Chrissy called. This time she has her boyfriend with her. They want to meet me for beer and dinner at Blue and Beyond, the rooftop open-air restaurant on Lindsay Street, below which nighttime Kolkata winks, twinkles and lies invitingly spread.We meet. She is looking as lovely as ever, the evening breeze gathered in her hair. The same old warm hug, the familiar smell of sunscreen lotion.Samid. Her boyfriend, a diving instructor and underwater photographer at the islands. Beer and small talk first. For the rest of the evening, we talk only of Havelock.He has found the girl. Havelock, really, is what I’m left with. Nearly a year back, she had made me jump into the middle of the sea. True. For someone with just a notion of swimming and who could be arrested for attempted suicide, I had shed my fear and clothes to dive in right after her. On her insistence of course, “Come on, it’s great, come”. The snorkeling gear in place, the lifejacket tightly knotted around me, and with those duck paddles for nuisance value, I had nervously eased myself off the boat and into the wide, open sea. Wooosh — our guides must have drowned laughing. My legs stiff, outstretched and desperate, they touched no land. So I floated. Head down, immersed below the surface of the sea, I saw. The heavy sound of breathing inside the mask the only hint of my own existence — around me was a parallel universe. Schools of fish, richly or dully coloured, small or big, squirming or elegant, played around me and around blocks of corals lying far below.A light rain was beating on my bare back, specks of water leaked below the sea's surface, the thin line that separated our world from theirs. I lost touch with time. How long was it, till I saw her shapely legs float by, as gracefully as a creature of the water? How many hours till she said, “Beautiful, isn't it?” Beautiful, it was.I had seen her for the first time at a beach unlike any other I had seen. The evening at Radhanagar beach seemed straight out of a mythical moment — a long hard beach, the white sand catching the dying rays of the sun, the water less transparent now in the fading light, clouds painting orange streaks tantalizingly across the sky, isolation. Except her, with her Nikon D70, hastily gathering the wafer-thin sarong around her on seeing another human approaching, busy, otherwise, collecting vignettes in the Nikon's memory card. We barely nodded an unspoken agreement to not meddle with the silence.The feeling of being an alien I had carried over to the Havelock island from Port Blair. On board the MV Hutbay, as its hull left the azure sea frothing and exposed its turquoise innards, the world seemed divided decisively between land and water. Nothing upset the horizon; an equal understanding between water and sky. We were insignificant blots on the plan. At Café Del Mar, I felt at home. There she was, shouting a warm welcome, making room next to her. We brought our thoughts to the table. Everybody else left, we became friends.Now, Samid. A pleasant man, eager also to be the world's best underwater photographer. Images flash past me — the dense, heartening greenery of the island, the carefree rides on the hired bike and through the only road that connects the jetty with Radhanagar beach, the old Bengali man who came as one of the many refugees of the Bangladesh War and never left the island, Elephanta beach, the impenetrable calm. Chrissy.Now with Samid. Well, I have Havelock and I have no complaints.P.S: Last heard, Havelock was coping with the mad rush of tourists, many of whom had to pitch tents on the lonely beaches after being refused by overburdened hotels. Where would we have met in this melee?
