Wave

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I thought nothing of it at first. The ocean looked a little closer to our hotel than usual. That was all. A white foamy wave had climbed all the way up to the rim of sand where the beach fell abruptly down to the sea. You never saw water on that stretch of sand. It was our friend Orlantha who alerted me. A short while before, she’d knocked on our door to ask if we were ready to leave. We almost were. Steve was in the shower, or reading on the toilet more likely. Our two boys were on the back veranda, buzzing around their Christmas presents.

This was Yala, a national park on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka. White-bellied sea eagles abound here, and for Vikram they were the most splendid of birds. For a nearly eight-year-old, Vikram knew heaps about birds. A pair of sea eagles nested near the lagoon that edged this hotel in Yala, and he’d sit on a rock on the lagoon’s shore and wait hours, hungry for a glimpse of them. They always turned up, as reliable as the tooth fairy.

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