I’m not a diver, sailor or surfer. I’m not a marine biologist, studying the wondrous ways of the dolphins. I have never been on a ship, speeding along to touch the horizon. But the ocean can be revered in so many ways. As the new sun threw its rays onto the white-grey morning waters, it struck me in all the ways we take from it.

Fisherman tow in motor boats to spread their nets and cast them deep. Do you think the flavor of the briny spray ever leaves those boats? What sights these men must have seen, out there every day. How many times they must have feared for their lives. They must know the ocean like she’s a goddess.

Early morning joggers are running on the best track in the world while their lithe footsteps in the sand are being washed away again and again, in that relentless motion of the waves that never tire. These waves haven’t tired this year, yes, but then again they haven’t tired in millennia. Not since the moon called to them and they rose up to greet him.

Early morning beach goers are playing in the water. Their squeals as the cool water caresses them rent the sunrise. A girl is collecting shells in a plastic bag. These are the realities. These shells are sold in so many seaside towns as earrings and bracelets and necklaces. Because who doesn’t want to invite the ocean home, in any form it will consent to come?

And then there is me. I came here to sit by the ocean. I leave today, and even though it doesn’t matter to the oceans of the world, I’m not going to see this beautiful sunrise in Pondicherry tomorrow. I’ll see these waters from elsewhere, soon. Why would you voluntarily go without smiling at the ocean every once in a while?

I love the idea of the horizon as the place where the ocean meets the sky. I love the beautiful surface of the sea. It’s unceasing nature. The possibility of a million creatures thriving and brimming within its waters, in the shallows and the deepest, darkest trenches. The way the waves rise and fall for the moon. The way it kisses my legs with foam and my face with sea spray. The shells it slowly leaves behind, without care. The crabs who hide from the waves, and feed in them too. Paw prints of beach dogs that stay as long as the waves allow them to. That lone crow who caws and caws at it, buffeted ever so slightly by the wind. Sunlight lighting its world up so magnificently that you cannot bring yourself to look away, even for a moment. That sound that would cradle you to sleep if you’d let it, when the stars shine their lights for the world.

Olive Ridleys come to nest on a beach not very far from here. They say the nesting of females is older than the dinosaurs. They say that. But do we understand what that means? Can we conceive something that ancient? We only just got here. But here they do lay the eggs. Gently, painstakingly, in leathery softness for the turtles to claw their way out into their home, where they will swim the waters year after year until the shore beckons once again, for the females.

The gulls that fly overhead, with calm, gradual beats of their wings. This may be the only time I wish to be a bird, I think. How it must feel to have the sea wind beneath your wings, to look farther than we can, but still keep seeing that horizon? What does the Arctic tern feel, when she flies pole to pole, over eons of ocean?

It isn’t untouched pasture. But it’s the last, most accessible part of the world that looks it. If you can sit close enough that the trash is behind you, and you look onto it, it looks like it must have for billions of years now. There is no way the timelessness of the ocean will ever fail to evoke these emotions in me. After all, this was where life was born. It was in these shores that the great diversification of everything that lives on land today started. This is where bountiful sponges and corals once lived, and where armoured monsters reigned in glory.

It only takes a whiff of that salt spray to bring me to my knees.