My father calls me late one night. He’s

building a boat, gathering sticks of balsa

wood and grainy plans printed off the internet.

Expecting rain? I ask and he laughs

agreeably: a dazzling Bengal light

over the 5,163 nautical miles

of Indian Ocean.
He tells me then that we have mariner

blood, that his great-great-grandfather spent

his days on the fractious waves of Durban Bay –

in a careful choreography of ships seeking

safe harbour. He’ll test the boat in my

brother’s swimming pool; he’s not quite

sure if it will carry one person or two.
It’s physically the most complex of

the three oceans. I feel I should warn him

before he sets sail, it’s a perilous swathe

of water between us. He’ll have to schedule

his voyage meticulously, aligned with the

trade winds and monsoon rhythms that

could make or break him, because
I’m not picturing my father bobbing

in his balsa wood boat in my brother’s

suburban pool. He’s crossing the ocean instead,

eyes on the horizon, cap pulled low, he’s

Larry Taylor’s Birdseye. And he’s bearing

tea chests and lanterns, lifebuoys and blankets –

he’ll whisk me from these waves. 
And maybe I say it all out loud because

he’s silent, and then he says

gently: does it always have to go

like this. And when he sighs, it’s a kindly

sound, a rustling ebb and flow of his breath

over the 5,163 nautical miles

of Indian Ocean.