Li'l Andaman

Returned from the rainy North Andaman, Girlface Buddha and I faced exactly what we did not want: 3 days in Port Blair, the most boring place in the entire Indian Ocean, during an incessant rainy shitfest. Worst of all, we arrived on a Sunday, and Port Blair is so dedicated to inanity that there was a hell of a lot of nothing to do. The only way we maintained our sanity was by checking into a hotel with cable TV. We remained glued to Star Movies, by far the best English-language channel on Indian TV because it shows an incredibly random selection of Hollywood films. It is Girlface Buddha's commendable verdict that Face-Off is one of the best movies ever made, and for the next week she wouldn't stop talking about it, delving deep into the social and philosophical quandaries raised by the possibility of waking up to find your face replaced by that of either Nicolas Cage or John Travolta. This, I feel, is infinitely more pressing than the over-examined issue of how, metaphysically speaking, Vishnu becomes Krishna, or for that matter, a fish.

The main reason we were stuck in Port Blair so long, aside from being unable to buy a boat ticket on a Sunday, was the petty spitefulness of Captain Tool, master of the merchant vessel MV Dering. It takes a special type of pathological misanthropy to seriously contemplate the sort of douchebaggery committed by this scuttle-fucking mariner. When we arrived at the jetty at the ripe hour of 6a.m., in the rain of course, Captain Whalesplooge had apparently decided that in order to facilitate the most obnoxiously punctual departure in Indian seafaring history, he would withdraw the gangway long before leaving and not allow last-minute passengers to board. Girlface, a couple locals, and I all looked on in puppy-eyed dismay and tiger-eyed outrage as this stupid-hatted, waveriding chucklefuck refused to allow the gangway to be put back in place, which would have required nothing more than having the flunky with the forklift move the bridge two feet to the right and lower one end. As we stood there gaping, too loaded with baggage to shake our fists, our squid-buggering nemesis pulled a fresh prawn out of his crotch, bit its head off, and sailed into the mist. I will not budge on the details of this story.

When we finally did get on a boat to Little Andaman, the MV Rani Changa  the next day, we quickly realized why the ticket for the seven-hour journey over open seas cost $0.55. It seems the Little Andaman route is served by the more "nobly oxidized" members of the shipping directorate's ferry fleet. The seats within were so awful I joined most of the other passengers in lying on the bare, somewhat crusty steel floor of the passenger hall, singing little songs in my head about not going to the bathroom until the ship was stable enough  to not shit sideways. After many hours of this, and one very strange dream wherein my college buddies and I rented a zany funhouse to live in, only to discover that it mysteriously rocked day and night ("Oh my GOD, it feels like a ship at sea!" I thought within my dream), we finally landed at the jetty of Hut Bay, the small strip of civilization on Little Andaman.

Little Andaman is the most isolated of the settled islands in the group, lying hundreds of kilometers from the other Andamans, and still almost entirely consisting of  a dense jungle which is home to the remnants othe reclusive Onge tribe. I never saw any Onge myself, but I can tell you that the Indian settlers of the island hail from all over South India, as evidenced by the great diversity of inscrutable alphabets found on their temples. Little Andaman was also one of the places that got utterly pounded by the 2004 tsunami. Behind the beach there are a few hundred yards of land now overgrown with weeds but filled with ruined concrete boardwalks, houseless foundations, and piles of toppled temple pillars. Behind those lie the new residences, a strip of shabby tin shacks. Further behind those lie the new neighborhoods where people are building proper homes. One notices that this quarter sits upon the closest hillside.

There aren't many tourists on Little Andaman ( a peek in the police register revealed I was the second in the month of August), but when there are, it is inevitable you run into each other because there are about three guesthouses and two eateries not crawling with vermin, and these are connected by the road... the road. Yup, Little Andaman has precisely one vehicular thoroughfare.

Anyways, after discovering all these titillating facts, Girlface and I went for a lengthy walk along the beach. Once you get past a kilometer or so of fishermen's rubbish and a prodigious amount of empty liquor bottles, the beach becomes a pristine arc of shining sand between the jungles, the palms, and the glistening blue sea. On the far end of the beach, where there is no village and no path nearby, the only things interrupting the silence are the lapping of waves on the shore, the calls of birds, occasional wandering cows, and one or two villagers scrounging for dry palm leaves. I got immediately to the business of something I haven't done for a very long time... lie my lazy ass on a sunny beach. It was magnificent. Girlface thought so too, as she demonstrated by dumping clumps of wet sand in my hair. For someone who lives in a state pretty much defined by its sandy composition, she found that substance surprisingly novel. It then occurred to me (because she told me) that she had never properly enjoyed a beach before. Indeed, the only time she had ever been to the ocean, not counting our monsoon-soaked adventures earlier in the week, was to Chowpatty Beach, a teeming wad of sand in the heart of Mumbai, the City That Never Stops Testing New Ringtones. Anyways, she loved the beach as well. And people say I don't do anything for the Indian people.

We awoke the next morning to the bizarre and harrowing screams of some of the islands endemic avian life. I swear, I haven't been driven from bed so rapidly by a cacophonous gaggle of randy birds in the morning since I lived by the Amsterdam zoo. We then went on another walk, this time out into the jungle to visit the island's much-trumpeted waterfall. I'll spare you an account of the jungle itself -imagine I said the word "lush" a lot- and go straight to the waterfall, which was utterly fantastic. In a green... lush.... opening in the forest, the waters of the local stream fall about 15 meters off a small cliff face into an idyllic shady pool. The only downside is the rumor of crocodiles about. I hate crocodiles. There are a great many deadly animals in this world, and the odds of being slain by them are generally slim, but crocodiles are just fucking evil. One second you're there, a second later you're gone in a flash, and twenty seconds later your ass is dead. The way I see it, crocodiles have been around for millions upon millions of years. They've had their day in the sun, and as a sort of Evolutionary Achievement Award, we should treat them now to an all-expenses paid dinner and afterparty at the Extinction Lounge. Fortunately, no crocodiles were about ( we were told the area right by the waterfall should be safe since crocs don't like it for some unspecified reason, which leaves me suspicious) and I waded out under one of the falls for one of the finest showers of my life.

One day, however, one must leave Little Andaman as one leaves all places, and in our case we were fated to sail overnight on a miserable, grungy shitcan... the vile MV Dering. How we were allowed to board I don't know. An oversight of its nefarious captain perhaps? I have never encountered such repeated nautical discomfiture at the hands of a single being. I mean, Poseidon is powerful and all, but unlike the master of the MV Dering, you have to actually blind his children before he stoops to using his power to be a dick about it. Seriously, to hell with boats. When this is all over I'm breaking into an antique shop in the night and drowning all their bottled ships in vodka. My Popov funnel shall feel the heat of battle once more! To arms!