My reality TV

It’s a 3 meter flat screen TV. I watch it from my couch or lying in my hammock. I am so close and it is so large I have to turn my head to see from one side to the other. Sometimes I rest my feet on the frame; it puts me in the picture.
I can’t control the volume or brightness but light dims at night automatically. There is only one channel. I can’t turn it off and even when I'm not watching it plays. The picture is primarily of the sea, it’s my ocean colour scene and it’s in 3D. It is high definition and has surround sound. The thunderous waves break over rocks and crash through a sub woofer; sea birds are heard through the tweeters in perfect stereo as they fly across the screen.
Old black and white TV’s would have a tiny white dot centre-screen when you turned them off at night. This has hundreds of sparkling dots like pin holes in a black velvet curtain, the light piercing through the darkened nocturnal display. The volume gets so loud with the high tide, waves break at me feet. Like white noise it’s a constant yet inconsistent sound, it never stops it just fades in and out.
If I had a door, if I had a visitor, if they were to knock, I wouldn’t hear.
I spend a lot of time in front of it. The more I watch it the more I notice the subtle changes. The sunlight’s strobe reflection off the uneven water, the shy fishing boats that hide on the hazy horizon, and the sun setting further to the north at the end of every slightly longer day.



Palm covered cliffs rise to the right of the screen it’s where the sun must hide until the morning. Bamboo huts are perched on stilts beside a narrow dusty path. The open air restaurant has fewer customers and the parade of tanned and dreadlocked wanders has gaps that get bigger and last longer. The end of season finale has begun, it a vibe that is broadcast, I can feel it. My TV tan is in its earliest stage. I am the fresh spring contrast to the autumnal browns I see, reversed from a winter sun. They are leaving the heat for cooler greener grass in the Himalayan foothills, leaving me the remote solitude I control.
I will continue to watch channel Goa. I've seen it before, it’s like Dave but with updates installed, Indians didn’t have mobile phones or show open displays of affection last time I watched. Now there are Red Indian lifeguards, 3rd world Baywatch, Hindi young dudes on jet skies fly past, as if projected by a line of white surf.
It’s the sun screen from my balcony. And it’s a screen I’ll savour until I watch the train station that takes me to the hill stations.