My brethren and sistren are everywhere. I stepped out of the Vatican ravenous, and walked up to the first beef burger truck I saw – and lo and behold, it was run by a Bengali. One of hundreds I encountered through Italy. I still marvel at how they had got there.
And now I have found them in the far reaches of the subcontinent – in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. I thought I could escape Kolkata and West Bengal, and the handsome Haryanvis I live alongside in Gurugram by taking multiple flights, a ferry and then a car ride – only to reach Havelock Island in the Andamans and realise that every second person there was from Bengal.
Well, this is understandable. One, the Andamans are close to Bengal. It’s just short of a two-and-a-half hour flight from Kolkata to Port Blair. Many people have moved here also for jobs. Two, there are those who can thank GoI for shipping them out to Andaman and Nicobar under the ‘Colonisation Schemes’ (sic) first in 1949 after Partition and hen again after the 1971 India-Pakistan war with the creation of Bangladesh. In both cases, thousands of East Pakistan/Bangladesh refugees were resettled on the islands. In 1951, there were 2,362 Bengali-speaking people, which by 1991 had become 64,706, according to the census. Today, they make about 28% of the population with about 1 lakh people.
Settling in the Andamans is not a bad deal today. But in 1971, it was as good as the British sending off political prisoners from the Indian mainland to Port Blair to be housed in Kala Paani, a.k.a. the Cellular Jail during colonialism.
On visiting the Andamans last month, it warmed the cockles of my heart to see the union territory celebrating one of Cellular Jail’s more unwilling prisoners, Vinayak ‘Veer’ Savarkar. Today, he seems almost like a co-traveller from the moment one has touched down at the Veer Savarkar Airport where I got down not from a bulbul, but from a plane.
But back to the Cellular Jail. It is a chilling reminder of a grim time in our not-so-distant past. What is even more chilling is the sight of multiple newlywed couples and uncles and aunties from the mainland striking romantic poses and pouting while taking pictures and selfies with the Cellular Jail as their backdrop.
But the loud Indian who spits and shoves and litters soon becomes a distant memory as you move farther away from land. I have not seen such azure waters, pristine sands and miles of empty beach ever, not even, literally, overseas.
A long and extremely swanky ferry ride at a very low cost from Port Blair will deposit you on the shores of Havelock. A phone signal is rarer than steak tartare here, and WiFi is a distant dream. But telemarketers still managed to call me on Independence Day in the two seconds my phone caught a whiff of a mobile signal — to remind me that a free credit card awaits my return, and independence from spam will never be possible.
What Havelock proved to me is that the only way to ensure a no-crime, no-pollution, no-litter world is by making your destination as inaccessible and as low interest to the selfie-loving, mall’n’bar-hopping tourist as possible. This is like miles of a Maldives beach minus the restaurants, resorts and nightlife. In other words, paradise.
That these little islands in the sun exist in India – visited only by the truly committed – is a miracle. Even families whose children remind you of The Exorcist, seem to behave mindfully. No one screamed or shouted or drove SUVs on the beach while swigging beer. People simply swam, went scuba-diving, snorkelled, read a book, spoke softly. Even being a voluble Sen, I became as zen as possible.
So, go to the Andamans for its beaches. Stay for the solitude and the company of the most softspoken Bengalis you’ll ever met. Just, like me, don’t tell anyone about it.