What's in a Dive

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What is it about standing at the foot of a multi-storey-high Brain Coral perched on a steep incline to your right and a steep descend into mysterious darkness that you’re unsure of venturing into to your left ; or the strange extra-terrestrial objects lining the floorbed swaying to the tune of some gentle unbreathable breeze so toxic that you breathe through oxygen cylinders strapped to your backs while you challenge the laws of gravity and nature; or the tiny fluorescent pink, or fluorescent green, or orange, and yellow, and patchy and dotted, and striped, and boxy, and roundish and streamlined and shiny fish that swim almost directly at you, like they want to touch you, as if you were as fascinating to them as they are to you. I don’t know.
But I know it’s worth fighting for. It’s worth one shot, even if just one.
While my mother’s brother (Faroukh) has a list of problems, I had one enough - the inability to equalize.
While in the past, I have attempted to dive on at least three different occasions at at least three different locations - unsuccessfully - Faroukh had never attempted a dive in his life, and was at a stage where we all believed he never would.
“I’m never going to dive am I?” There was a shattered expression about him that tore my heart out. “I’m 48 years old. My whole life is going to go by, and I will never dive.” Something was about to break, if not in him, then in me.
This is a man who has injured (severely) his spine in three places, recently recovered from a dislocated shoulder, a broken collarbone, a de-skinned face where half his teeth were replaced and the other half were either capped or filled, has never dived before, and suffers stress-related asthma.
I excuse myself and approach one of the instructors - Vikas - and beg him to just give it one shot, probably the last one this man has to ever dive. And I certainly wasn’t going to place his life into the hands of anyone less professional. I was right.
DiveIndia - a strange name for a dive centre in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands considering we’re so far away from “India” but okay, I’ll bite - is a bit like the Bermuda Triangle in effect.
They’re a bunch of easy-going underwater creatures who probably gave up their fins for limbs so that they could eat fish “cooked like steak”.
Vikas took Faroukh by the arm and disappeared somewhere between the corals and the surface, while Jackson - another instructor there - grabbed my entire arm and locked it purposefully into his left arm while doing the same for my brother on his right.
I thought it was rather charming.
We were like monkeys, making gestures to our eyes, and ears and nose and backsides and confusing ourselves on which finger’s “going up” and which one’s “down”. And in all that drama I completely forgot that I couldn’t equalize. In my curiosity and monkeyness, I picked up this round thing dangling out of my life jacket that had “Depth in Meters” written on it and the arrow was pointing at 9!!! Nine Meters Deep??? No-way! I think we went to 11 that dive. I am telling you I have never been treated that gently before in my life. It was charming.
By the time we got back to the boat, Faroukh was already sitting there, drying himself off, smiling from ear to ear. He made the “okay” sign to me and mouthed the word “superb”. What a relief.
“Was it worth it?” I asked him later, about his fight against his wife, his sister, his own health, his emotionally blackmailing mother - if this one dive was worth all of that.
“Of course man!” I never brought it up again.

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Photos

havelock
havelock from neil

hermit crabs
hundreds of them squabbling like little drunkards

In full moon
That's full moon cafe - where the world's most divine food awaits my return

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[dianabharucha]

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