As a child, I would often wonder what a ‘guardian angel’ would be like. How I would spot one if it glided past me. Whether it would have a silvery halo or shimmering wings that only I would see. Whether it would be for real. Over three decades on, thanks to a book I’ve been reading, it has dawned on me that only a guardian angel could have rescued me from certain death during an excursion to Digha.
It was the early nineties. We were a happy bunch of English literature graduate students of Calcutta University bent on having fun on campus even as we grappled with Shakespeare and Milton, TS Eliot and Virginia Woolf in the classroom. So, sometime in August-September of our MA first year, our rollicking group of friends set out on a four-day trip to Digha.
Sea fever
I forget which hotel we put up in, where we went sight-seeing or what kind of local delicacies we feasted on. All I remember is that our group would go down to the sea – the Bay of Bengal, Digha being off the Bengal coast – first thing in the morning during low tide and again in the late afternoon before the waters got choppy. Those of us who couldn’t swim would be chaperoned by an expert swimmer and tutored on how to withstand the mighty onrush of the waves.
One morning as usual, many of us were marching to the beach for our ritual splash in the sea. We were dressed in frayed clothes and rubber flip-flops. Being an eager beaver, I was at the head of the group and racing to reach the sea that had receded and uncovered vast expanses of sand. The beach was a steep and sharp drop from the undulating road on which the seaside hotels were located. We had to clamber down jagged rocks and cross over huge boulders to get access to the beach.
Danger lurks
So, there we were going down to the sea again to answer the call of the running tide, much in the manner of John Masefield’s famous poem, Sea Fever. On a whim, I strayed off the beaten track and ventured towards a slope that ended in a steep drop down to the boulders. I did not notice that the slope was totally covered with moss. Within a split second, I found myself slipping, my flip-flops unable to get a grip over the moss.
I don’t remember what I was thinking. Possibly, I had extended both my hands in an effort to regain balance. I don’t know if I realised I was heading for a fatal crash onto the boulders below. Suddenly, I heard a voice screaming, “Zaara, sit! Zaara, sit! Zaara, sit!” As though by reflex action, I plonked myself down. The next second, I found myself sitting precariously on the edge with my legs dangling in space.
Whose voice was it?
The voice belonged to one of my classmates — a bespectacled, moustachioed guy who somewhat resembled the film actor, Kamal Haasan, and had a good sense of humour. I could see him and the rest of the group running towards me. They took me to safety, I cannot remember how. Sometime last year, I heard that my guardian angel – a school teacher and a passionate mountaineer – had passed on after a heart attack.
My lifetime regret is that I never thanked him enough for saving my life. Neither did I keep in touch with him after university. Nor have I thought of him as my guardian angel before a book shone a light a couple of days ago.
Footprints, once more
The book was a collection of unusual stories by people inspired by the beloved ‘Footprints in the Sand’ poem. A story by a retired Canadian teacher in her seventies who would travel to Toronto by train once a month for a medical check-up caught my eye. On one such trip, she gets chatting with a man, also in his seventies. They hit it off, exchange details of their life and go their different ways after reaching Toronto. However, the woman takes ill during the day because of the unusual heat. In the evening, she somehow gets to the subway but is too dizzy and faint to find her train.
As though from nowhere, she hears someone calling her name. Within seconds, the man she had met for the first time in the train in the morning walks up. He escorts her to a coffee shop, gets her a glass of iced water, sits with her till she is better, hails a cab, pays the cabbie $20 and sends her home.
Mystery presence
Over the next fifteen months, the woman religiously searches for the man on each of her train trips to Toronto. But she never sees him again.
Years later, a friend speaks to her about a book on Arctic mountaineers who claim to have experienced the mysterious presence of a guardian or a helper during snowstorms. The friend asks the woman if she believes in such presences. Of course, she replies, I do.
Just like I believe in guardian angels, especially the flesh-and-blood one that saved my life.