As I matched my steps with the people I was marching with, I realized all the passers by were staring at us, but that did not stop us from singing aloud bhajans praising our little elephant god whom we were bidding goodbye. Chanting aloud the shlokes I had shed all my old clothes and I walked naked absorbing the radiant glow the idol was bathing in.
The sea was just not water today; it was a hot volcano burning souls and their idols in spirituality. Hundreds of hosts like us stood bowing down to their own ‘personal’ idol, though they were all clones, but each group had put a bit of themselves, their family, their spirit in these idols. Inhaling the camphor fumes , I saw dancing shadow of the little flame it produced , putting a smile on the onlookers, bowed heads looking for an answer in that fire on the beach. Tears filled my eyes, it was ecstatic, and a blurred image of red faces formed a beautiful scene in front of me. People who had left themselves behind were now moving towards the fire, probably in self destruction, it was pulling them to it, like a fragrance, like a drug. I felt high, head spinning I was lost in the many lights shining, fuming, swallowing the sea.
And loosing all their inhibitions, souls ran toward the light, soaking themselves, like new born tortoises who rush to live, at midnight. And as they immersed our idol in the water, I too was submerged with it. Taking in all the water, filling my nostrils, but not choking, giving me a yet another life. I relived a hundred years in those few seconds, I relived a lifetime.
