The Lifejacket Guy

On the first week of my (already too long) holiday, I allowed two close friends to convince me to go on a road trip. I hate road trips. I hate the car ride. I hate having to make conversation when all I want to do is throw up vile, motion-fed goop. And I hate having to be told that I am anti-social. But it was a water trip. And I love the water. So I said yes and took my vile humour, many many bottles of water (that never stayed cold), my beautiful camera and a potential to share the dil chahta hai attitude that my friends clearly, enviously celebrated.

But it was not what my dil chahtafied. I want to say that I warmed to the idea of having close company the last few months before I left home. But the truth was I was a complete, unexplainable grouch. I snarled every time the music changed to a tune I dint know and/or like. I sulked when the sun found its way through well-tinted glass of a luxury a/c car. And I hated the driver for not knowing (or pretending to not know) tamizh.

As a result, nothing was beautiful to me. Not the moss green roads. Not the chance of sighting wildlife in the middle of a highway. Not the mountains that sneaked behind every old, sleepy village. Nothing.

Nothing, that is, until we first sighted water.

For when we did (one day into our trip, on the banks of Kali), nothing was was not beautiful. With the clean, black river and the promise of being able to ride her, everything nothing was irksome anymore. Not the sun that shone harsher than it did in our silver Chevrolet. Not the fact that I was in a swimsuit that looked infinitely nicer in the trial room mirror of the store I bought it in. Not even the gawking, croaking, ghastly birds.

And just as soon as I found the river and the chance to salvage what I had resigned to be a forlorn trip, divine interference tainted the balance. To enter the river and ride the white (black) waters, I had to wear a lifejacket ensemble, complete with a yellow helmet.

I dont know about hydrophobics, but for those of us that love the water, having plastic shield us from an environment we love and thrive in, is not only suffocating and infuriatingly restricting, but also hateful. Sure, it is safe. Sure, we need it to keep us afloat. But its also easy to hate when you are being forced to wear one whilst riding a river (you think) you know you can handle.

And I hated it. I hated the lifejacket. And I hated its clumsy, suffocating promise to save me.

Perhaps I should introduce the lifejacket guy before going too far with this. This guy is every mother's right guy. He is safe. Involved (without being irresponsible). Funny (without being crude). Honest (without being tactless) and strong (without being overbearing). He walks the dog, helps set the table and holds your hand in front of the father without it ever seeming offensive. When he has not been found for us (by fat armed auntys that insist they know the way to a successful marriage - yes, even as their own wilts to a sorry end with thinner, longer nosed secretaries), he finds us.

And when he finds us, we find ourselves. At least, we find the parts of ourselves that wants to settle down, build picket fences and raise chubby babies whose drool we know we will have help cleaning. We imagine the brass pots and the yellow kitchens, clean wooden flooring and the enlarged, matted posters that we want on our bottle green walls. We plan vacations and sights, draw names on the sides of our notepads and try saving email addresses with names that we think we might have should we (and we should!) marry this guy.

But (and this, like most buts, is a sad but), you see, when I was on that raft, cruising the white (black) waters, trying hard (and succeeding) to allow the sun and the Kali to make up for the fact that I had a suffocating helmet on, we reached a spot which our Nepali head rafter called the swimming pool. Those of us that could (and wanted to) swim, he said, could jump off. We were allowed to float free within range of the raft. And so long as we agreed to have our safety gear on, were allowed to swim the waters between the dangerous, lifejacket-needing waters.

Being the sort that always wants more (or slips to oblivion after foolishly trying), I put on my most persuasive smile and asked Mr. Gangotree (although between the two of us, I had seen more of the Ganga than he. He was a coorg rafter) if I could jump in the water without my helmet. After five required turn downs, he allowed me to kiss the waters and hug the sun without having to awkwardly float on the river on my back to fight my water claustrophobia.

Those twenty stolen, helmetless minutes were the best minutes of my trip.

Not the safest. Not the rightest. Not the most honest. But they were the best. Because they allowed me to be. exactly as I wanted to be. without question. without reason.

This is not to say that I did not wear the helmet after the twenty minutes. Or even that I did not want to. Safety is good. Important. Desired, even. But when safety is thrust upon you when you think you dont need it, it becomes something a settle instead of all the glorious things it should in fact be.

As a result, my lifejacket guy is both the right guy and the settling guy, with disarming consistency, depending on when it was you met him in your life. If you were waiting to be rescued at sea, searching for the one warmth that could get you, he was your right guy. If you were a swimmer at the banks of a river that was 12 feet deep at worst and the only access you had to it was if you wore a helmet, he was your safe, settling guy.

And so, for those of us that dont want that lifejacket guy when he comes into our life and are really fine with clean, unshared rooms (where we can stack the walls with snippets from our ex-ridden past), the lifejacket guy is the suffocating helmet ruining our sun basking on handle-able waters.

Perhaps we know that somewhere, we need to know this guy to save ourselves. We know that we will be out of the currentless pool soon and when we are there, we can only hope that he will find us too. For no faded orange-yellow is non coveted when we see it for all the beautiful things it really is.

But for now, in the swimming pool we know we can handle, it is enough to be there. not thinking. the sun on our eyes. water waiting to be squirted. helmetlessly swimming.