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EARTH

New !

The Stupa Man

It begun literally at my feet. The pure white froth of expended waves fizzling out on the strand line like white paper, and the water black as ink; the sea, like a passionate writer caught in a whirlwind of prose, scribbled furiously thoughts that need to be caught and told. Thus the tale unfold and I became his page held captive too by his narratives.

As it happened, it was a windy day. I could feel it on my face, and see it in the waves. But today, the sea was unusual. This particular bay was invaded by huge blocks of peat. Evidently, a raging storm had bridged a fortitious inter-tidal plain somewhere beyond the horizon and having ripped of its subterranean loot of peat, swept them here by strong northeasterly current. Along with them, came huge logs, planks and debris, strewn askant along the beach...

East Coast Park, Singapore; 25 May 2004

The scene and its mood were thus set... almost surreptitiously, that is; it fell in place like a drop of water in a pond and carried within the fleeting ripples deeper meanings. Was it not the poet and novelist, Thomas Hardy, who once wrote,

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps it glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk,
will the neighbours say,
'He was a man who used to notice such things.'?

Dreamy thoughts turned rippling waves as the writer struggled to ease his pen. It crushed down heavy on his beseiged paper. He tore and wrangled with himself. Creating and snatching back those irrepressible lines he penned, he could barely come to grip with his vision. Volatility tossed and heaved the large block of peat into crumbles. With each new wave pitching forth, natural imperfection revealed its beauty. He had a beautiful mind.

Man has no patience for imperfection though. And beauty has no place it seemed. Into the scene rolled the Protagonist in the form of a huge machine. 'Efficiency' was its middle name. It was impressive and powerful, and it had, one might add, an 'intelligentia' persona. At a push of a button or a lifting of a lever, it could do everything it was meant to do. And that it did with clinical precision. It simply could not wait for the rhythm of the sea. Raising its heavy plow, it bore down onto the peat blocks, crushing them into carpets of dust...

In one clouded instance, his textural text lost it form, and words became flatter that flat. Crystallined thoughts turned to bare sand. The writer was stumped and could go no further. Intelligentia has an intrusiveness that gets in the way of emotive thoughts, and that took the light out of his page. It was pitch black.

Meanwhile, the Protagonist went about its task. It marched back and forth along the bay in a show of strength and consistency. Lifting and setting aside huge logs, it even boast an elaborate conveyor-belted dumpster in tow. Like a giant pompous snail, it mowed and scrapped out any debris it could find with its radula. The Protagonist literally swept aside anything it found out of place, assisted by two foreign labourers in attendance...

Old Chaos rose up to engulf with pitch black void and formlessness, and the Light drown in the primal universe of the sea as if the earth was flat once more. 'Ignorance is bliss' they say, and so it was - in the blistering heat little did the sun-bathers knew they were under a great shadow.

The writer gestured me to walk and that I did, following him in a mesmerising trail of shimmering wet sand. It laid magically before us like a comet's tail and led us

yonder into another world - the next bay.

Only moments ago, he was a man wrecked like a ship upon rocks. He had his face buried deep in his hands and his curly locks drabbed forlorn like sargassums over Melpomene. The shadow of the Protagonist was too much for the writer to bear. But here, he was smiling and writing again. There were no peat to be found and the water was clear. His pen flowed freely again like eternal spring. For here in this bay, he met a man after his own heart - a man who build 'stupas' with drifts. The writer was inspired.

One would have mistaken this old man as a hired beach cleaner. Bending as he did so often to pick up a plastic bag here and there, and selectively filling them with small-sized debris. At times, he would wade into the shallow water to collect floating planks which he would haul to the scarp-line, and stack them up. His gait was tellingly unhurried and slow to a stroll. But he was focussed in an unassuming way. It was as if he was carrying Time in his own hands and offering them as prayers on the stupas he built.

'I pitied the two labourers' was his simple answer when asked why he was doing it. He was neither hired nor volunteered, but an agent of his own heart and it was pure. His presence was as natural as the wind and the waves. He made no show and seek no attention, and was at one with himself and everything that was about him.

To call him a saint would have him stained. To praise

would have defile. We left the good man to his calling, but before we took leave, we shock his hands. Soon after, the writer and I parted company too. But before he left, he found a driftwood and wrote on the sand at my feet. It read: 'T'was a man as simple as the drifts he collected, but mightier was he than any machine for he had a heart.'

Thus the story ended where it began - at my feet; a day at the beach seemed a lifetime, and the distance spanned the vast ocean of the Universe. I will never forget the man and his stupas of drifts.