Sand Castles

The last few days have been a bit mad. I met somebody very similar to myself; except she’s a she, ten years younger and a great deal more beautiful. She’s off today, back to Calcutta. That’s the way things go on the beach. For most it’s just a transient span of time between moments in reality. They come, they see, they change the currents and then leave memories.

We built a sand castle the other day; a suitable analogy, as she suggested. You spend a great deal of time building it, knowing full well that soon it will disappear completely, except for an impression on the mind; but you don’t regret doing it. It’s liberating, in a way, to know the conclusion before you begin. Like the monologue at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet that frees you to concentrate on the journey, rather than the end.

Mind you, our sand castle wasn’t really a castle, but more a temple. One we dedicated to the Sun Gods of Palolem. It was a square temple on a round mount. Sand doesn’t really lend itself well to square shapes, but with a bit of effort you can make it work. There was a moat, too (sand castles always need moats). Over that we built a bridge, we had to try many different strategies to cross the divide; but we got it to stand in the end, when the waves were already lapping near the moat.

It got a lot of attention, our sand castle. A little boy sitting nearby tried to build one too, but couldn’t make it match up to ours, he got very angry. There’s always a lot of envy surrounding beautiful things.

We found a hermit crab and made him the head priest. It didn’t really want to come out of its shell, though. It didn’t really want to play along. I imagine that people can be pretty intimidating to a hermit crab. I guess it was very afraid of what we might do to it. Fair play, as the Brits like to say. Shells are there for a reason. In the end it wandered around a bit.

There’s something innocent about sand castles; something that harks back to somewhere before. I haven’t done anything like this for a long time. Probably won’t again for a while to come. These kinds of things are best if they remain unique.

A single sand castle on Palolem.

Of course, sooner or later the analogy breaks down (as otherwise it wouldn’t be an analogy but the actual event). The sand castle’s impact will always be minimal; what we had might reverberate for a little while longer. I just hope that – taking all the positive and the negative – there will be no regrets.

But then a good mate of mine down here correctly pointed out that the only things you truly regret are the things you didn’t do. I feel he’s right about that - I hope she feels the same way.