The marina is shiatsu to the jittery cognizance..
The sun dips low and the powdery blue of the beyond blushes a bleed of crimson , in the conurbation that never slumbers , and Mumbai’s marina begin to ripen with bustle and banter.
Tucking her feathered coat closer to her, sinking her petite toes into the sun kissed feverish shingles of the sea , she hops from one foot to the other and , peers past the peddlers , perambulators and the debris and peer into its Prussian plunges… at the zenith of the sea, south of border, and to the west of sun , where lies the zenith of the universe- A constellation of moss-topped emerald tarns , afloat on the brow of the empress of the Arabian sea.
She remembers a sundown, where she coasted through the briny tang that fanned from the brooding depths of the olive green pools …
Through the din of the marina, a sense of armistice meditates through her and she arches her back, poised to take flight..
Dusk would be tiptoeing into the western crook of that flawless frame, where the call of a lark would be hailed by the high slanted shrill of a kingfisher
Sandwiching these cries sounds the clamour of the cruiser –Lady Matilda gongs , who laps her way from the mainland to the deltas dotting the lagoon
she is leaving the jetty for her last game of four corners for the day that she along with her cohorts play reeling across the gloomy backwaters , carrying her lessees home till the shutter of obscurity falls , the lamp on her cowl was lit and she was snarled to her home by the pier– and rocked gently by the shallow waters , her bell tingling teased in the tangy nocturnal gust, waiting for the sky to clear and the larks to rouse
From the south western bottom of the page, wafted the strains of the melancholic call from the Mosque in the islet, beckoning his brothers , to bow down to the bidding sun… the waves of the backwaters, pirouetted in the darkness, fluctuating to the harmonies of life around them..as lamps peppering the focal marina spring to life, a nod for the larks to coast back to their shells in the moorland as the backwaters begin warbling the sonnets of a half reminisced rhapsody …lulling its litanies in to a lullaby.
The lark's pointed toes, posed to soar , pecks the shingle of the Mumbai marina goodbye, as she soars across the Arabian vista , on a long voyage to her shell by the backwaters , as the rhapsody of the lagoons , hymn to her and the pharos from the beacon in the Cherai haven , beam on – song and light hooking pinkies and swaying in carnival of the lark’s homecoming.