A poem for a picture - 3

My boat stands still
Soaking in the calm sea;
A moment to ponder.

-khyati

I remember the late morning when I clicked this picture at a jetty near my home. It was about 11 am on a weekday. But the thick cloud cover made it seem like a late evening. Very few people have the privilege to loiter around on a weekday morning like that. It was very quiet; the water very still.

I was in company of old men who were fishing lazily by the jetty. Old men who have nothing better to do. Fishing is a perfect passtime for them. To me, it feels a bit like life.

You hook a fishing line, throw it off as far as you could into the sea and wait. You have to wait for the trinkets attached to the rod to make a sound as the fish struggles in the otherwise calm sea. When will that happen? Nobody knows. There is a lot of waiting involved. In the meantime, you have all the time to wonder and ponder.

When the trinket finally rings and you pull the fishing line towards you, there is a sense of excitement. What is it? Is it a big fat fish you have been waiting for or a dud piece of a floating branch. You have no way to find out till you make the effort of pulling it all the way back. Sometimes, they turn out to be disappointments. Sometimes, they are pleasant surprises. Irrespectively, you have to put effort to find out.

But fishing, just like life, is not about what you catch. It's about the moments of stillness in between and whether you can learn to enjoy them.

P.S: In this series, I attempt to write a short poem to match the picture.