Arizona Golfing Paradise
Maintaining the Paradise
Beach is more than a place
It is a feeling!
The poems of Robert Frost do not require a deep analysis to understand how much the poet was in love with the woods. The forests amazed him, intrigued him and urged him to travel back to the part of nature to which he belonged.
John Muir, the celebrated mountaineer, who wished to ‘lose his mind, and find his soul’ every time he scaled the peaks, chronicled his adventures not in words, but the deeply rooted desires of his heart that gave him courage enough to break free from confines of home.
The two literary geniuses, also the nature lovers with a deep appreciation for wilderness, bowed to the call of the ‘wildness’ residing within them. Both of them expressed freely their loves for the aspects of nature that perhaps act as the bridge between what is human and what is non-human.
I find that bridge with the nature through the beaches. More than the thick forests, cloudy or sunny skies or the sun, moon and other celestial bodies, I find the beaches attractive, complete with the sand, crabs, waves and very often the tides in their subdued or threatening form. My love for beaches dates back to almost the time I learnt to identify the picture of it in a children’s story book. What looked fascinating then with blue shades and vastness of waters that spanned through the entire page, looked specifically terrifying when I visited an actual beach at 6 years of age.
The Juhu Beach in Mumbai was my first memorable adventure, where I saw the world wrapping up in less than 2 kilometres of space, and another one unfurling within the sea. The beach was littered, waters were in shades of black and waves were frothy; but all this looked extremely beautiful to my innocent eyes and I happily nourished my soul in the wet sand for hours.
Growing up however was quick; and quicker were the harsh aspects of reality. What was once the soul-rendering affair became traumatic experience when my slightly intelligent mind knew what lay hidden in the sandy beaches and its opaque waters. ‘Dirty, just dirty’, I would say, permitting my inner child to bow down to the stubborn adult-self; convincing myself that beaches were no more the mirrors of nature.
The life placed me in the vicinity of Marina Beach in Chennai that I visited countless times, every visit reinforcing the dreaded feeling of beaches losing their charisma to merciless existence of humans; so many humans, irresponsible and heartless. Those with hearts were many a times the part of beach cleaning drives; the drives that could not sustain because resources were too few and litter was too much. And too frequent. No Government policy could save the beaches that faced existential crisis at this point in time.
And then everything changed one day. One fortunate day, when I went to Havelock Island in Andaman. On this island which is famous for several beaches, seven of them specifically noteworthy, the biggest is ‘Radha Nagar Beach’. I am not sure in which order we visited the beaches, but all I remember is that when I landed in Havelock Island, I set foot on the land with a prepared sense of compromising my fascination to beach waters once again.
I had convinced myself much before the start of journey that an internationally famed tourist place, witnessing over 5000 tourists every day, is sure to be a sorry-some sight of struggle, woes and misery. I had convinced myself that I was going to appreciate the place that “once had” the nature in full bloom, and that was a reason adequate enough to visit it. In spite of the many explanations that I gave to myself for not expecting anything much from Andaman’s beaches, somewhere deep inside I longed for interacting with clean waters. Beach waters with shades of green. Playing catch and run with the sand. Where the nature could look like a palette of colours, all co-existing in their distinct individuality.
It was hard for me to accept the fortune when I touched the sands of Radha Nagar Beach. It was not sandy, it was powdery- the soft powder, that nature grinded with finesses without any machinery! And it was white! Some moments are inexplicable and impossible to put in words. I don’t know for how long I stood in awe, sub-consciously interacting with clear transparent waters, and mechanically responding to those around me. But I do remember looking around for the people, and getting surprised that in-spite of at least 200 people in view, the beaches were clean. How? Not a dustbin in sight, then how was it possible that a highly frequented beach such as this, fondly called “No.7” by locals, didn’t have a stray ice-cream wrapper flying by!
And then I spotted. There were dust bins. Huge in size, and beautiful in sight. They were painted with all kinds of imageries that depicted culture of Andaman- the waves, the fishermen, their nets and the fish. Their families, their lifestyles, their boats and their food, all was exhibited with intrinsic details permitting the tourists to become part of their culture instantly.
These dust bins did not take away the beauty of the beach, but rather enhanced it in most peculiar way. One would not distant off from these bins, but would be attracted to what they conveyed. I was thoroughly impressed and secretly proud that such an innovation bore roots in my own India; that it was an Indian island where such a thought was born and put to realization.
An instant feeling of being at the place where the solution to one of the massive world problems found its origin filled me with feelings that were positive in multiple ways. But I still had an intriguing and nagging thought at the back of my mind, ‘who cleans this beach’? It was about sunset and the beach was getting prepared for closure at 6:00 pm when I spotted them.
The school children with uniforms, gloves and long sticks with hooks at one end. They were about 20 in number. Coming towards the beach, in small groups, as the visitors were preparing to exit. These children, in their own world, oblivious to anything around themselves, walked happily as they picked up an occasional ice-cream stick or bottle cap, and hit them with their stick-bats until they landed in the dustbins.
So, this was the secret! These children were playing warriors to an acute problem that the nature faced on Earth; and they addressed it in the manner as if playing the game and having fun. However, there was more to this than eyes viewed at that moment. Looking around, I saw the locals with “No.7” batched on their brown uniforms, already engaged in sifting through sand and picking up ‘foreign’ entities that were not supposed to belong to this paradise. They had filtered wheelbarrows which would clean the sand as they walked. A simple, frugal and extremely mighty solution.
The feeling of positivity brings in itself the power to identify everything that is positive around. In the state of satisfaction of heart and satiation of soul, I was now equipped with observing the small, so called ‘minor’ transformations that I earlier overlooked, or chose to overlook. The small stalls with eatables were using plantain leaves to serve.
The items that the shops sold were wrapped in newspapers and handed over in brown paper bags. The cottages where locals lived were thatched with thick dried muddy sheets. At 6:00 pm, many of these cottages had gathered around to cook, and they cooked ‘together’. Not by burning woods, but with fuel supplied from LPG cylinders. Indane had a strong footprint; first time in my life did I praise a corporate company for its selfish objectives. This small beach was turning out to be the reservoir of solutions that the planet desperately awaited till now.
My 3 days trip to Andaman with one day spent at Havelock connected me to my childhood, rekindling the memories of happy connect with nature. This so-called un-urban or sub-urban community of Andaman Islands had the potential to put the urban life to shame. Through united efforts, probably the degree of innovation that thrived here was hard to find a parallel anywhere else in the world. The collective mindset with which the locals lived had a lesson imbibed in its humble lifestyle. A lesson and a hope. For a better future through a well-maintained nature.
The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.
By: Deepti Bhatia
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