Please read the chapters in order starting from Drowning — Chapter 0
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Morjim seemed uncharacteristically strong in its pull. Supratik decided that he wouldn’t go any further than his waist depth. We stopped for a chat whilst tumbling with the waves. Some rave discussion later, Supratik mentioned how the undertow was getting stronger.
As far as I can remember, I had a similar thought initially. That is until I saw, a long-haired Jesus-looking brother swim super long strides like he was the second coming of Jason Momoa himself. He wasn’t afraid at all. Jesus swimming on the beach with a red, dusky, setting sun blessing all the good wishes should have been a beautiful sight to behold. The only problem was … my ego.
I am a half-decent swimmer myself. I am a self-confessed water hyacinth. I float like a wafer and heck — after my recent illness, I was looking like one too. So I like being the farthest on the beach. I hate to find other guys going in deeper than me.
So away I went, sailing the seas with that Abrahamic motherfucker. I could immediately feel the mud rush beneath my feet.
Pretty soon I found Morjim creepily cuddling my clavicles. Varun at this point was a few feet away from me. He motioned to ask — “Aaun?”. I may have nodded!
Reaching my level and standing a few feet away, he started chirping away at Juicy Jesus. Varun and I share a sense of pointed passive aggression towards anyone who seems a bit unlike us.
The sun as I mentioned was bright red, the kind of red you see when someone smacks on the back of your head. The beach seemed sufficiently sparse. The 2 deeply closeted guys were no longer hugging each other. The odd bunch of desi boys were still mingling and monkeying in their Dixy undies. I saw a couple of European oldies in their granny panties approach the shoreline, & that’s what I remember.
I was struck by a big wave on my head, or rather since Varun was at my level, we were hit by the same wavefront on our heads. I didn’t think much of it initially. I know the wave dance. I jumped, breathing in and popping out exhaling, waiting to land on my feet.
Only this time, I couldn’t. There was no land to land on. I immediately went inside the water again. The cuddle was now a choke.
“No!, No!, No!”, the beach has it wrong, I thought. Before I could recover, I was hit with another wave & I realized, it was I who had it wrong.
I immediately pop my head out, only to hear a nervous chuckle from Varun, “Abey …. he he he”, before he went inside again. He still hadn’t realized that we were in deep, deeeeep waters!
I was pushed in for a third time. I try to turn right and look at him, but the waves by now were incessant and stronger. Within around 20 seconds of struggle, I reminded myself that Varun had probably realized by now that he was fighting against the sea & that this evil vortex was trying to pull us out of this dimension.
Herein lay the problem, “Varun is not a swimmer.”
I popped out again and glanced at him to the right. He was moving his arms in circles. His back was arched and he was leaning at about 50 degrees. His eyes were wide open like he had seen Kraken’s anus. If panic and dread had a face, it would look a lot like Varuns in those moments. He was struggling to stay afloat. His open-mouthed gasps were causing him to swallow gallons and gallons of salty water. I shouted, “Varun! Varun! back par float kar!” All my attempts at direction were futile
I decided to call for Jesus, and so I turned left only to realize that Jesus had left us a long time ago. We had been forsaken like Africa. I decided to recoup some strength by floating on my back. The waves had abated for a bit. I tried swimming against the current. I tried with everything I had. I tried with blood, bone, and brass sinew. I stopped and got up, I was still in the same spot.
“How could I still be in the same fucking spot?”
And it dawned on me — we were in a riptide!
These waves were gonna pound on us like some rapey war soldier, trying to drown us in his salty depressed cum.