Shakespearean.

The Indian subcontinent has so many joys, almost too many joys, and is well worth a visit. The various regional cuisines entice, architecture inspires, trains, hill stations, hotels, drinking tea and shattering the cups on the tracks so as not to inadvertently touch lips with an untouchable all set the heart racing but one of the greatest pleasures is the Indian use of English

The language is as much theirs as it is ours, as the English first spread the tongue across the land in 1608, but they have done better things with it.

Can we, as an example, read a passage from the New Indian Express that details a tragic event of father drowning while trying to save his surfer-daughter?

Chennai: Man meets watery grave while trying to rescue drowning surfer daughter.

CHENNAI: A 51-year-old software engineer drowned in the sea off Thiruvanmiyur while he was rescuing his daughter who was pulled by a giant wave while practising surfing on Monday morning.

The deceased was identified as Balaji, an employee of a private software firm in Tidel Park and a resident of Vannandurai in Besant Nagar.

According to police, the incident happened around 7 am at Thiruvanmiyur beach.

Police said that Balaji accompanied his daughter Revathi, 11, a Class 6 student, to surf in the sea.

Quoting on the onlookers, police said that Revathi, who was training with the surfboard, was suddenly sucked in by a giant wave. A shocked Balaji entered into the sea to save his daughter. He drowned as he was unable to swim in the rough sea.

Police said surfers usually do not practise in a rough sea, but the duo reached Thiruvanmiyur claiming that the sea was relatively calm there compared to Besant Nagar.

Extremely tragic but written better than anything in Austro-American surf, save Longtom, in years and years. We other continentals have dispensed with “watery graves” and “Davy Jones’s Locker” and other pirate-adjacent words and have stumbled into pure bore. Drowning, asphyxiated, etc. But we should reclaim the swagger as we are closer to pirate heritage than any, save right-of-center politicians.

Poetic.

Kafkaesque.

As you well know, I grew up surfing central-southern Oregon’s icy cold water. The Pacific there teems with life from crab to seal to the mighty Great White Shark herself. Shark sightings were common in and around my hometown and I swear I saw a massive silhouette, once, when I as out for a paddle near the long rock jetty jutting out from Bastendorff Beach.

Scary, though I always thought about my own spindly arms and legs then looked at the many seals swimming by, luscious and fat, and thought the shark would know better.

Well, apparently the beasts have developed a taste for spindle for last evening a surfer was tasted in Seaside, there in the very north.

The man, who was riding a fine Super Brand board, sustained non-life threatening injuries to his leg and was helped by fellow surfers and an off-duty lifeguard who fashioned a field tourniquet to stop the bleeding. The man was then transported to a local hospital for further evaluation.

The fire department said, “The incident serves as a valuable reminder to never recreate alone, in or out of the water. The fast response of fellow surfers was instrumental in providing aid to the victim.”

Very confusing advice in our Covid days when, I thought, we were supposed to recreate alone. Kafkaesque, I suppose.

In any case, I wonder if this expanded palate, amongst sharks, will hold or if human leg will simply be a trend. Like cronuts.

Did you ever have a cronut? I did and an original one too from the bakery that invented in New York City.

I was underwhelmed.

Updated: Super Brand has offered to give the Oregon hero a free board. If one of you know him, please pass along this turn of good luck.

Merry everything!

California will be shut down, entirely, by midnight tonight. No more pumping iron in the gym. No more getting super fit in the gym. But do you remember a simpler time, when the only terror that haunted our dreams was radical Islamic terrorism? A utopian bliss, in comparison and, as it happens, I wrote a book about that joy which you should gift friends and family.

Of course, when a book is being written much ends up on the floor. Like this passage right here.

On the way home from Somalia, a handful of years ago, I rode a weird transport airplane with four with 7-foot-tall Taliban. I can’t imagine they were up to any good in Somalia and their faces were etched into furious scowls beneath their black turbans, in the middle of their wildly bushy beards. I decided to sit next to them so at least I’d be the first to know when the hijacking was occurring. I mumbled something in the little Pashtu I knew and the 7-footer sitting next to me broke into a smile. We chatted in Arabic for the duration of the flight to Dubai. He leaned in heavily on me, insisting God was one and that I must recognize. I told him I agreed, and that Jesus was God was the Holy Spirit. Three in one. Weird but true. Absolute blasphemy to any Muslim and his frown returned. We went back and forth, he tried to trick me into saying the Hadith and converting to Islam, I told him I couldn’t. I was a believer too. At the end he capitulated and patted me on the shoulder with a giant, muscled paw and said, “You and I, we are people of the book.”

But you are a person of the book too, even if that book is the World Surf League Rule Book.

Pipeline is tomorrow-adjacent. Join the Surfvival League here before it’s too late. You can win $1000 and a Panda surfboard.

Happy Hanukkah (in four days)!