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Remembering the Andamans - green islands in the sea
By Carl Muller
Green emeralds - so remote, lying between Sumatra and Burma. In the Buddha Jayanthi year, with the north-east monsoon raising twenty-foot waves in the Bay of Bengal, I sailed these waters on board the HMCyS "Vijaya", almost half a century ago.

The Vijaya skirted the Nicobars, but the weather was foul, so we took a lugger to the Andamans and our skipper decided on lying off the island. Rangoon, our destination, was a long haul away and for a small 1,040-ton vessel, the seas were getting most treacherous. We were to check out a lee side and take soundings, to determine where we could ride out a mounting gale.

Such a beautiful old-world place. So many British had ramrodded it too - Temple, Ferrar, Cadell - for about 30 years and, even when we returned to the Vijaya with instructions to drop fore and stern anchors, the rains came down and the sunset very early.

Most of the off-watch crew decided to spend the time ashore, to the chagrin of the duty watch, but our skipper decided that a skeleton crew should do.

We went to the Andaman Club where the walls were decorated with the crests of many naval ships. On a hill stood Government House which, I am told, could not escape the tsunami; and on Ross Island was the headquarters of the Chief Commissioner, with the sea pocket with fishing boats that leave at dawn for their morning catch.

Port Blair
Port Blair spreadeagles - from Haddo to Secretariat Hill, to the Aberdeen Bazaar and South Point with lots of neat little villages: Pahargoan, Shadipur, Garcharma. Most of the houses are occupied by government servants and we decided to roam around rather than take the decrepit taxis that charge for two-way trips even if they only take a drop hire.

It is hard to imagine that this was a convict colony during the British rule in India. The 700-cell jail in Port Blair was a grim reminder. Today, this jail has given way to a modern hospital that took a powerful beating when the sea lashed in.

Port Blair was in no way "modern" when I saw it. Village-houses on stilts with thatched and tatted roofs like inverted honeycombs. The Andamanese were so much like a mixture of Indian and Sinhalese, but the tribals with their face paint and skimpy codpieces, snouty-nosed (the Onges) and quite Grecian in stature (the Shompens) were rather off-putting.

The women were all round-faced, Sinhala konde, cloth and jacket, many busy at old Pfaff and Singer sewing machines, and they seemed to adore mats and tatting. There were settlers from Madras in their wattle and daub houses, while the more energetic East Bengalis planted rice and worked their fields.

Scenic beauty
It was a surprise to see the elephants. The forests of the interior had given rise to a flourishing timber industry and Indian elephants had been shipped in to haul timber into trucks and roll logs into the water where they were floated to the Chatham saw mill. A lot of wooden handicrafts were on sale - figurines, heads, canoes, ornamental letter openers, etc., as well as rush baskets and bags. We followed the torches to Corbyn's Cove - a beautiful seaside resort where people come at sunset to sing and dance on the sands. Holidays are always spent here.

Such a place of scenic beauty with the sea rippling in with a buttery foam, a few huts on shore selling food and drink and open to the evening winds. What remains today? How many of the dead lie on those sugary sands?

The Andamans are just 800 miles from Calcutta - just about the same distance from Madras. The motor vessel "Nicobar" (What happened to it, I wonder) came in regularly and there was also a dry dock. Of course, monsoon-hit seas can be pretty bad and this is why fish is so expensive and the mail always comes so late.

Yet, the Andamans are not self-sufficient. It depends on India for wheat, sugar, pulses, mustard oil, even to send students out for study beyond the secondary school stage.

When the Japanese occupied the Andamans, three wings of the seven-winged Port Blair jail were dismantled. Only one wing now serves as the local jail. The Forest Department controls Chatham Island from where more than 55,000 tons of timber are exported and the sawmill there is the biggest of its kind. I was told that the sawmill alone employs up to 1,000 hands. What impressed me the most was that power was generated from timber waste and mangrove fuel.

Naturally, we were guests at the naval shore base, the INS "Jarawa" - named after a local Jarawa tribe - but we still saw old Japanese pill boxes, an airfield and, believe it or not, a small Japanese temple garden. Also, believe it or not, when the Navy band strikes up, it plays songs from "My Fair Lady" and "South Pacific"!

Marks of war
My heart hurts for Port Blair today. Around it, I walked the heart of the old agricultural settlement - long winding roads, green rice fields, wide open valleys, overcoats of jungle scattered "basha" huts. It was like a little India taking shape - Madhuban, Havelock Island, Neil Island. Madhuban was where elephants were trained. Settlers had built their camps on Havelock Island, surrounded with its spectacular coral reefs.

There was not a car horn to be heard. From Aberdeen Jetty to Ross Island, where 300 convicts used to slave for the British, tending the gardens, the swimming pools, tennis courts, residences, ball room, church, hospital, bakery and butchery. A curator told me that in the old days, when visitors came to the island, the children were left in the care of an old convict who was serving sentence for murder! Even convicts from Mandalay served here. What I saw then was ruin and neglect - full of weeds and snaking undergrowth. How had the Empire fallen! Even the walls bore traces of strafing from RAF machine guns when the Japanese swept in.

We visited Harriet Hill, the only real mountain overlooking High Rose Island, the woods of Wimberygunj, and the Sentinel Islands. Here, at Hoodpoint Jetty, a British Viceroy, Lord Mayo, was murdered by a convict, - the only British Viceroy to be assassinated on Indian soil!

Gone to sea
The tsunami skittled it all. Who tells of the fate of Dundas Point, Shaitan Creek, North Point Bay, Bamboo Flat, North Corbyn, South Point, Corbyn's Cove, Rangachang, Chidiatapu, Port Mout (where Chinese and Malays hunted for edible birds' nests), Rutland Island, Labyrinth Islands, Jolly Boy Island, Malaytapu, Red Skin Island, Boat Island, Twin Islands, today? I could be sure of one thing - Mount Haughton, that rises, 1,000 feet?

When the quartermaster piped us aboard, I saluted the quarterdeck, a most dissatisfied sailor. Why the devil did the captain wish to press on to Rangoon with so many squalls ahead? True, we were carrying a large statue of the Lord Buddha - a gift from our government to the government of Burma, but the Bay of Bengal was a bundle of fury. Also, there was so much more I would have liked to see - the North, Middle and South Andamans, the tribal Karens, the Burmese settlers, the Moplaks. No one told me of the Sentinalese, the last of the world’s Paleolithic people.

Today, after centuries of near seclusion, the Andamans has whipped up world attention. Such a place so worthy of attention, and it had to be a ferocious sea that made the world sit up and take notice. One day, if I live that long, I would like to return.

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