by Benyamin
But I didn’t lose hope. I decided to meet Jesintha again. I was sure that through her, I’d be able to find at least one more person. For the next two days, in the hope of meeting her, I went and waited for long hours at the coffee shop in Port Louis. Either she didn’t come on those days or I had missed her. I cursed myself for not asking for her mobile number when I met her last. However, I caught her on the third day, sitting under a tree. She ran towards me, saying, ‘Hi!’ She was with a friend. We ordered coffee, and while we were waiting for it, I casually asked her about our classmates. No idea where they are, she gestured. I shared my curiosity with her. Where will we go to find them—she was puzzled.
We can easily trace someone from a faraway village in a large country, she said, but to find even a single known person in the narrow streets of a town is next to impossible. In a village, every person is ‘marked’. You could go to a particular location to find a particular person. Mostly, from birth to death, their location stays the same. But in a city, anyone can be anywhere. People keep moving all the time. Especially in places where there are temporary migrants and tenants. They come, they go. The whole demographic could change within a year. Go to any church. The ones whom you saw last year won’t be the ones whom you’ll see the next year. Go to any street. The ones who were there last year may not be there the next. Diego, too, has this dynamic character. It will be difficult to find our classmates and arrange a reunion.
I had to accept her hypothesis, sadly.
It was then that an incident happened, about four tables away from us. There was a gunshot. A person shuddered and fell to the ground before my eyes. People who were talking to him till then ran off in random directions. I saw one of them quite clearly. A couple of workers chased them, but none were caught.
Jesintha and I were among the crowd that flocked around the wounded guy. I tried to catch a glimpse of him. He was lying under the table. Some people pulled him up from there. He’d been shot in his chest. There was blood splattered all over his face. The crowd waited for the ambulance to come. Some started leaving the place.
‘They shot a person in the open, in a public place, and fled. No one could catch them despite so many of us being here,’ I said morosely. ‘The Public Security will catch them,’ Jesintha said briskly. By then, the ambulance-boat had reached and he was shifted to it. It was a speedboat. It sailed away within minutes.
In a short while, the place returned to normal, as if nothing had happened. Jesintha returned to her seat and took up her coffee. I went and sat next to her. I no longer felt like drinking coffee. My mind was awash with the terrible incident. To witness someone falling to a bullet! But more than that, what baffled me was how quickly the crowd had overcome the incident. I would have been placid if it had happened in Mumbai or Karachi or Iraq. They were used to it. But here in Diego? To my knowledge, it was the first incident of its kind. Someone getting shot in a street! Had our people become so insensitive as not to get affected by that?
The Public Security officers arrived at the spot and started their investigation. They began by asking the people in the cafe to describe the incident. All of them shied away from it. When I was about to get up, Jesintha stopped me, pulling my hand. ‘You don’t go there and get involved. Let the Public Security do their job. We have not seen the incident. We have come here just now.’
‘But, Jesintha, when such an incident occurs in our island, isn’t it our duty to help the Public Security team? Shouldn’t we give them the information they need?’
She made a face and then smiled. ‘Yeah, right . . . our island . . . there is still a huge contest about who owns this land. Our island! Whatever. Anyhow, more than knowing who the killers are, you’ll be stunned to know who the victim is.’
She got up, her bag on her shoulder. ‘In your search for your classmates, the number has been reduced by one. The person who got shot was Senthil from our class.’ She said it nonchalantly and walked away with her friend.
The Face of Death
SENTHIL? oh my god! And then Jesintha walked away so casually? In our class, Senthil, Jesintha and Daniel D’Silva were the Sri Lankans. Senthil and Jesintha were good friends. They used to come to the school and leave together. Both of them lived in Seleucia’s Tamil colony, Cherar Peruntheruvu. Now, it was as if she didn’t even care a bit for him; she had stood among the multitudes as an onlooker—and refrained from being even an eyewitness before the Public Security. He was among the smartest in our class. Though we didn’t have any career prediction for him, nobody had thought he would end up being shot dead in the streets.
Though Jesintha was cavalier about what had occurred, I couldn’t set it aside without knowing what had happened to Senthil. I left straight for City Hospital. All I could think about during the boat journey was Jesintha, not Senthil. Who would have thought she’d react like that?
How did she know so quickly that it was Senthil who got shot? How long had I stared at that face, hoping for a hint of life? I never realized it was him. And was she aware all along that Senthil was there? Then why didn’t she tell me? I was more struck by Jesintha’s reactions as an onlooker than by the mystery behind the gunning down of Senthil. If that was Jesintha’s normal response to such an incident, then it is terrible how unfeeling the times have made us. If that wasn’t her normal response . . . if she had some ulterior motive . . . was she . . . involved in the murder?
I had to sweat a lot at City Hospital to get any information about him. I finally got to know that he was in the ICU. It was easy to figure out that it was just a medical formality. A medical hypocrisy—to show that all attempts had been made to save him, when, in reality, he had dropped dead long back! As I’d supposed, he was shifted to the mortuary without much delay. When they brought the body out, I lifted the sheet and looked at the face another time. Though Jesintha had said it was Senthil, till that moment I had my doubts. But now I was certain. Despite the coagulated blood, I could easily identify the Class V face! When the corpse was brought out, there were two Public Security officials accompanying it. As the only person who went there looking for Senthil, I was stopped and questioned thoroughly. They were rude to me. Not many in the town had heard the news. Hence, they wanted to know how I came to know about it. I tried bluffing, saying a friend had told me, but they didn’t let me get away with that. Jesintha’s warning wouldn’t let me admit that I had indeed witnessed the incident. I couldn’t explain my behaviour. But while standing before the Public Security officers, I felt it was the right thing to do.
They asked a lot of questions such as how I knew him, what my relationship was with him, when I had met him last, etc. Finally, only when I told them my address did they loosen up. At least, some of them still remembered the influence the Andrapper family had in Diego Garcia. Even then, they let me go from the hospital only after warning me that I would be called if they needed me.
While I was walking down the hospital corridor, I ran into a friend from my Thiruvananthapuram days. Johnny. We used to go to the mainland together. And also return together, after the vacations. That was the connection. He had also studied in a college in Thiruvananthapuram.
Honestly, he had been nowhere in my memory till then. I had often reminisced about my life in Thiruvananthapuram, those journeys and those days. But not even once had his face sprung up in my mind. It’s surprising. I didn’t spare a thought for a person whom I had known for three years. He and all the things related to him had disappeared from my mind. Many such faces and incidents have been lost to us for eternity, haven’t they? Some of those faces would have been of our dearest ones, those whom we have respected the most; some of the experiences we forgot had probably affected us deeply. How does the mind erase such things?
With these thoughts in mind, I deliberated on my life for a long time. I tried to walk through each and every moment in the past. I didn’t succeed much, but I recollected a train journey from my childhood. In that crowded compartment, I had travelled squatting on the floor. Thou
gh there are no trains in Diego, I was sure that it was not a dream. I asked Momma about that journey. When we would drop anchor in Kanyakumari, we used to catch a train to a relative’s house in Alappuzha, but never in anything but first class, Momma asserted. She couldn’t even imagine a journey sitting on the floor. I asked everyone at home about such a trip. If I had gone on a journey at that age, it couldn’t have been alone. Some elder would have accompanied me. But no one knew of any such journey. So, when or to where did I make such a trip? All I could manage to gather was that it was either a dream or a journey made in my previous life.
Anyway, I could recognize Johnny as soon as I saw him. Not just that, I even managed to retrieve the memories of those days.
‘I’m with the hospital administration,’ Johnny said. ‘Why are you here?’
I told him.
He took me to his office. Served me coffee. Inquired about my house and job and marriage. I quipped that the house was where it always was, and that nothing had happened with job and marriage.
‘Why would someone like you who sits on cash need a job?’ Johnny was half serious, half joking. There was a tint of jealousy in his question. A common envy that one who has to work for a living feels for another who doesn’t. When I was about to leave, he held my hands. ‘Nonetheless, we have travelled together for ages. Please tell your family to arrange a promotion for me. You guys have good contacts. You can get it done.’
Not knowing what to say, for a minute I stood bewildered. Then I said OK, nodding my head.
Geography
DIEGO GARCIA is a land of lagoons. Located 1600 kilometres away from the Indian subcontinent, which we islanders refer to as the mainland, at 7°19’S latitude and 72°25’E longitude, Diego Garcia is the largest land mass in the Chagos Archipelago that also include Eagle, Three Brothers, Egmont, Nelsons, Salomon and Danger. Our neighbours are Tanzania, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Zanzibar, Maldives and Sri Lanka. The islands of Pentasia, Seleucia and Venecia, often called the Three Sisters, constitute our hub. Then there are the small islets, more than forty of them, including Sarthe, Cordoba, Parana, Sao Paulo, Bahia, Mahala, Bourdon, Messia and Messina. Our prosperity lies in the lagoons that blanket the island. The dry land rim, with a width of 2.4 kilometres, separates the fresh water from the sea. Lagoons divide our cities. Lagoons are our pathways. Our lives are moored to the lagoons. Houses that extend into the lagoons; front yards that walk up to the lagoons; shops that open up to the lagoons; churches with steps leading up from the lagoons; temples that face the lagoons; mosques that summon to prayer beside the lagoons; schools . . . offices . . . hotels . . . bars . . .
Pentasia on the western-most side is the capital of Diego Garcia. The Senate Hall and other main government offices are in Pentasia. It is twenty-five kilometres long and up to three kilometres wide. Serpentine, it lies in the Indian Ocean. The Port Louis harbour is at its western end. The other two islands are smaller. The eastern island of Venecia has the St. Raphael International Airport. Seleucia in the middle is the main residential area.
In Diego, cars can be found only in Pentasia. That too, very few, and mostly used for official purposes. Other motor vehicles are rare. Some use cycles, some bikes. Canoes and boats are our primary mode of transport. There’ll hardly be a house without them. My house has six canoes, four small boats and three speedboats. A long time ago, it seems the family had 400 canoes, sixty boats and four vessels. All that grandeur disappeared before I was born. On 13 May 1973, to be precise.
It was on that day that the French transferred Diego’s administration to the British. Before that, the Andrapper family were the real lagoon moguls of Diego.
According to recorded history, most of the people now in Diego Garcia are migrants or their descendants. Most of the migration to Diego took place from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh from the mainland, and Sri Lanka, Mali, Mozambique and Zanzibar.
The world-famous explorer Vasco da Gama, who set off from the West in search of black gold, first landed on the shores of Diego Garcia, mistaking it for Malabar. ‘Here we have reached, friends . . . the land we’ve been searching for. That shore . . .’ exclaimed da Gama as he jumped into the waters and ran to the shore. But he was to be disappointed soon. In his log entry, he described Diego Garcia as deserted: a wasteland of lagoons and swampy bayous, a place that gave us hope of our destination and which killed our joy.
We have been here for ages, we are the sons of the soil, the land belongs to us; it was our ancestors who battled da Gama with stones and slings to stop him from setting his foot here, and it is because of that shame and anger he wrote that there were no inhabitants: These are the claims of the Dhivehi-speaking Chagossian tribes that echo from the mikes during every election campaign. On hearing that, my Valyapapan has a way of emerging from the top floor and walking down, dragging his feet. What follows is a string of abuses, facing the lake. ‘Sons of bitches! All your fathers had been entrapped and brought from the African wilds by my forefathers. You may not know, but I know . . . there were some langurs too. When taken off the boat, your fathers and langurs all looked alike. That was their condition. Now your women are on a breeding spree. For numbers to show strength in elections! Breed! Breed a lot. Who cares. But remember one thing. We made you human beings . . . my great-grandfathers . . . Get lost! Your land indeed! I’ll take anything, but never say this land is yours . . .’
Then a long sigh would be addressed to us onlookers. Savages, langurs and wild peacocks. These three were brought here by our forefathers. Savages slaved in coconut plantations. Langurs made for a good tonic. Acrobatics followed peacock oil massages. And liquor with meat from Africa. Hah! Those were the days.
Valyapapan would then return to the top floor. It’s been more than three decades since he took to staying behind closed doors. He comes out only on such occasions—to curse at someone.
I don’t know how much truth there is in his words. Chagossians, the African natives, are relatively poor and a minority in Diego. It was poverty, I thought, that was the reason behind their increasing number of children. That there could be politics attached to it, I came to know later. Well, whatever the case of the Chagossians, Valyapapan could be right about the secret behind the many peacocks and langurs in the island, which do not have many wild animals otherwise: migration.
If you come to Garcia someday, it is quite a feast for the eyes. Scores of peacocks dancing in full plumage at the lakeside. Peacocks combing the palm groves like hens. Peacocks hopping on the verandas of every house. Langurs running across the streets of Pentasia. Langurs peeling off coconut husk for a meal. Langurs swimming through the lakes. Diego’s present population is five lakhs: 28 per cent Hindus, 45 per cent Roman Catholics, 8 per cent Muslims, 12 per cent Buddhists, very few Jews, the rest Protestants, Jains and African tribes. In 1981, Diego’s Senate, through an order, banned all kinds of immigration. Instead, it installed a visa system that every job-seeker from abroad has to renew once in three years.
There are records that say the first inhabitants of Diego Garcia were my forefather Hormees Avira Andrapper and family. It was the year 1713.
The King of Dreams
WHILE RETURNING HOME, I thought about Johnny’s comment about me sitting on cash. Did the people in Diego still have such a misconception about the Andrapper family? Must be. How our lives are built on the illusions of others.
It was as part of a deal with the French East India Company that Hormees Avira Andrapper migrated to Diego in the early eighteenth century. Possessed of such an advantage, my family has stayed here in all prosperity since then. There had been difficulties in the beginning, of inhabiting a deserted island. But with the help of the mighty French East India Company, who could provide enough slaves, cash and other amenities, it wouldn’t have been that tough.
They cultivated palm trees not only in the barren lands of Diego, but also in those of the nearby islands of Eagle, Three Brothers and Danger. Sugarcane was grown and swamps were cleared for p
addy. They grew cotton, banana, yam, tuber, tapioca, tobacco and a multitude of vegetables. Within just two centuries, they raised Diego to a rich and prosperous nation. Now when you look at the streets and buildings and offices of Pentasia and Seleucia, it doesn’t seem as though the changes took place within such a short span of time. It wouldn’t be a surprise if some tourist wrote that this city was as old as Venice.
The French ruled Diego for two centuries. News of the freedom struggle taking place in the mainland reached us too, but did not influence us enough to make us win our freedom. The French had lost all their prowess on the waters, and the realization that they couldn’t gain much by ruling Diego had prompted them to retreat.
My family had believed till the last minute that as a reward for loyally serving them for two centuries, the French would confer the power to rule over Diego Garcia to the Andrapper family. That they would be made the kings of the land. It wasn’t just the Andrapper family—the whole island expected it.
My family had even started preparing for it soon after the rumours of a French exit started doing the rounds. There were minor fights over who should be the king, but finally, it was decided that it would be Valyapapan. So, when the shocking news came about Diego coming under British rule, the person who was affected the most was my Valyapapan, who had kept his crown ready. He was thirty-two then. He had just returned after higher studies in Paris. A perfect candidate in every way. But that dream never materialized. And he withdrew to the upper storey. Since then, Valyapapan has never come down, other than a few times to shout at someone. To understand the pain of losing a country, you just need to know one thing about Valyapapan: he still strictly follows the diet of Portugal’s last emperor, Manual II. ‘Yes, meal by meal, course by course, down to the last crumb I do follow the typical daily menu of the great Manual II. Because we two are of the same stature,’ Valyapapan says once in a while, but who knows if that made him feel good or was causing him to fall apart?