03. A Saline Rabbit Hole
Sea, Snails, Science, Sentiments...
Part I: Bad Sea
“We bring our phantoms to Rome, and we uncover and read or expect to run into these phantasms, so that in the process Rome ultimately becomes the embodiment of these phantasms, even if we never run into them.”
—Andre Aciman (Homo Irrealis)
Late one night in September when no one is sure about the season anymore, we take the car out to the beach. We had broken many afternoon hours upon their spines doing the regular jobs - separating stones from rice, refilling the parrot’s water vessel, discarding leftovers from used plates into the bin upon which descends a feast of joyous monkeys. As the day’s jobs slowly come to an end, darkness rises from the sea like boredom reigning upon a solitary street. It is too good, the arrival of night; it is benevolent and mature. Seeing it fall from the roof in front of me, I realise that my prerogative with respect to the world is now over - I must retire to the sea.
As the car crosses the damp trunks of coconut trees on either side of the road, it makes slashing sounds at regular intervals. It sounds like the swift turning of pages in a book. The sea can be heard in the distance, not yet visible. At this point it can be imagined, although it is new every time I visit. Once the car is parked at the gates of the town’s only cremation ground, the sea remains to be run to.
The distance between us and the first waves breaking upon the sand in burning white, is an odd entity. It is neither the emissary of the sea, nor the employee of man; it does not belong in between the sea and me. But there it lies, a stretch of confusing sand, disintegrating and copulating grain by grain under the moon. The distance is melancholia come home. I think — do I run, cover it in seconds, and dip my toes in the sea? There is sorrow in looking at the object of one’s desire from a distance. I do not run. I am so sad looking at the sea that I am scared of losing the only thing it has given me – the sorrow of looking at it, the distance which geography has decided for us. What if, when my toes are wet, and the salts have dried under my nails, the sea is just the sea? What if all of the sea has been seen and had, once the toes have been dipped? What if the sea is over at my feet? I prefer to stay close to the car and have a popsicle. All the while I look at the sea and say to it, “I am angry with you”.
Retiring from the cremation grounds in its extraordinary banality of motion, the car among several others in the traffic, tears me apart inch by inch. I want to close my eyes throughout the process – the severance from the sea will be complete once I am home, placed in front of the assurance of dinner, sleep, some oblivion. But I do not close my eyes out of fear of what I may encounter behind them. Behind them I will see the Sea, and me right next to its perilous, beckoning waters sitting very, very close — my feet completely dry. I choose to live the paranoia — of the injustice of separation, the infuriating obviousness of returning to work. In the to-and-fro between aridity and salinity, it seems, I have found all my muses.
Delhi: How far the sea is! As the crow flies, it is 1311.94 kilometers away. As we, the university scum, gather to celebrate the year’s spring equinox on the terrace, memories of sea-shells tiptoe into my conscious mind. The distinct sound of the conch shell marks the beginning of every auspicious occasion at home (more on this below). 1311.94 kilometers away from the sea, we have no rituals, no tools. “Vernal winds on top of the world!” - I declare, mostly to myself. I say those words in order to fortify the ground beneath my feet as home, even as my skin discerns the lack of any sign of spring in those awfully temperate winds. More importantly, I say those words in order to declare a territory safe, by remembering in it a wind that is lost by virtue of the loss of another territory, a truly safe one - the sea. 1311.94 kilometers away, our tool to ritualise times and spaces so that we may call them our own, are words. Years later, words are going to be what I shall remember of Delhi, just like the spiral conch shell is what I remember of the sea, and just as fondly. So, it also follows, therefore, that whenever I remember spring, I shall remember the privilege - accorded to me by precisely the lack of a home in Delhi - to use the hyperbolic mania behind the word “vernal” to ward off my anxiety. When I remember spring, I shall remember my license to partake in the privilege of words. When I die, the sea being where it all began, shall be nothing but words. That, perhaps, may be a fitting testimony of the kind of person I am — always a passer-by, one who can never do anything except whisper.
Part II: The Black-sheep Snail
In the busy streets of small humans selling pipes and eggplants and lingerie and paint, the invisible horizon supervises us like a guardian angel. The quality of daylight expands and expands till it fills the orb, the cranium, the world as we know it. Once the illumination establishes contact with reality, it lends mood – yellows on the edge of shop-awnings in the morning, green of the traffic-light at the loss hour of dusk - the virulence of insufferable colours enlivens the sad soul of nature with dots of poignant animals. Animals – from the Latin anima meaning breath. Breath is what moves us, animates us.
∞
Snails are so unassuming and secretive and slow that some of their most fascinating features can barely get any attention. For example, the direction in which their shells spiral. Like humans, snails too are either right-handed or left-handed, except that in their case it refers not to their limbs but to the orientation of their entire bodies. Even in humans, the ‘side’ and location of internal organs is often times a genetic thing - for example, almost all of us have hearts that protrude slightly to the left, owing to the size of the left ventricle which is slightly bigger than the other areas of the heart. In rare cases does this orientation change - for example, people with dextrocardia have a heart that is more to the right than to the left. The causes of this are not really known, except that we think this might be something that occurs during fetal development.
And so with snails. Most species of snails are dextral (from Latin ‘dexter’ meaning right - think of words with this root like dexterity), and very few individuals in a normally dextral species are sinistral (from Latin ‘sinister’ meaning left - think of the meaning of the English word ‘sinister’ - malicious, deviant, of ill-intent). Sinistral gastropod shells are a collector’s weak-spot for their rarity, although there are other things which make an aberrant left-handed shell interesting.
The direction of the spiral growth of the shell is known as ‘chirality’, which is a concept useful in many branches of science. Chirality - from the Greek ‘kheir’ meaning ‘hand’ + the English suffix ‘al’ which is used to show relation. Chirality refers to the quality of objects to be distinguishable from its mirror-image, that is, the object and its mirror-image cannot be superimposed. Consequently with snails, ones which are “right-handed” are not compatible with the “left-handed” ones — we’ll see how.
In malacology, which is the study of the phylum Mollusca, chirality is determined by placing the gastropod shell (class Gastropoda) in a specific orientation.
The orientation must be such that the apex is pointed upwards and the aperture is turned towards the observer. In this orientation, if the aperture is to the right, it is a dextral shell. If it is to the left, it is a sinistral one.
As said, the dextral shell-coiling is the most common among gastropods. The species turbinella pyrum, which is our subject of study, is no different. Almost all individuals of this species have a dextral shell. However, one in approximately 200,000 individuals (this number varies from study to study) exhibits a sinistral shell. It is this rare sinistral shell that is of religious importance among the Hindus and Buddhists of the subcontinent. Furthermore, this species of gastropods is only found in the Indian Ocean. And hence, one can imagine, what the history of ritualisation is in these religions, and how during the early days of ritualised worship, the proponents of these religions had established a connection between an extremely rare biological phenomenon on the one hand and faith on the other. Did they know that shells usually do not coil leftwards? If so, then how did this observation come to carry weight — who observed sea shells and for how long? If Hindu scriptures mention such a shell and its uses and properties, then does it mean that this observation was done way before than one is given to imagine? This is perhaps a good socio-anthropological research idea.
The Sanskrit name given to this sinistral shell of the turbinella pyrum is “Dakshinavarti shankh”. This terminology is slightly confusing when it comes to determining the orientation of the shell, which is in turn important to determine its provenance. The word ‘dakshina’ refers to the fees or reward given to an elder, especially a ‘guru’; it also refers to the cardinal direction south, while in some compound words (like ‘dakshinachara’ which means right-hand path) it refers to the right side or the right way. This seems to be an opposite of what the scientific nomenclature gives us - ‘sinistral’ stands for the left. This confusion is easily removed by changing the orientation of the shell vis a vis the observer; instead of placing the aperture closer to the observer, one must place it away from oneself. This particular orientation seems to be congruent with the way rituals are performed. Sacred offerings are often made with the palms of one’s hand joined with each other at the side, facing upwards, and with the contents placed in the cup that is formed. The act of offering is done by letting the contents roll down the palms, over the fingers, and out - almost like the spout of a kettle. While using the sacred conch, the siphonal canal of the shell acts as the ‘spout’ while the spire and the body hold the contents. In order to do this one must hold the shell with its aperture kept outwards, thereby bringing it to the right. This perhaps explains why in religious contexts, the sacred conch is thought of as “right-handed”.
Going back to the biology, to understand how truly rare and fascinating the sinistral individual of this species of sea snails is, one must necessarily look into a bit of genetics. The direction of a snail’s shell is determined so early in development that it is governed not by its own genes, but by its mother’s. This particular phenotype (characteristic of shell-coil) is the result of the female genes between the reproducing pair. Therefore, even if a snail has entirely dextral genes, it will show a sinistral shell if its mother had a sinistral shell. However, because of the structural asymmetry between lefty and righty snails, and with the added fact that lefty snails are so rare, it is impossible for a lefty to mate with a righty.
Things with snails genes are more complicated than this. Studies in chirality and its genetic aspect is a rather recent event. Read this biologically heavy paper to know everything there is about snail genetics. Also, for a more fun ride, read this article to meet Jeremy the famous lefty snail and know about his extraordinary love-life!
I love the sea. And I love this piece.