Water World

I am now unsure whether it was the anticipation that began as the sun set the previous day or whether it was the promise of another beautiful and memorable day that got our aching bodies to feel nimble and lithe at the crack of dawn. Whatever it was, it succeeded in getting us to the promised seafront at Wandoor without a whine. Before arriving there, we drove for an hour, passing through patches of Tsunami affected terrain. That event evidently had changed the landscape permanently. Where there were at one time lush green fields that needed tilling, prawn and fish culturing were now the calling of the day. We arrived to be welcome by the sight of scavenging mutts that had risen early to seek out any food material the sea thought was inappropriate to remain within its bowels. The receding tide last night had left on the beach some sort of food like dead fish, broken oysters and other things which I could not even name. We found ourselves within a stone’s throw distance at a restaurant, living-quarters combo, from where the first citizen’s helicopter had landed a couple days earlier. We also discovered that in addition to the mutts that were the obvious first sights as we arrived, our instructor-master for the day was already awake and about, waiting for us to arrive, although we couldn’t at first say if he shared the sense of anticipation at all

To ward off any copyright and royalty issues in case this write up becomes famous enough to fetch me any money. I will refer to our instructor-master simply as S. At first go he seemed an easy talking fellow, until one point when our group’s collective opinion was he was seemed to suffer from a chronic case of verbal diarrhea, or, word vomiting, as a few would prefer to call it depending on which orifice their affinities are suited to. He chalked out our itinerary for the day which began with learning how to wear our wet suits and saddle the apparatus correctly complete with the use of each of the paraphernalia. And then after a very light breakfast we set off in a motorized dungi towards Mavadera. This place was a restricted island and was supposed to be ideal for our orientation of DSD.. (discover SCUBA diving), although I prefer to refer to it personally as Deep Sea Diving which sounds more exciting and adventurous. Even now, I just say DSD and do not elaborate on what it actually is unless asked for, just hoping that people think of it as deep sea dive..

Our beloved friend D looked absolutely ravishing in the skin tight wet suit which did its bit to highlight the various bulges and depressions on his otherwise nondescript frame. He was slated to finish his under sea adventure first because he had to be over the clouds in a few hours heading back home. We watched as his usually multifaceted expression changed from anticipatory to ponderous to what-the-hell-am-I-doing-this-for all the way through a few more fine ones which I cannot describe for all the life in me. It all concluded in him bobbing up the water surface screaming at the top of his lungs that he did not want to do what he was being asked to. At this point his expressions no longer mattered, however, we the ones that had the transient privilege of being up on the dungi gave each other reassuring looks that nothing inappropriate occurred under the water, and it was just that he was his sense of survival was getting to the better of his sense of adventure. After a bit of a struggle, he managed to enjoy for a brief time the wonders that the world 4 meters below the surface of the water had to offer. If not for his fast approaching deadline to begin his journey back home, he might have played spoilsport describing what our otherwise so far virgin thoughts of the under sea world were.
Our turn came a few hours later after we had seen D back to Wandoor, packed him off to the airport, eaten some lunch, were subject to the first of our fully paid physical miseries when we were dumped into the sea by the beach to learn swimming and acclimatize to the water and the diesel that formed a film on it from the dungi anchored in the vicinity. Until then, the only other insufferable misery was Ss condition. We headed back in the boat to Mavadera amidst questioning from a few other tourists about how much we were paying for what looked like a space mission except that it was headed in the opposite direction. I thought I actually saw celestial objects in their eyes when S quoted the cost. We went through our training session and by now were used to or rather getting weary of the continuous onslaught of his personal life and about what were the maneuvers we had to learn before we could dive down, and S continued to dole it out in all generosity. I kept wondering why hadn’t nature designed us such that 4 ears could bear more than 2, because when we exchanged glances, either of us were sure we were as bored as the other. I was actually glad that once the breathing apparatus was on, talking was off which was indeed a solace that complemented the tranquility of the surroundings both above and below water.

DS who was my company on this dive after initially sounding and seeming brave was literally dampened at the thought that none of the wet suits fitted her. We weren’t sure if that could be termed as a compliment to her seemingly brave façade or to her proportions. Owing to the latter, I personally worried that once in the water, she put us in the danger of finding ourselves in a frenzy of larger fishes like whales and dolphins who might find it a compulsion on their natural traits to inspect her at close quarters to either accept her as one of their own or let her pass for seals, sea lions, turtles or even possibly man made submarine or debris. Much as I did not want to say other nondescript creatures or ones not yet listed under Carolus Linnaeus' binominal nomenclature classification method, I must include that just to give it a sense of completeness.

After several trying moments and un-coaxed willingness to forfeit the small fortune that we had spent on this, we finally decided to go in for the dive. Being dumped in the sea backs first made me feel like fish food, but once in there all the pain and misery was forgotten. The world beneath was more beautiful than beautiful could be. The vividness and variedness was mind numbing, I would have been happy to drown in such a beautiful setting because to me it was heaven. There were fish and corals of indescribable colors and shapes. I felt like I was on television except that this time I was on the other side of the screen where all the live action was. I could live there forever, and wished endlessley that by some divine power, I could become one among the surroundings for eternity. It would be a hopelessly failed attempt if anyone tried to describe the world below, and owing to that sane thought, I am refraining from doing it. If you want to understand the 'depth' of the word beautiful.. then do the dive at least once in your lifetime is all i can offer. In the interim, DS managed to knock off the regulator (the mouth apparatus) from Ss mouth a few times, and ended up riding the waters like Lord Ganesha seated on Mother Parvati's lap. I ended up kicking him in the backside accidentally, I would have relished that though if I had done it consciously to get even with all the torments he heaped all along. All this in addition to the fact that he had dived with D in the morning plus the fact that DS wasnt built with any aerodynamic proportions quickly drained him of his energy. The only other part of that experience worth mentioning is watching DS try to get on the boat. It took none lesser than the marginal crew of the lanky dungi captain, another helper, the commandant from within the dungi and marginally one of the co passengers from within the dungi, in addition to S and myself from the water and alignment to the water current to hoist the mass out of the water and back into the dungi. All this while, another helpful co passenger shot rather embarassing footage of this attempt and a little more as you will find later.

On the way back to the shore in the dungi, and well out of the waters that were Ss forte where he tormented and treaded barefoot (occasionally with the artificial paddle fins he wore on his feet) on peoples confidence, he made the mistake of treading into dangerous waters that were American slangs. We had professional expertise in the form of co passengers that were incidentally call center employees. In one swift & lethal slash of the tongue they rendered S speechless. The intricacies of the phonetic difference between the expression Gosh “as in .. .oh my GOD!!”, and the word Shark were explained, they also threw in a bonus by distinctly establishing the meaning of both words in the common parlance in all American, English & Hinglish languages.

We were back on Wandoor beach at sunset. After the much required ablution and change back to clothes more acceptable on terra-firma. A little more of idle talk toyed with the idea of paying S a premium to torment, and drown, one of the founding heads of modern Indias IT industry. His offence for such well planned out treatment being that he had heaped generic insults on the occupation of our co-passengers. The only advantage that we collectively saw in doing it was to make full use of Ss verbal condition (which by now we were more content in believing was a dysfunction of his intellect than anything to do with any of his orifices) plus the fact that if any memorial were to be established at Wandoor in honor for the potentiall late business leader, then there might be a subsidy offered to the employees of that company for any "homage trips" they make to the Emerals Isles, in addition there might be DSD opportunities to pay him homage at his final resting place… all of course would be a part of the variable pay options….. and on par with existing industry standards

We were saying the byes to our co passengers who other than sharing the same age group and idea of fun as us, served us as allies to shut the sluice gates on the dam that was Ss oral orifice. And we realized only at a later date that we owed them thanks for being the videographers they were. Unawares to both parties until then, and to only them until eternity, they had a lot of their own “skinful” footage on my camera, which I believe was by virtue of them being in relatively liberating clothes (of course they weren’t there on a pilgrimage) plus the inexperience in handling a live cameras orientation. I mentioned about this briefly earlier, and I must add that of course, for that given day we had an overdose of uncovered skin already, but now in retrospect when I am back in a city that is about 8 hours from sea either to the west or the east and much more so to the south, I personally consider that footage as a treasure of the sea.

Just as we thought the day was over, a surprisingly intimidated S surfaced yet again. I think he got reprimanded by his boss that the mandated paperwork that absolved Laccadives Diving School’s incidental or direct risks arising out of a divers wish to SCUBA dive remained uncompleted and unsigned!! The perfectly undrowned and alive students of the days Discover SCUBA Diving lesson were back on terra firma and boarded a vehicle headed back to the hotel driving into the sunset.

A day that began with anticipation… was full of trepidation.. and ended in a very memorable and wonderful conquest….. I don’t know if the expression "vini... vidi... vici..." or the palindrome "Able was I, ere I saw Elba" is more appropriate.. with due respects to both Alexander and Napolean… I would rather say… as we drove into the darkness the only thoughts that kept coming to us were that "beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder"… And by some unknown grace, nothing got in the way of spoiling it.. not the fact that the first citizen had caused most other islands to be off limits to lesser mortals, not the fact that we had imbibed too much salt water, too much sun burn, had decided to give it up at the nth moment, and had almost forgotten to breathe with our nose whilst still out of water. We lived through it and will probably live to tell the story to generations to come.

Long live S!!!! and long live D, DS and the co passengers.. of course my heartfelt gratitude to the Dungi captain and Commandant Baht!!!