A surreal sea of rocks

The thing about the sea is that it is never the same.

There are, of course, its many moods and colours. Sometimes tranquil, sometimes ferocious, sometimes lazy, sometimes playful. As to colours, depending on the weather and sky above it could be any shade from a bilious green to a muddy brown flecked with grey, or even a pretty shimmering pink.

But for those who have never experienced the sea, particularly along a hilly coastline, what can be most surprising is the way the water sometimes recedes completely.

Patnem is a lovely crescent shaped beach here. At the curved end of the beach is a rocky hill, on the other side of which is another beautiful beach that is accessible only when the sea recedes.

At such a time, when you go to Patnem beach you find its entire topography has changed almost overnight.

It's not only that the sea, which only the other day was lapping about your feet, is now some distance away. It's that by receding it has revealed an unseen, almost surreal landscape of tall rock shelves standing on the sea bed, rather like a Dali painting.

The existence of many of these rocks was only suggested earlier by the way the sea seemed to break at certain points into sudden surf. But now you find yourself wandering about on what is the bed of the sea, and marveling at the fact that you can do so. The sand here is wet, but flat and hard, and in parts stained a dirty seaweed green. The shelves of black and brown rocks, which are taller than I am, are craggy, deeply eroded by years, perhaps centuries, of battering waves. And they're embedded with millions of whitish shells and with tiny green and white pebbles.In some seasons, these rocks are densely covered with live mussels and then entire families of villagers come with buckets, and spend hours scraping off the green shellfish. Mussel curry is quite delicious.

When the tide starts coming in, you retreat from the incoming sea and climb the rocky hill that separates Patnem from the beach on the other side. Even at this height there are pools of water among the rocks. And you realise that the tide probably comes all the way up at night. But your gaze will be on the sea. As the water comes in it hits the exposed shelves of rock first. As the water ebbs and flows, it sprays over the rocks and then dribbles over, creating the most fantastic miniature waterfalls.