It was our annual vacation – this time to the French Riviera and around, beginning from Seville in Spain to Capri Islands in Italy.
We had had a great time and Capri was to be the best part of our trip. Travelling from Naples by ship to reach Capri was an experience in itself. Once settled in the advantageously perched hotel at Marina Piccola, plans were made to visit the Blue Grotto next day morning.
Blue Grotto is a cave opening, about a meter in height leading you to darkness for a fraction of a second, which instantly turns to azure blue light on the water surface caused by sunlight entering the caves through the small opening. As you appear to float on water, the crystal blue waters give silver reflections from the tiny bubbles on the surface of the objects underwater.
The next day, we left the hotel at around 10 am for the jetty from where we were to be ferried to Blue Grotto which was about 45 minutes away. A number of ferries were making trips carrying groups of eager and excited tourists.
As all of us got our turn to step on to the ferry, the excitement mounted as each one of us was looking to have a memorable experience. After having braved the Sun for an hour or so, we were near the location.
Once there, we disembarked into smaller boats which could accommodate about four of us at a time. There were boats already lined up, each waiting for their two minutes of exhilarating experience. The Sun made the wait look like eternity. Time always seems to stop when you are anxious or expectant. Stop, it did.
After some anxious waiting, it was announced that our turn would be next. We had by then realised that the trip was like a drop – here you go and there you come – all in a matter of a hundred seconds. The boatman instructed us to bend such that we do not hit the rocky ceiling. And, we got ready with our Camera – ready to capture memories.
The next two minutes was marked by exclamations – “wow…”, “beauty…”, “fabulous…” and the like.
And there we were back in the sunlight. The trip over, everybody had signs of happiness and amazement writ large on their faces. Each was trying to outclass the others in the description of the beauty they had just witnessed.
I wondered what was wrong. I had seen darkness all around. Were they being sarcastic? In fact, I was too embarrassed to share my experience with my friends. I did not want to be a spoil-sport.
My mind was so flooded with these contradictions that I did not even remember my trip back to Anna Capri. I kept wondering. Heavily disillusioned and disheartened with the experience, I climbed the stairs at the hotel and walked to my room.
Throwing the camera bag on to the bed, I wearily walked to the small room. As I looked up the mirror to study myself, I was shocked to say the least.
My sunglasses rested on my nose over my elegant pair of normal spectacles. And, it struck me like a lightening. I had ventured into Blue Grotto with my sun glasses on. It did not take rocket science for it to dawn on me that Blue Grotto did not appear blue to me as I was wearing dark sun glasses.
As if still to prove myself right, I hurried to the camera and retracted the clicks of those moments in the cave. Lo and behold!! They showed the Blue Grotto in all its blue splendour.
It was much after we returned to India that in one of our meetings, I gathered courage to explain my reality of that experience. In any case, I had reinforced the age old lesson for myself – “You have to eliminate all your filters of viewing -may they be of sunglasses or prejudices, biases, predispositions or the like”. Else, as the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, beautifully observed – “Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world”.
