Andaman 2: A Lifetime in a Furnace

May 3

1300 hrs

Port Blair

This certainly isn't my idea of a holiday!! Packing into a little over 3 sq. ft. of shade in a scorching furnace of a boat jetty at Port Blair. What are we doing here?? Waiting for a boat. Not much... Just another 3 hours!!! Grrr... Whosoever's plan that was!

Earlier this morning we landed in Port Blair, and were welcomed by a swarm of taxiwalas. Literally. A bunch of them just attacked us. One of them grabbed our luggage trolley and walked away, beckoning us to follow... Finally, we managed to pick one of them and tell the others off.... Autowallas, taxiwallas and bus conductors are representatives of their city/town/village to visiting outsiders. Their conduct and culture gets easily projected onto that of the place and people. They must realise the responsibility that puts on their shoulders....... That goes for the drunk autowalla in Chennai as well. Anyway... Subhash Roy, our taxiwalla turned our to be a pleasant guy. He put us into his Omni and drove us over the curvy and hilly streets of Port Blair to the Boat jetty...

People of the Andamans mainly speak Hindi although a good fraction has Bengali roots, like Subhash. Anyway, our immediate destination is an island called Havelock, where we stay two days... And for that boatride to Havelock, we wait........

Oh, I almost forgot. It was strange rendezvous.... I'd gone for a walk outside the boat jetty out of sheer boredom. The streets were empty and I was walking in the sun like an idiot. When a boy, 20 years or so, clad in saffron, two horizontal bhasmam marks on the forehead, caught up with my trot.

"Phutbal khelne jaa rahe ho kya?" he quips with an amused grin. I was in shorts.

After waiting a second longer than necessary to comprehend i reply, "Aapke paas toh lungi hai. Itni garmi me pehnne ke liye mere paas shorts hi toh hai.." I try to equal his amusement but fail..

"Gussa aapke naak pe chadha rehta hai", he says as if revealing a secret.

"huh, kyun?"

We walked a bit and he made quite a few 'revelations' along the way. Mostly good ones. That I'll be very lucky in life. That I'll earn a lot more than my parents. That I'll rule the territory my forefathers once ruled. (My grandad was a school headmaster. Thats the best my forefathers have managed, in my knowledge.)

"Aaj subah neend khulne par mai ne aapka chehra dekha" he said in an impish mystic tone.

Seeing that i wasn't buying it, he went on to say that I was born near a 'puja sthan'. (True. In Alleppey, Kerala, you are never too far from a temple.) And, that I donot remember my dreams in the morning. (Well, I can't remember whether i remember them or not. So lets say partly true.) I told him in good nature that i donot believe in these things much and our little banter continued.

Laxman was from U.P. and had come down to meet some 'baba' n do some puja. We said our byes and best wishes as I had to return to the jetty... I half expected him ask for dakshina for all the unsought gyaan he'd spouted, readying myself to refuse. But all he did before leaving was smile....

Judged him too soon, i guess. Shouldn't have...