Dear home: Letters from an NRB
A Bihari in Male refuses to be ‘a paranoid Tourist’
By Dev Nath Pathak
In the dead of night when I disembarked the flight number UL…(let it be)… of Srilankan airlines, distraught at the unsettling services on board by the crew members (a case with most of the airline services in South Asia, especially in India), I was welcomed by a gust of musty wind. The airport, as clumsy as Patna airport, with a due humility of the localized ambience, soothed me further. With a bit of difficulty in convincing the customs officer that there is something called SAARC, which gave me visa, which legally enables me to travel to any of the eight SAARC countries, and that I was not carrying any eatables in my apparently bulky suitcase and that the suitcase is evidently overstuffed due to the examination material for the entrance exam of South Asian University to be conducted in Male on May 27 2012, (huff!) I got through the customs.
At the exit, Ali was waiting for me with a placard flashing my name followed by South Asian University in bold. Ali was a man with common congenial face we get to see in Kerala or in Maithili speaking region of Bihar. Well, he is a son of the soil, proper Maldivian, born and brought up in Male. And as a professionally efficient representative of the Mookai hotel, he ushered me to a ferry parked at the jetty.
As the ferry swirled in the sea, bidding a good night to the airport island, and headed toward Male, the blue sea water began to dance in jubilation of the night and sent out tides toward the near as well as distant island dotted with flickering lights of inhabitation. Maldives- the islands of Male- never sleep even when no inhabitant is awake to witness the magic of nights.
However, the price to see the magic is literally as well as figuratively heavier for a stranger in the city of Male. It is the price of freewheeling exploration of the place and people. Everybody concerned about you, as a host, would hold a simple message out- don’t venture out at night, the local youth are unpredictable!
Besides, the language difference due to the primary usage of the local language Dhivehi, is an addition to the fear. A dominant sense of differences could be too detrimental to the freedom of mind to let the magic of local surface on the cognitive landscape of the visitors. It is accelerated by the tourism industry and their agencies. The whole industry, with its services for a visitors’ convenience, could render the place into an inaccessible exotica to be accessed only by paying dollars and freedom of mind. Hence, majority of the tourists, especially from the western hemisphere, are anchored to the ‘resort islands’ straight away from the airport island. Resort islands are exclusively controlled by the resort owners, who have got the ownership of whole island on lease by paying a wholesome price to the government of Maldives. On such islands, in those swanky resorts, there is a veritable republic of safe consumption. Rich and mighty languish over there in the prison of secure sensation, so to say. On the contrary, a Bihari like me, or many Bangladeshi like those trolley-shop men, or many immigrants who work here in Male, or even many of the indigenous people of Maldives, can not manage to and perhaps like to be seductively imprisoned.
So after finishing with the official-formal meetings with the local officials at the Department of Higher Education, in the ministry of Education of the republic of Maldives, I requested Hamid Abubukuru, the coordinator between South Asian University and Ministry of Education (Maldives), to give me a ride on his feminine scooter. By the way, Male streets are evidently abuzz with (two-wheeler) motorbikes and very few cars (largely belonging to taxi services). And the scooters, which are instantly labeled as feminine due to the look of lightness in India, are popular with both male and females in Male. The ride on Hamid’s bike was my first attempt at wriggling out of the tourist mode. We had a fleeting glance at the whole of Male in 40 minutes. The main circular road around the island, the bricked narrow lanes, the inland trees of a Maldivian hibiscus, and many more of the green foliage of the kind I am yet to figure out, the riders with their dark goggles and curly waving hair, the hot afternoon sun and humid air, the frequent patches of cool shadows every now and then, the small pockets of open space with rustic sitting arrangements amidst numerous hotels and cafes, Male began to invite me.
Then I spotted the trolley-shops by the roadside on the circular road around the island, mostly by the side of the jetty. Hamid told me the Bangladeshi immigrants mostly run them. On my request, Hamid stopped his scooter at one of such trolley-shop. The tall man, with stubbled oval face and toothy smile, asked me ‘something’ in Dhivehi. I asked him in Bangla, “Aaapni ki Banglabaashi“. He sprang with wide eye- haain! kichaahi? I said ‘Paan(betel leaf)’. He made paan in Dravidian style, on a big thick leaf, and sweet spices spread across. I asked for some tobacco in it, which Hamid denied in his paan. It was a tobacco from north India with a label naming it ‘Ganesh zarda’, while Hamid had in his paan the masala with a label saying ‘Heera-Panna’ made in Kanpur. On my request, my paan was properly folded. The catch however was the areca nut. It didn’t taste familiar to me at all. I asked as to where does this nut come from and he said ‘Pakistan’.
I asked Hamid that Maldives (the islands of Male) perhaps houses whole of South Asia. Immigrants from almost all over South Asia working here their means out through the goods of every day life imported from all over the world, are set to embrace a reluctant Bihari who refuses to be just a tourist. Thus on my evening walk toward the main harbor I was not surprised to hear the song played on one of the ferries, muffled with the noise of humans and sea- Maine pyaar tumhi se kiya hai, maine dil bhi tumhi ko diya hai, ab chahe jo ho jaaye, duniya se ab naa daru, tumhi se main pyaar karu.
A song from one of the bad films in 1999 Phool aurKante, meant- I have loved you and only you, I have ceded my heart to you, why do I then fear the world, as I keep loving you forever…
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Dev Pathak teaches Sociology at South Asian University, New Delhi, is among our panel of columnists. He writes his column ‘Dear home: letters from an NRB’ exclusively for bihardays on Saturdays.
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