A Trip Beyond

Once upon a time, when I was much younger, and when we used to visit other places almost every big vacation, we had a trip to the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Actually, just the Andaman islands, because the Nicobar ones were forbidden to normal people like us who enjoy a quiet life. The four of us : me, my parents and my aunt were all set to explore that part which resembles pimples on the face of India.

Visiting an island is a completely different experience altogether. Firstly, you have to get accustomed to watching a stretch of blue up to the horizon every now and then, reminding you constantly that the sea is dangerously close all the time. You remember having read something like ‘there is a cluster of 512 islands there’ in your Geography textbook and feeling that the people always exaggerate, but when you get there you understand how it is possible to have so many specks of land in that sea. Imagine alighting from your boat and reading the sign “Welcome to North Bay Island” almost immediately followed by “Thanks for visiting North Bay Island” and then you see more boats lined up in front of you.

We travelled by train to Chennai, and stayed overnight in a small hotel. On reflection, the train was much more comfortable as compared to that dingy room in Hotel Picnic. Fortunately the next day started with us going to the airport to catch our flight to Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and the only airport there. I loved the first sight of the Isle of Port Blair, which you could see entirely in one glance. I guess the pilot agreed, which resulted in us circling the island for about an hour until the plane on the ground finally took off and gave us room.

Our hotel at Port Blair was very pleasant. Even more than having a colour TV, the fact that we had this big window which opened to the sea made it more pleasant. We stayed there for 3 days and nights, spending the days visiting it's tourist attractions and the evenings sprawled on our beds, watching the waves ripple in the sea, a sight probably more lively than the Hindi movie channels they provided.

The hotel was entirely satisfactory in some unexpected ways. For instance, we seemed to be the only ones apart from the staff to be in that building. We would come down for breakfast every day to see the empty dining room. The waiters were desperately trying to show us that this was but a wrong time and the hotel was full on other occasions. We didn’t mind, however; it was nice to be the first to be waited upon. Moreover, as there was no rush and as we couldn’t see people lounging in the lounge waiting for a table to clear up, we could eat in peace. The food was too good to be true, and yet it was. All in all, the hotel was able to provide everything that we have come to expect from such places.

One of the main items on our agenda was visiting the Cellular Jail. Visiting a prison is an eerie feeling, if you can imagine seeing the wasted prisoners and hearing the cries of the tortured. You didn’t have to imagine it, because a light and sound show in the prison grounds that night made you visualize it. It was horrific, and simultaneously realistic. A prison does not simply hold captive the wrongdoers - in this case, brave freedom fighters - but also the thoughts of freedom, the urge to prove useful to the nation, and worst of all, hope. The aura around the iron bars and the locks (which go 3 inches deep into the walls) makes an inmate lose all that was dear to him, and readily embrace death as an alternative. The sinister mechanism of that gigantic symbol of oppression made it virtually impossible for any ray of light to enter those forbidden walls unless the jailers wished it to. I am trying to express the true horror here which I could not, at that time, through those childish limericks I made as a novice in poetry.

A day later, we visited the Isle of Ross, a triangular island not far from the port. When I say triangular, I refer to a right angled triangle erected in the sea with a perfect slope and a perfectly steep side. Today’s Ross is but a ghost of it's old beautiful character marred by hideous events in the past. Visiting that island, and listening to the touching story of the lady caretaker there, I fully appreciated the horror of Tsunamis for the first time. The island was a living proof of the destructive powers of the sea; tilted on one side and slowly sinking, having not been able to fully recover from that massive impact a few years earlier. Even so, the lady told us firmly that she was not going to leave that island, even if anyone offered her a job elsewhere. She considered the remainder of the fauna on that island as her only family, which, sadly, was true. When you climb back into your boat, and go farther away from that island, and you see the lady waving to us cheerfully with a smile that plainly said ‘I’m staying’; you find yourself desperately hoping that the island would sink no more.

We then visited two more islands, namely Viper (not actually as cool as it sounds) and North Bay, which was littered with porous rocks they claimed were corals. A quick round around that cluster in a boat with a bottom made of glass was supposed to be the highlight of the day. The glass would have made a fairly good window had it not been splattered with seaweed and never cleaned. All we could see below the endless blue surface was tiny fish swimming in murky waters, amongst similar rocks and ferns. To get things straight, me and my father accepted their offer of a dive into the same. It was wonderfully refreshing, or so we felt until we had to scrub off the sand which clung to us like sand.

These islands are so far from the Indian subcontinent that when you land you tend to forget that they are a part of India. Well, at least until you meet the people. What with the accents, the nature, the hair and the modus operandi, it was easy to see that the people who were in charge of this group of islands were our fellow Indians, which tends to reduce the feeling of being too far from home. We learned that, notwithstanding the majority of Tamils and Bengalis, a few people from almost all parts of India had settled there. There was a chance that our next guide was a charming Maharashtrian. We didn’t find any, but this was enough to make us feel at home. (The same effects is caused in the Himalayas by the great mountains themselves)

The Radhanagari beach on the island of Havelock was what we were looking forward to, having heard of it's beauty and natural splendour. We were thrilled to discover that the descriptions were right for once. The beach spread over a whole side of that island, and was entirely made of soft white sand and such foamy water that it was hard to understand where the beach ended and the sea began. The sea also provided us with the biggest waves hitting the beach we had ever seen, and not felt, because the authorities wouldn’t let us go in too deep. That was another advantage of visiting a beach on an island. The sea seemed to be aware that it was surrounding that land, and so could send big waves on it without fearing objection which it had learned to expect from the mainland. Sure enough, the sea on any of India’s mainland beaches seemed meek, apparently aware that a giant mass of land lay behind. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the company of two elephants with adorable names. The owner spoke to them lovingly, and we just couldn’t understand how they understood or responded. We were completely at sea.  

Our final item was a night on the island of Havelock, which was considerably larger than those little isles. Our cottage room on Havelock presented a completely different, but no less enchanting, view of the sea. We could lie on the beach on those comfy plastic recliners and watch the sun set. The sun, for the first time, seemed alive, quavering near the horizon as though hesitant to depart. But finally, when it did, it filled the horizon with a brilliant orange light which I took to be it's earnest departing smile. Long after this enchantment was lifted we went inside for some sleep.

The next day was all rush. We took a steamboat back to Port Blair, where a plane was waiting to take us back to mainland. We had quite a scene at the airport; a dramatic event which impressed upon us the vigilance of our officials. The man at the customs wouldn’t let us pass, having mistaken the North Bay sand we took as a souvenir, for heroin, of all things. I have no strong recollections of this incident, but know that the sand ended up in glass jars in the showcase back home, accompanied by this coral rock. So I guess we must have convinced him in the end.

As the plane took off, and I saw the island again, this time only for a brief while, fleeting memories of our visit came back to me. The funny midair circles of our plane when we arrived....... the witty nature of our cheerful cab driver...... the upturned island of Ross........ the coral reef........ the pleasant view from our suite at Hotel Sinclair's....... the beautiful sandy beach......... and most of all the pleasure of watching the sea smiling at us this whole while........... the whole journey back was filled with such glorious reminiscence. This is what perhaps made me open up those memories again and put it in words this time. It was unforgettable, right? So let's make it unforgettable.