Port Blair: Away from the 'mainland'

A visit to the idyllic town of Port Blair can still invoke painful memoriesof the British Raj

Far away from everywhere and surrounded by the sea on all sides, it was aptly known as Kala Paani, or the water of death during the British Raj. Even today, Port Blair wears the slightly sad air of a penal colony, and the Cellular Jail seems to echo silently with the voices of the inmates, freedom fighters and patriots, all of who were once incarcerated here. As I wander through the corridors, laid out like the spokes of a wheel, I wonder how prisoners lived here for years on end, hardly ever speaking to a friendly soul and with few hopes of leaving as free men. A black gibbet stands in the courtyard, a dark reminder of a time when every hanging was seen by every inmate.The walls of some cells have words carved on them. Perhaps they're here to remind us that political dissidence can never be completely repressed - some of it remains defiantly etched long after the regime has changed.

It's not the best of legacies for this otherwise idyllic town. As I walk around the city over the next few days, I realise that Port Blair's palm-fringed beaches, crystal clear waters, mangroves and rolling hills make it easy to forget its past, but the past is always lurking around the corner. The Cellular Jail is not the only reminder; the now-defunct saw mills, adjoining islands and even the local populace paint a picture of a place to which few belong. In a rickshaw headed to the crowded bazaar of Port Blair, I chat with the driver, whose great grandfather arrived here from Burma (now Myanmar), never to return to his homeland. I ask him what locals think about the Jail. Are there any local myths and tales about it? "All we know is that before Independence, it housed prisoners from the mainland," he says. His use of the word "mainland" strikes me as interesting. Did people like him not feel like they were a part of India? "You can say we're outsiders who have settled in India," he says thoughtfully. "My father still dreams of returning some day to a home he's never seen in Myanmar!"

Ross Island where the British officers administering the jail made their home

It comes as no surprise that although the Andaman Islands abound in fresh coconut, banana, spices, rice and seafood, they don't have much of a local cuisine. Given that agriculture is possible on barely six per cent of the land in the state - much of it is reserved and the soil is not nutritionally rich for large scale cultivation anyway - the bulk of food in the Andamans comes from the "mainland". The Bangla, Tamil and Burmese who have settled in Port Blair do not seem to have exchanged recipes, or adapted their eating habits to what is available locally. Thankfully, restaurants are now capitalising on the fresh seafood available the year round. As we dig into a delicious coconut-based fresh prawn curry at Sinclair's Bay Island, one of the oldest luxury hotels here, it seems as if the new "local" is evolving in front of our eyes.

Names and identities are curious things, I muse, as I look at the beautiful azure sea that an entire generation has known and feared as Black Water. I am off to Ross Island, which the British officers administering the Jail made their home, with a kilometre of sea conveniently separating them from the local populace. When they took it over, it was uninhabited. After 1947, when the British left the Andamans, the island became uninhabited once again, and nature took over. Yet, the colonial mentality remained. After the British left the Andaman Islands, Indian "mainlanders" became the colonisers. The slow demise of its original aboriginal tribes due to disease, violence and loss of territory, which the British began, was duly continued - first by the timber industry and now by tourism. As I snorkel near the beach at Jolly Buoy Island, my sense of wonder at the stunning array of coral reefs around is balanced by the guilty knowledge of all that's been lost.

The lighthouse on North Bay Island in Andaman

Palm trees sway in the balmy breeze as the sun rises. We're at the docks, waiting to board a ferry to Havelock Island. "There are so many unexplored islands in the Andamans," says a tourist standing next to me. "The government should open up tourism there too." I give a silent thanks that there are still some uncolonised places left on this planet, and as the ferry sets sail, watch Port Blair as it recedes into the horizon.