Standing on 'Pamban Bridge'

As I stood upon the Pamban Bridge, the sea stretched endlessly on either side—glistening, murmuring, beckoning. The sun played hide-and-seek behind gusty winds, cool one moment, warm the next. On one side, a flotilla of small fishing boats lay moored in still devotion. On the other, the sea unfurled infinitely, like an unanswered prayer.
The wind rose like a hymn. With the ocean billowing on both sides, something within me softened and shifted. There is a peculiar lightness that comes when land ends and all that remains is water—and thought. Jacques Cousteau, the great mariner, once said, “The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.” Here, gazing out over the Palk Strait, I felt that spell take hold—vast, unknowable, yet deeply intimate, like the contours of consciousness itself.
In front of me stood the newly inaugurated Pamban Railway Bridge—India's first vertical-lift sea bridge—a feat of modern engineering stretching 2.07 kilometres across the strait. Beside it stood its elder sibling: the venerable 1914 Pamban Bridge, India’s first sea bridge, weathered but resolute. One was memory, the other momentum. Together, they framed a metaphor for India: ancient and aspiring, rooted yet rising.
This was not merely a view—it was a vantage point. Below me roared the ocean; above me loomed the changing sky. And in between stood I—part pilgrim, part citizen—held in suspension between reverence and reason.
The Island That Holds Time
Rameshwaram—one of the Char Dhams, the four sacred pilgrimage sites of Hinduism—is not a destination; it is a turning. If Varanasi is where death finds peace, Rameshwaram is where life finds pause. It rests gently at the southern tip of the Indian peninsula, near the edge of vision—almost touching Sri Lanka—bathed in myth, salt, and sun.
And it is here that Adi Shankaracharya, in the 8th century, consecrated the ancient Shiv lingam in the Ramanathaswamy Temple, anchoring the island in the Advaitic vision of oneness. This temple, with its famed thousand-pillared corridor, holds time not as a relic but as breath—living, inhaling centuries.
Yet Rameshwaram is more than sacred geography. It is the birthplace of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the humble son of a boatman who dreamed among stars. His life, like the island itself, stood at the confluence of faith and science, prayer and propulsion. In his legacy, Rameshwaram reaches beyond temples and tides—toward the sky.
A City Struggling With Its Pilgrims
A few steps inland, and the mystic hush gives way to human hum. Narrow lanes throb with autos, pilgrims, vendors, and the overflow of devotion. The town, sacred as it is, struggles with its own sanctity.
The alleys are dense, the intersections cluttered with makeshift commerce, plastic waste, and a swelling crowd of seekers. The temples still echo with chants, but also with fatigue. Faith has not failed—but infrastructure has. It is a fragile balance, and it is fraying.
What could be done differently? How can reverence be made sustainable? How do we welcome the devout without wounding the divine? These are not rhetorical questions. They are calls—to government, to citizenry, to conscience.
Still, amid this disorder, something endures. Order peeks from chaos, like a refrain in free verse. Belief persists—not as dogma, but as mood. In Rameshwaram, even atheism walks with conviction. The believer and the sceptic, side by side, both seeking meaning—just in different idioms.
Return to the Bridge
As I returned to the bridge, the setting sun poured molten light across the steel rails. Below, the sea shimmered—a liquid mirror to the sky. Beautiful yet formidable, it whispered truths older than language.
From this vantage, Rameshwaram reveals its deepest offering: that divine chaos is the truest order. That faith and doubt, devotion and detachment, temple and telescope—are not opposites, but twins separated by style. The scientist and the seeker are but reflections in the same tide.
To visit Rameshwaram is not to tick a destination—it is to be altered. It is where myth exhales, salt lingers in the air, and thoughts are loosened like birds in wind.
And the Takeaway?
What do we carry back? Not conclusions, but contemplations.
Rameshwaram reminds us that the believer and the non-believer often ask the same questions, only in different tongues. That yearning is universal. And that perhaps, the world is not built on answers—but on the audacity to keep asking.
Millennia ago, Lord Rama stood on these shores and prayed:
“धर्मात्मा सत्यसंधश्च रामो दाशरथिर्यदि।
पार्थिवान् सहस्रं मे समुद्रमन्तरं गतम्॥”
—Valmiki Ramayana, Yuddha Kanda
“If Rama, son of Dasharatha, is indeed righteous and true to his word,
then may this ocean yield, and grant a path to my army.”
The bridge that followed was made of floating stones, and it was a bridge not of conquest, but of conviction. Today’s is built of steel and resolve. Both are acts of faith—one in the divine, the other in ourselves.
Rameshwaram is not just a place we reach. It is a place we return from—changed. It doesn’t offer destinations; it offers directions. It doesn’t give answers; it opens questions.
And the bridge? More than concrete or cantilever, it is metaphor.
For life. For India.
For the soul that seeks, and the hand that builds.

(Uday Kumar Varma is an IAS officer. Retired as Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting)