Time lapse.

Have you ever walked along the shore, just a little ahead of where the sea waves hit the sand? It's high tide. Waves are wilder. Quicker. The sand receeds into the sea so fast, it feels like the entire world just moved and shifted tectonic plates. Your whole body seems to be moving, but there's one thing that remains stagnant and that's the mind. Focused and alert, taking frame shots of a movie like movement of everything around you and within you that's shaking and shifting. You can feel every fiber of your being in that moment. 

That's what dhuriwada is like. That's what five days of being in and around this village has made me feel. It was meditation. 

Dhuriwada happens to be a fishing village at the edge of the Chivla beach in Malwan, Maharashtra. We spent about 15 minutes walking across the entire beach every morning to reach the village which was our site. The first day I stepped into the village, I noticed how I actually hadn't stepped in. There was no boundary, no definition of where this village starts or ends neither were there any definite boundaries between the houses or within the houses. I'd never seen a landscape so sporadic and yet so wholesome before. A coconut tree here, another there, a temple here , a well there, a house here and another house there. And no pathways to walk. Just a massive public space that flows throughout the layout of this village. 

The next day we began working as groups for our case study which meant we'd have to talk to all kinds of locals and gather the information we need. For some, like me there was a stiff language barrier in these interactions but within a few hours I found myself figuring out ways to talk to them with all the intimidation fading away. The people here are very forthcoming. Even if they don't know how to communicate with you, they'll definitely find someone who can in a matter of minutes just so you can get the data you need. 

There's an eagerness they had to tell us all about their lives. You know when you teach a kid mathematics and feel so good when she does the problem right? There's this superiority and wholesomeness you feel because you've just imparted someone with knowledge they did not possess and could possess with out having to talk to you. You've just taught someone something from your own gathered files of informations and experiences, that feels so good right? That's exactly what must have driven them to talk to us so well and so much.  

We ended up finding so much about their lives. People we've never known or never had a way of knowing and now we know their entire life history and daily routine. Even though there's about 40-50 houses here, the whole village functions as a big community. There's no concept of a formal organization on any level of economy. There's no hierarchy in the fishing activity. In fact their primary occupation is just another large scale community activity for them.  We've spend days understanding the bond between the fisherman which has leaked through the stories they've told us. 

Their whole life is strongly tied to the malwan town and the way the landscape shifts and mixes into the city and markets and back to shore is mind boggling. While the village is all about free spaces and a highly interactive community, the next shift in landscape is to the town which has brighter and proper built bungalows with a lot of different layers of facade that come together so gracefully. From there, there's a quick shift to the market which is narrow and congested with bright shops and lights and sounds and conversation everywhere. It's so easy and drastic at the same time. And in all of these landscapes, you can still pass through spots where you can hear the waves and the wind that are passing and crashing on the shoreline. Like leaks in a big wall of an intricate painting. I can't wait to put everything in a physical representation and show the rest of the world what this place is all about. 

On a spiritual and intellectual level, I've  had so many new moments of self discovery and reflection that it's hard to tell you which moment made me feel the most alive. I've spent two days walking around an unknown village and a small town, with a child like curiosity that was shared by someone I hadn't had one straight conversation with in the four months of college. It's weird when you connect so well with someone in a matter of four days and feel as if this moment of hanging out with them is as real as it can get. I've walked to the beach through a pitch dark road with echoes of ghost stories and a wave of fear from my fellow classmates at midnight. I've stargazed  while sleeping in the middle of five people, all of whom were in awe of how vast and beautiful the black sky looked with a thick blanket of stars. I've slept on a thin cement road, between a creepy later of bushes which have wandering snakes and the high tide hitting the rock bed on the other, feeling tears running through my face because it was so beautiful to feel that alive, to be in a place only you are and only in your own awareness. I've gotten reminded of people so far away from me by hearing the sound of the waves as a distant echo haunting through and within my body. I've sat on dried leaves and felt high and dizzy looking at the glimpse of the universe above me. I've stood at the edges of a massive Sidhudurg fort and gotten over the fear of falling and dying in the violent waves below me and felt like if I really believed it, I could have been flying. I've ran across massive stretchers of weathered rock mountains felling like Indiana jones and discovering secret rooms and pathways through the fort. 

I've felt like I've been walking at the edge of our world. That's the beauty of this place. It's so far away from everything. Not geographically or physically but in some other kind of a dimension. 

Spending four days talking to locals and understanding their way of life and getting to know them so well, familiarizing with a village and town that I've heard of as a friend's native place and at the end feeling as if I could be a native here, calling out to kids and knowing which house they came from, having Coke while talking to an adorable lady who seemed like the happiest woman in the world, understanding the economy and culture of the whole village on our own and many more factors have made me grow so much in these few days. 

In a place like this you completely lose all track of time. On shore an hour seems like two and in water an hour seems like fifteen minutes, that's what a young fisherman told us. We've walked through the borders of land and sea and stood between two ways of experiencing time. Time moves slowly and the number of events and data received by your breaking doubles up. It feels as if I've been teleported far away from my world to understand another and now I can go back and apply everything I've understood and felt here, there. I guess that's the whole point of these study trips. 

We're not just documenting a village, we're becoming a part of it. We're a part of a welcoming community and we familiarize ourselves so quickly with the landscape, the maps , the houses, the community and culture and their economy and whilst doing this compare and reflect upon what our experiences in the urban life have been like. 

I think it's like a process, of falling in love. Falling in love with a person, a place, and animal a thing a scene, a book a movie a stone a shell ; all of it in a way or the other is just the same. And the contentment that these bring about is just something else. 

I'm glad I've raised my social skills so much by being forced to interact with 100s of strangers. I'm glad my confidence levels have increased so much by engaging in constant conversation

 and work with my batch and my faculty. A lot of insecurities have faded away after standing here and watching how this community has no insecurities. Sure everyone does but the difference is the way you respond to these insecurities and issues. Their responses towards various issues and questions that's should bother them have completely shook my way of responding to things. 

I might just feel homesick for this place when I go back to Bombay. Heh.