Fuzzy Decisions

He lay on the cooling sand, unmoving. He pretended to be staring at the purple sky, in the grips of some deep thought. His prone form hinted at inebriation, real or imagined one couldn’t be sure. The stars hadn’t shown up at their haunts yet. A few months ago, in the clutches of pointless nostalgia, he had declared that the stars and the night sky of his homeland were decidedly different and infinitely better than the one he was forced to gaze at in the US. But now, watching the tardy stars light up the sky, he wasn’t sure that was entirely true. Even if it were true, he realized that the difference in the skies and the stars seemed terribly inconsequential. He had more immediate, larger worries to consume him.

The throngs of sunset gazers had found something less stunning to occupy their evening and had left the beach in his sole custody. The dispersing crowd had signaled the end of the duty for the overly cautious beach guards. The guards often wielded their whistle mercilessly, blowing it furiously at anyone daring to step out of line of the approved beach behavior. Right now, no one seemed to care that he lay there, lost in thought or maybe on the verge of a nap.

The famous lighthouse on the beach stood ignored like a still-hanging Christmas ornament in January. The red and white of the lighthouse only made it look more forlorn. He lay there and let himself be assaulted by the fumes of expensive fish cooking on the grill in the many restaurants on the shore. The smell of the fish swimming in the ocean, awaiting a similar fate as the one on dry land only added to the hopelessness of his repose.

He was sure his mother would smell the fish and the ocean on him. She had made him promise earlier in the week, to stay away from bodies of water. She had explained that the family astrologer thought that deep and unbridled sorrow awaited him if he did not stay away from large water bodies. He had nodded in uncomprehending silence and did not bother to argue. He was sure that the astrologers mastered the art of being fastidiously obtuse when they learnt how to match horoscopes for weddings.

The photographs his mother sent, starting early last year had often been fuzzy. It needed him to peer and squint at his laptop screen to discern anything more than the general idea of the girls in them. The backgrounds of these fuzzy photographs were often comforting in their monotony. A few were easily identifiable tourist locations in the US. But most of them were shot against the backdrops of generic clapboard apartment complexes and parking lots. The same generic bushes, trees and foreign made cars became the canvas for the pictures of girls with coy smiles.

He had realized early that his mother favored a certain type of girls as her son’s future wife. They were the ones who wore a wraithlike aura like their ill-fitting clothes. Their faces were often fair and blemish free, arms reedy and thin, and their hair never shorter than shoulder length. He often thought about the heavy, short haired, dark skinned women whose fuzzy photographs and backdrops he would never see. His mother, like the mothers of all his friends expected a decision to be made in the time it takes to order at a drive-thru. All his life his mother assured him that she knew better than him, warning him often about the dangers of bad decisions. Alarmingly, at the threshold of the most important decision in his life, she had said “You know best, you decide!” And he had no choice but to decide on one fuzzy photograph.

The likes and dislikes of the chosen girl were just as indistinct to him as her photographs had been. They had had weeks of first awkward then platonic phone conversations. Her hobbies, his ambitions and their future had been clinically discussed. When an appropriate number of phone conversations had been reached, his mother had decided that it was time. Engagement was to happen the week of his return from the US, the wedding a couple of weeks after that. Jet-lagged and bleary eyed, he had been engaged to the girl the day he met her in person. Now, he lay on the beach wondering what the heck was going on.

He was clear headed enough to know that his situation had very little to do with him. He was helplessly bound by the pursuit for acceptance from a moody society. He could not do anything that would jeopardize the society approved, in-ostracized life where happiness was almost an afterthought. His mother needed him to stay the course. Letting her down would seem akin to murder, his overly dramatic mind solemnly whispered. It would be infinitely easier to go along with what his mother decided, he knew.

It wasn’t that he did not want to be married. He had no other girl on his mind either. But he was worried that he would be getting married just because he had nothing better to do. If that was not ridiculous, he did not know what was. But the alternative was to simply float along and try not to make a ripple. Now that seemed unimaginably stifling. He could almost see himself 5 years from now, doing exactly what he was doing right now, but with an EMI for the house, screaming child and an even-tempered wife for company. Was that what he wanted? Did he really want anything else?
This last year, he had watched with dismay the procession of his friends changing their Facebook statuses and profile pictures, each featuring a slice of their marital bliss. He wasn't entirely sure that kind of happiness existed out of well-choreographed photo shoots. He knew what was coming next. In a couple of years, the smiling husband and wife in those photographs would morph into balding, thickening men accompanied by women who had sacrificed their former stick thin figures for the sake of a beaming child. He would have to grudgingly “like” those pictures on Facebook as well, a price to pay for keeping the friendships alive.

His friends dismissed his trepidations as cold feet and assured him that this was how it happened for them as well. They hardly knew the women they married and now look at them; they announced not noticing his growing alarm. They flaunted their domestic bliss as proof that this was the best decision they ever made. He wasn’t sure that they made any decisions either, but like they said, what did he know.

So he lay there confused and unmoving, seemingly waiting for a divine intervention. He would have appreciated anything that would take the decision out of his hands. The waves now seemed louder than when he had first gotten to the beach. He did not dare to look up at the water but he suspected that the water might be inching closer. Maybe the waves would close in, take him in and make the decision for him. But his brand of cowardice did not condone suicide, he realized.
That’s exactly what he was, he realized. A coward! If he was anything but, he would have dusted himself off and told his mother that this marriage could not happen. He would have acted like the adult that he was and figured out what it is that HE wanted to do. Not what his mother, the society or anyone else wanted him to do. There would be tears and unamendable rifts and he would have hurt people in the process. But at least his life would finally be his own, and all the tears his own making.

He sighed. He could never work himself up into frenzy with thoughts like these, he was sure. They all sounded like way too much work to him. Wouldn’t he rather continue to play the role of the obedient son than rock the boat? He was so comfortable in the way things were. And existential crises were so inconvenient. He wasn’t worried about being called a coward. Being a coward was what awarded an uncomplicated life anyway. There really were no decisions to be made here, was there? Everything that needed to be decided had already been decided by everyone around him. He simply needed to stay alive to see them realized.

He got up off the now cool sand and dusted himself. He had been saved a lifetime of tribulations and needless anguish by lying on the beach unmoving. An examined life was overrated anyway he thought as he nodded to himself and walked towards his car. He had been drifting placidly for as long as he could remember; wouldn’t it be foolish to change that now? The dark night seemed to sigh in assent as he drove away with the smell of the ocean in his hair. He felt a sense of relief that, the body of water notwithstanding, some great sorrow had been averted just in time.