The Andaman Islands
Gut instinct. Should you listen to it or not? Even if it makes you act irrationally? Very irrationally?
I
woke up the other morning in Port Blair on the Andaman Islands and I just
knew, (just KNEW, so very sure) that I needed to leave. Pronto, immediately,
I needed to catch the one and only plane that day (in one hour) off the
island. And so I did. Crazy. But I’m glad I left. I’ll go back another
time.
The Andaman Islands are theoretically part of India and are considered a Union Territory. By plane, they are two hours south of Calcutta and two hours east of Madras in the Bay of Bengal. They’re closer to Indonesia than India, by far. Yet, they remain on Indian time. I burnt to a cinder walking along a road at 9am. Sunset on the Andaman Islands is earlier than I’m used to and that’s including winters in Scotland. By 7pm, it’s time to call it a day and head to bed.
24 armed guards surrounded our plane as we boarded our flight back to Madras from Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Police in India carry very large guns. Resting on the ground, they fit snugly under an armpit. Intimidation. Last week, when I was on the hellishly long and wet train journey to Madras, a policeman on board couldn’t wait to show me how the gun worked. I told him to please stop and go away. Anyway, the airport at Port Blair was little more than a wooden ramshackle affair. Immigration was in one corner, a makeshift desk and foldable chair. Foreigners have to get special visas to visit the islands. The Indian Consulate in San Francisco only granted me permission to stay on the islands for a maximum of 15 days.
Security is tight on the islands because of the bad feelings between the Indians and the tribal communities. Pretty much, it seems that the various tribal communities have been screwed over time and time again over the last two hundred years. And they’re pissed off. As well as facing extinction. Those tribes that are left, that is. During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, missionaries from Europe arrived on the islands to convert the locals. Things didn’t go well for either sides: the tribes were faced with diseases and buggies that they had no immunity against and, hence, many died. And many of the missionaries had to abandon the islands due to lack of water and illness. By the late 19th C. the British annexed the islands, and they built a top notch prison in Port Blair. There, they kept Indian freedom fighters from the mainland. This lasted until 1945 when the Japanese briefly occupied the land. After the Partition, refugees from Bengal and Bangladesh were given land in the islands. All this time, outsiders were infringing on the land of the tribals, as well as cutting down huge amounts of the jungle forests. Today, the numbers of some tribes have dropped as low as 20. When taking a public bus through tribal land, armed guards board the bus should the tribals shoot off arrows. Which they do.
A new runway will be complete on the islands by 2002. And then there’s bound to be a deluge of hard core tourism. The islands really are picture perfect. The beaches are clean, for the most part. That is, in comparison to the rest of India. There are eco-aware signs all over the main island though I think that was more for the benefit of visitors than locals. The weather is fairly constant year round. Wet and sun and warm. Nothing too extreme. The corals are supposed to be some of the most beautiful and undamaged in the world. Right now, the Andmans are considered a very expensive holiday destination for Indians. The men on the flight wore Lacoste shirts (this says I Have Money here) and the women wore heaps of gold. And, as always, the parents came on holiday with the couple, too. When boarding the plane, there was still as much push-and-shove as when standing in line for a ticket at the grotty train station.
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