The plaque on the bench says to my lovely man, who thought this was the best view in the world..
I sit down for a few minutes.
The sun is out today and the water looks bluer than ever. There are a few whispy white clouds about but otherwise the sky is as blue as the sea.
The grass is overgrown at places. The overenthusiastic park maintenance crew hasn’t yet mown everything down to a bland one inch carpet.
There are white and pink and yellow wild flowers in the grass. They are tiny. If they were clothes, they would be XS size.
The dandelions on the other hand are an M. They stand in patches of yellow swaying gently in the wind. With occasional white dandelion puff balls in their midst.
You can see the sea front road below from here. Cars parked facing the water. Many with the occupants still in them, enjoying the sun, watching the waves.
The ice cream van – Mr Whippys – parked in its usual spot near the cafe. A queue of excited children and dogs has formed in front.
There are a few sail boats out, triangular white sails glistening in the sun. Going lazily to nowhere in particular.
Seagulls are there as usual. And all season fixture of this place. At this time of the day they mostly seem to be out over the sea or flying around overhead, although a lone one walks about, looking here and there and ignoring the humans nearby. It has a confident air about it, like a king out to inspect his kingdom, or a lord taking a morning walk on his estate after a breakfast in the gardens.
Behind me, on the wide pedestrian area called the Hoe (which actually comes from an old English word meaning high ground) there are kids milling about, dogs big and small, teenagers skateboarding, the athletic types out for their runs and old couples walking hand in hand; all under the watchful eyes of the statues of Britannia, Sir Francis Drake and the Unknown Airman.
On my left, the old lighthouse, Smeaton’s tower stands overlooking the water. Painted in bright red and white and with the glass windows on top which you can reach if you are willing to climb ninety three steps and pay a small entry fee; it is perhaps Plymouth’s most famous landmark.
On my right, I can see Mount Edgecumb, the easternmost part of Cornwall, flanked by the Tamar estuary which separates Cornwall from Devon. The Britanny Ferries is harboured in its dock, white and blue chimneys towering over the nearby houses.
I can see why Sue’s lovely man thought this was the best view in the world…
**
I must have said this before, but I really like this British practice of dedicating benches in public places to their departed loved ones – in parks, on a coastal walk somewhere, overlooking a field outside a village, on a windswept cliff by the sea.
When you sit on one of those benches and read the dedication and look at the view the person loved so much, you feel a kind of oneness with this stranger who you never knew and who is no longer in this world.
We Indians on the other hand, when we die, generally become framed photographs on the walls of the family home, keeping an eye on the going ons of the family; or in some cases sitting uncomfortably alongside the gods in the family altars. The dead belong to the family. There is no chance of any stranger ever wondering about you, or thinking what your life must have been like.
Unless you are a famous politician or something like that ofcourse, in which case you can aspire to have a road named after you or a statue or government schemes or official buildings or (if the local government is bone headed enough) even metro stations. This last one I find the most disturbing. Imagine your legacy becoming people at the ticket counter saying – give me two Netajis or how much for one Rabindranath etc.
**
If I had a choice I would definitely prefer a bench.
Mine would be somewhere high in the Himalayas. Maybe just a niche carved into a rock where one or at most two people can sit; on a walking trail which is barely two feet wide; overlooking a deep gorge hundreds of feets below through which a river runs, foaming white and angry.
Sometimes the place will be enveloped in the clouds so that you will have difficulty seeing whats a few feet ahead of you. Sometimes, the rains will lash down like there is no tomorrow and the wind will feel like it wants to blow you off your feet and push you into the gorge. And sometimes, on a clear cloudless moonless windless night, it will be bathed in ethereal starlight, with the distant snow capped peeks glowing silver in the starlight and the milky way rising over them like a necklace of pearls displayed over a frame of jagged silver and at those moments you will be able to hear the mountain whisper it’s tales to you in the silence.
And when you, the traveller, sit on this rock after a hard days hike, take out your box of roti and red hot aloo sabzi, and have the long awaited sip from your flask of butter tea, you will spot, carved into the rocks, almost covered by moss but not quite, the words by Zen master Ryokan.
My legacy —
What will it be?
Flowers in spring,
The cuckoo in summer,
And the crimson maples
Of autumn…
..And you, the traveller, will maybe wonder about who this bench belongs to, before you move on on your journey..
Invictus 
