Amalfi in a Day

The night’s numbness is chilling. Darkness rises around me, so I close my eyes and imagine the day in Amalfi, the jewel-blue sea, sparkling and shining around me, as I sipper the little cup of Limoncello, my jeans jacket not enough cover for me to ignore the slight chill in the weather. After we plodded into Sorrento, I quickly found a little shop and bought myself a second, small bottle of Limoncello, not for any other purpose but immediate consumption. My eyes wandered while the cold, lemony liquor hit my tongue – a little shock of ephemeral joy breezed through my being and I was hit with this sudden sensation of excitement.

Sorrento is a bit like the Pistachio Cream Liquor, cousin of the more famous Limoncello – it’s all smooth and creamy, and a little bit nuts. Little, because the young brother of cashew never really got any further than a mention in the writing of Pliny, and that was that, to be honest. But ‘Pistacello’, as a lot of Americans around us were fondly calling it, was what made the lushness of Sorrento even more intense – exposed to us in its touristy depths, with a mixture of broken English, bad Italian, and rather excellent Bangla coming through. I turned my gaze to the two men arguing near the shop around the corner. They had, even moments before, looked perfectly Italian – from their dresses or expressions, no one would even guess. And here they were – naming and shaming in Bangla, and I started laughing.

It was rather wonderful to laugh at one’s own. Makes you feel like you’ve reached somewhere.

Don’t ask me where.

The dock was crowded – from time to time, a huge wave would splash against the rocks, and the ones on the dock, maybe posing for the photo of a lifetime, suddenly would get rather drenched. It was all about the timing – who knew it would be so cold out there in the sea? And yet, the ocean calmly proved us wrong.

We moved further along the coastline after that. Our bus slowly weaved its way into a tavern of sorts. We rolled out of the bus, and a haggard-looking woman walked us down to the place where we were supposed to sit and eat. We shared our table with a newly-married couple, and they spoke to each other, and we spoke to ourselves.

The meal was a bowl of freshly-made pasta doused with some marinara. A bottle of table red was requested and received, and it was delightful, if a little brackish. We requested for some Parmesan, and the server brought a chunk and proceeded to grate it all over our pasta. We ate our way through the lunch, then slowly proceeded to take a long look at the sea that spread itself in all the magnificence it could possibly possess. I closed my eyes and inhaled the saltwater-laden air, thought of the extra glass of Limoncello I had had before lunch, and knew it was why I was perhaps here. To capture this moment together with this unique being that possessed it.