Havelock...

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29th September,

Havelock, VijayNagar Beach

I never sleep well anywhere on my first night, and this early dawn break was creating havoc to my system. I was up at 4 and could not sleep. After tossing and turning for a while, i felt it was better to put this wakefulness to good use, and off i went to the beach. The light was just creeping up, and everything was just ethereally silent. I could see the waterline way up, where it had come up at the high tide and everything had a washed up look. I sat with my notebook and my camera on one such washed up rock and as the water lapped on my feet, i wrote and took snaps and waited for the sun to come out. And it did, and how! I have no words to describe the sheer magic of that moment. I have seen tinged gold on water, and tinged steel. But this was all copper, a copper which bathed every corner of the water in a thousand small pieces, and reached out and touched your heart, to forever bleed for it, forever and ever never to forget it. It was a moment of my life when after a very long while I was totally at peace with myself, totally calm, totally without any war inside my head. I could look up and if I believed in God, I would have said 'take me now, as this is the most beautiful I have known you'. Poor me, I don't have the luxury of faith. Soon the sun was high enough to make it quite unbearable to sit around, and a small snooze seemed the order of the time.

I had heard about the fact that you could rent a scooter or a bike on the island, so after I dragged my hapless and grouchy teammate from his sleep, and a quick breakfast on bread and eggs, and a rush for a quick swim, it was time to look at best options for a scooter. Our hotel offered us one for Rs 275 for 24 hrs and we had to fill in petrol at Rs55/ litre from a shop in the market. A little search at the Market No. 3, and you pay the money in a shop and take your scooter around at the back workshop where they fill it out of canisters. You have to trust them that they are filling what you are telling them to fill. We trusted them for 3 liters. And then we were off.

Through country roads, tarred and non tarred, the landscape reminding me of what i remembered of rural Bengal - pitched thatch roof huts, cow and hens on the front yard, fields of green paddy smelling of rice in the sun and water, more cows and buffaloes. The hay for the cow pitched up like a mound. small ponds with waterlilies. The smell of the rice was just like fresh rice getting cooked, and for a while we actually thought that if we knock at someone's door, we would be invited in for a meal.

After roaming about for a while and hitting a few dead ends we landed up at the famous Beach No. 7 which has been described as one of the most beautiful beaches of the world. And it took our breath away. We walked on the soft white sand along the line of the mangroves and found a spot in the shade to sit down. And just looked on. The water here was atleast four colours. The white of the surf, the green at the shallower end, the turquoise green and then the majestic deep indigo blue. I have never seen these colours before in nature. The white sand, the green tree line (again so many mangroves) and the water and the sky. Somehow I could not even remember one song of Rabindranath which described such beauty. I don't think he ever came to Andamans....

If i had packed a picnic lunch i would not have budged from there for the whole day....

But we hadn't and in some time, food seemed to be what our stomaches needed. After a little scouting around we settled for a small place in Market No. 3. It was a typical 'made for tourist' place, with misspelt ambitious menu card and non-spicy 'made for the foreign tongue' food. I would have settled for some real maachh bhaat. I chose carefully, and the food we had was simple and good, though yes, pretentious. Ingo seemed to like it quite a bit so I guess it does appeal to the western tongue....

Talking to the (yes again) Bengali restaurant owner, I cleared out a few mysteries. The population of this place was predominantly Bengali, almost 95%. They were mostly refugees and convicts who were told to shift to this Island and start cultivating. Apparently the soil was hard as rock (I really need to check this fact - these are after all tropical islands), and nothing would grow, and the fathers of these people toiled on such soil slowly making an unwilling ground yield a crop and then the next one. By the next generation, it was almost like they have had been their for always! As with all the trappings of a Bengali life (and I asked them), of course they had the Durga Puja, and the Jagaddhatri Puja, and the Laksmi Puja and all the total 'baro mashe tero parbon'...

....The restaurant owner also sowed the seeds of something which I would pay the price for the next day. But more about that later.

After lunch and a quick shut eye (remember, I for one was up since 4), we went the opposite direction, towards what was called the Kala Patthar. The road weaved along the coast, exposing rocky streteches of beaches, and we seemed to be now turning around to the west. And i wanted, so badly, to see the sunset! Soon the road vanished with a sign saying this was the 'Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana'...not a very good Yojana there, and the mud track which we were very obstinately following also very soon stopped. So that was that. What we found was actually deep rural areas, a young boy walking on the road with diving flippers on, and a primary school where kids of around 5-7 years played 'kit kit' (one legged catch catch anyone?) with great enthusiasm under the watchful eyes of the school master.

By this time the sun had gone down between the trees, and so we decided it was time for a repeat of the last evening on our beach. And so yes, pretty much the same. Stood in the waters, till it became dark and the stars came out, and the waters rose. And then we came back in the darkness, washed up and off to dinner. It was this huge fish grilled. Ingo very bravely tried to tackle the head, seeing him not get anywhere soon enough, I had to kindly share my portion with him, otherwise he would have gone hungry. Name again forgotten, but again cooked to perfection. But I am finding this place a wee bit too expensive to eat everyday. We are averaging Rs 400/500 per meal per head. The lunches are way better. Today's was just Rs 90.

The order after such a huge dinner seemed to be a walk, and so we walked out, under the diamond studded sky, wishing that the street lights were not there. And here was one house with some Bengali movie playing on TV and somewhere else someone's boom box going. The rest was all dark stretches of cavernous silence. I would have liked to wonder off between the fields - but slush and mud was not that inviting at that point of the night. We would save all of that for the next day ;-)...

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