The Sunday Haul

...and Andaman Memories

For three months in a year, physically I am at one place and mentally I am at a totally different place. This has been the case since the past three years after I returned from the Andamans after a three month stay in 2006. All through May, June and July my mind is in the Andamans revisiting all those beautiful places I had visited alone. It is something I am unable to get out of my mind however much I try though I don’t try much. My experience was too beautiful to forget. To help me remember more I try to lay my hands on as much stuff about the Andamans as I can find. This Sunday, at Abids I found a nice book about the Andamans though it wasn’t the one I was searching for since the first time I laid my eyes on it. I am talking about Madhusree Mukherjee’s ‘The Land of the Naked People’ that a friend had. I had barely started to read it when he packed up and left. I’m still looking for the book that I hope to find some day in a second hand bookstore if not at Abids

But the book I found this Sunday at Abids was ‘The Andaman Story’ by N Iqbal Singh. It is a hardcover book published in the year 1978. Iqbal Singh was with All India Radio and posted in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands during the seventies. Like all books about the Andamans Iqbal Singh’s book too attempts to give us a comprehensive history of the Islands right from the time of Ptolemy etc., to the time the book was being written, stuff about the Andamanese and other tribes who inhabit the islands. The time when the British occupied the islands of course grabs most of the attention because it was a significant period in the history of the Islands. It is an interesting book that I’m glad to have found.

Almost all the books on the Andamans I have come across (and they are only a handful) are about the history and such stuff which is covered ad nauseum by everyone. What I would like to read are stories about the people who have settled there, like the Bangladeshi refugees and others I met during my forays into the interiors of the islands. Maybe there are such books written in Bengali which unfortunately I cannot read.

One book I regret not picking up at Abids was Bruce Chatwin’s ‘What am I Doing Here’ that I saw at Abids. I already have the book but the one I saw was a hardcover copy though with the jacket missing. I guess I might buy it if I see it next Sunday. There was a new copy of a book by Ernest Hemingway but I did not buy it. Maybe I should have bought it. Surprisingly I saw another book on the Andamans but this was by NBT and a very slim book that I did not find interesting. I forgot the author’s name too. But I think anyone who has stayed for more than two weeks would feel like writing a book on the Andamans. If I had stayed a day more than the three months I spent there I too would have come out with a tome.