting. Cursing the moment, thinking, the wonderful time is up let’s come tomorrow and start afresh, I slowly got up from my float position. Suddenly I realized that my feet were still floating under the water. I tried to reach the ground beneath, but then I could not. I saw the land quite far away from where I had started floating. It took me a moment to realize that the waves had calmly drifted me away from the land and here I was trying to think hard how to get to the shores of safety. Realizing I would drown at any moment, I immediately called my uncle for help. My uncle realized that and started swimming towards me. Suddenly one more of my cousin who was sitting on the shores also started coming towards me when he heard me call for help. Finally my uncle reached me, but then he also was not able to touch the ground beneath. He pushed me from behind and then he had to regain himself and push me again. After few pushes, we were still long way from the shores.

The ground beneath was uneven, the place where I started to float was at a much higher altitude than where we were now. That was the reason we were not able to find the ground beneath. The higher ground was towards our right. My uncle started pushing me towards that higher ground level. Whatever we tried, it looked as if the silent waves of the sea were pulling us towards itself and away from the shores. One more cousin of mine was standing on that higher ground level and shouting at me to try and reach there. My uncle was now tired, he started swimming back towards that higher ground. Maybe he would regain some breath and return again for another push. But since I saw him move out, I thought I must be too far away and was difficult to be saved. Thoughts came to my mind that this could be the end of my life and started looking at various moments which I had spent in my lifetime. Then one final time I started praying to the god and thought that this is it. Then suddenly I realized I was still floating, not drowning. This was weird. I was not drowning, at the same time I knew vaguely on concepts of swimming. So putting all my effort, I thought, one last chance let me give it to myself and started kicking my hands and legs to move towards the higher ground. Suddenly I felt some sand below with my foot finger, but I was still not feeling safe. I could not stand on the ground below and the waves were still pulling me away from the land. Then after few seconds of struggle, I could finally land my foot on the ground beneath the water and struggled to walk until the water level came down to my knee level. At this point, I felt completely safe and turned back to see my cousin who had dived into sea was double the distance from land from where I was at some point of time. It was merely impossible for any of us to swim back to him and save him. We could only watch in horror for couple of minutes when few village people gathered around. None of these people came for our rescue and instead they were scolding at us for going so far in the sea.

From nowhere in crowd, one man with 6.5ft height started undressing himself and started towards the sea to save my cousin. We watched him easily swim across the dangerously calm sea and catch hold of my cousin and then with the help of a long rope, we all pulled him back to the shores. My senses were not working at this point of time and at that moment realized that everyone of us were safe now. Somewhat regaining the strength to face the shouting and scolding villagers, we put on the remaining strength and courage to start walking towards our home. We thanked the hunk whose name was Martin and he was from England. He wished us back a “Happy Diwali” and for the next 15 mins, nobody talked and we were in state of shock. We were also wondering how to face the people back in home. Then our nerves slowly started settling down. We told all the people about this incident back home and then there were usual “I told you not to go…” speeches from our elders. Not that, we did not know about this before, but then some lessons are learnt in a harder way.

There is a saying “Calm seas are more dangerous than the roaring seas”. Even today when I see the calm sea and think of this very day, it sends down shiver to the spines of my body and makes me think how true the saying is. Also this incident told us not to underestimate the strength of a calm sea. Nevertheless, I am thankful to all people who came to my and my cousin’s rescue without which I would not have seen another sunrise in my life.