Today is my one year aniversary of being in the islands...Came to Port Blair on february 17th exactly a year ago.. And for some reason whatever work i might be doing, i'd like to be doing it here. .. When i went home for a few months i missed things i never thought about when i was in Port Blair. Its a sleepy, small town feeling that you get while walking down the main bazar as the gongs of the ghantaghar waft into your ears through the general murmur and sounds of the market place. Tanas, my favourite T shirt shop, where almost everyday i'd stop and look if they had something new on offer. The Tirupur Garments mela where you'd get cheap international brands..all export rejects i guess, but great stuff.. These were the places we depended on when sweaty clothes had to be changed twice a day and there was no water to wash them.. just buy new clothes! Of course there was dhobi uncle who curiously enough never ran out of water to mentain the flourishing laundry service.. last i heard he'd gone to mainland to get more boys.. i always did suspect him of human trafficking!
The "Mainland" occupies a near mystical space in teh island imagination. Going to the mainland and coming from the mainland, all terribly exciting events. Food, clothes, ration, even people all come here from the mainland.. Never thought i'd get used to the idea of "mainland" and find a certain reassurance in the fact that mainland would always be far away and never come in contact with the islands apart from sending all those wonderfully exciting things that I would keep buying at rahmat and the hallmark store.
I came here from the mainland a year ago, and fell so in love with the beaches, the sights, the sounds and most importantly the people. I fell in love with the fact that i'd bump into someone or the other i know everytime i walk through the bazar. Nod to the shopkeepers wher i've become a regular and smile at random tourists who'd assume i'm also a random tourist just like them . I fell in love with how the waiter at Punjabi Dhaba would put chana masala, dahi and roti's on the table even before i'd order them because that was obviously what i was going to eat. In love with how walking home and picking up juice on the way from Milan was an everyday routine that became so familiar that i'd just go open their fridge and help myself.
The blog space is hardly enough to describe all that has happened over the past year and i'm not even going to try. Just that on my Island Aniversary all of it came rushing back, fresh into my mind. People who havn't been here at all wouldn;t know the feeling of completing a year here. But all my friends who've been here and done this can read this and feel so terribly terribly nostalgic about their own island aniversaries.
Smitha, Junuka, Divya, Liz and most of all Kranti.. its lonely here without you guys.. So quit feeling nostalgic and bring your asses right back!!
The "Mainland" occupies a near mystical space in teh island imagination. Going to the mainland and coming from the mainland, all terribly exciting events. Food, clothes, ration, even people all come here from the mainland.. Never thought i'd get used to the idea of "mainland" and find a certain reassurance in the fact that mainland would always be far away and never come in contact with the islands apart from sending all those wonderfully exciting things that I would keep buying at rahmat and the hallmark store.
I came here from the mainland a year ago, and fell so in love with the beaches, the sights, the sounds and most importantly the people. I fell in love with the fact that i'd bump into someone or the other i know everytime i walk through the bazar. Nod to the shopkeepers wher i've become a regular and smile at random tourists who'd assume i'm also a random tourist just like them . I fell in love with how the waiter at Punjabi Dhaba would put chana masala, dahi and roti's on the table even before i'd order them because that was obviously what i was going to eat. In love with how walking home and picking up juice on the way from Milan was an everyday routine that became so familiar that i'd just go open their fridge and help myself.
The blog space is hardly enough to describe all that has happened over the past year and i'm not even going to try. Just that on my Island Aniversary all of it came rushing back, fresh into my mind. People who havn't been here at all wouldn;t know the feeling of completing a year here. But all my friends who've been here and done this can read this and feel so terribly terribly nostalgic about their own island aniversaries.
Smitha, Junuka, Divya, Liz and most of all Kranti.. its lonely here without you guys.. So quit feeling nostalgic and bring your asses right back!!
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