The Salt on the Skin

The smell of damp wood always brings me back to the riverbank, to the way the air feels heavy and thick, like a wet wool blanket draped over the shoulders. It is a scent of rot and rebirth, of silt stirred up from the bottom by a wooden oar. I remember the rough, splintered texture of the hull against my palms—the way the grain bit into my skin, leaving behind a faint, woody ghost of itself. We are often told that time moves forward in a straight line, but the body knows better. It knows that we are constantly circling back to the water, to the slow, rhythmic labor of pulling against the current. There is a quiet ache in the muscles that remembers the strain of the oars long after the boat has been beached. Why do we cling to the tools of our ancestors, even when the world around us has learned to run without them?

Siddhant Chauhan has captured this enduring rhythm in his beautiful image titled The Forsaken Route. It feels as though the water itself is holding onto the memory of the boat. Does the stillness in this scene make you feel the weight of the oars in your own hands?