You know that beach is close when you see the tallest palm trees emerge from the emerald green tapestry. About two kilometers before arriving, the traveler usually runs into Secret Beach, which is not so secret when you check the sign located at the beginning of the road. Perhaps it is an irony, or the stocks to distract the tourist and prevent them from reaching other places.
I continue on the left side of the road until I find a man killing flies next to a stall where octopuses and lobsters are displayed. The path that starts from here winds through the trees and I am leaving behind the map of mundane sounds, of horns and Bollywood songs, here replaced by that of tropical birds and a sea that can be guessed at the end. The infinite green and me alone in such an intimate way that I can hardly appreciate the presence of a young woman in the distance smelling a lotus flower.
Arriving at the beach, a four-year-old boy points to me from the pink balcony of a humble guesthouse. There is no one left on the beach at five in the afternoon, except for a fisherman on a stilt – perched on a stick stuck in the seabed – who blends in with the blues of the Indian Ocean. Sitting on the sand, I see two Sri Lankan friends in their twenties sharing a bottle of whiskey under a huge eucalyptus tree. They invite me to join and they serve me a drink in a plastic cup, eager to share anecdotes with someone else.
“I am a musician,†says Roshan, showing me a YouTube video of him singing in a bar on the beach in Mirissa. The second guy, Saman, asks me for a cigarette. Shortly after, he tells me that his mother will never go near the ocean again because of the 2004 tsunami. He does so with a tilted face as he scratches his chin thoughtfully. A breath of breeze, a more swollen cigar than usual, shakes the vegetation.
Roshan tells me that the yaksis, or female nature spirits, are among us with unknown plans. “Only the moon comes to bathe on this beach,” he adds. “And the rest go to Secret Beach,†says Saman. And they both laugh in unison, as if the whole community made up of the people, trees and spirits of this little piece of land had conspired in an ancestral plan in which I was now an accomplice.
The whiskey bottle is lowered as a blue bird perches on the eucalyptus branch and Roshan urges me again to come see him sing at the Serendipity Club. Then one of the boys takes a photo with his cell phone. Night catches up to us, wrapped in the scent of rotti from the same pink balcony, except now the boy has come to join the gathering.
We are in a place where the future and the past cannot enter. Sometimes the mission falls to the tall palm trees with coconut eyes. Others, in a young woman who continues to smell lotuses in the depths of the jungle.
