Child of the sea

They say there’s no place like home. And home to me is the place where I grew up, near the sea. Even as I spent many years of my college and employed life in another place, the call of our home by the sea would always be there. On high tide, you can see the waves on the beach just few meters from where our house is. And on late evenings, you can hear their faint sound crashing on the shores as they lull you to sleep.

My childhood days were spent going to the seashore on late afternoons with my siblings. We had fun catching tiny crabs before they ran sideways to their holes. It was a thrill for us trying to grasp those wriggly little fishes and shrimps hiding in the rocks before putting them in a container. My siblings and I would always stop by a wide stretch of smooth moist sand and write our names on it. My favorite activity was going on a trek to a remote part of the beach, beyond our subdivision’s boundary, where few shanties were built. We would imagine ourselves on an adventure then and went home proudly showing off our beach treasures of crabs, shells and sand.

Now that my siblings and I have grown up, our idyllic view of the nearby sea has changed. As the years passed, shanties were built on the shores and trees were planted to minimize soil erosion. These houses and trees blocked our favorite view of the seascape. There’s been an ongoing negotiation about an educational institution to be built on the seashore near our house. While this would definitely relocate the shanty dwellers to another place, I know there is a price to pay for progress. I wonder if this plan for the construction of a building near the sea will bring back what used to be a captivating vision of the sky, sea and sand especially during sunsets.