October 24, 2026
The trip to the Andamans that I just returned from yesterday cleaned my mind and soul, even if I was physically wet most of the time. The body will get soiled and dirty again in an urban city like Hyderabad, but some learnings I had and a myth squashed will remain permanent.
Visiting Port Blair, the capital city of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, has been one of my lifelong wishes. Not like anybody else, though—I was born there. Even if I am not a local there, my astrological significance doesn't diminish, and how my entire life has unfolded owes something to that place.
My elder one, Sreemukh, argued yesterday that he couldn't believe why I wouldn't have done this trip much earlier if it was really so important to me. After explaining my phases in life, he did get convinced that there was only an 8-year window during my 64 years that I could have accomplished this goal. But that 8-year window was busy taking care of young boys, and my attention was diverted.
Having been born amidst waters, yet I was overly scared of water all along my life—perhaps more so than an average person. The calling from my motherland was there to squash my myth that water was dangerous, even so a deep sea. I predecided long ago that however scared I was going to be, I would keep my fear of water next to me and do coral watching under the sea anyway. I did want to see how beautiful my motherland was, a part that even my parents had missed owing to lack of facilities back in 1962, and on top of that, my father not knowing how to swim, just as I am now.
I have only scaled up to a level that I can swim, but only as far as I can in one breath, for I could not learn breathing while swimming—a la comparison of Abhimanyu in the Mahabharata where he knew how to enter into danger of war but not how to come out !
I am so destined for this tour that, out of the blue, Sreemukh proposed the idea of going to the Andamans instead of staying at home during his annual visit to India. Despite being a decent swimmer himself, he also seemed a little nervous to go underwater in a ses and near 40 feet deep.
Scuba diving was strongly encouraged by my cousin, Swapna, before I left for the Andamans with family. She clarified to me that this scuba diving, coral, and fish watching doesn't need one to have swimming skills. I owe a ton to her for my unforgettable experience from this trip.
So with the encouragement she had given, it did get added to my agenda.
Scuba diving was truly an out-of-this-world experience. It was a little more than, but similar to, the experience of watching a regular movie in 2D on Television versus watching a 3D movie in a.large theater.
The training provided was quite inadequate—at least so I felt. Already scared, I even considered quitting and go back to my room. While breathing in and out from an oxygen cylinder through the mouth and sealing the nose 100% was complex in itself to be trained in a couple of minutes, my body's unsettling lack of gravity against the mighty strength of sea water currents was unnerving, to say the least. No wonder people over 60 years are banned unless certified of good fitness by a doctor. And I did manage one from Dehradun quickly thanks to my doctor elder brother. Luckily he gave me one even if he was a little hesitant with my not so long ago cycle crash and blackout. Stars do fall in place when you are so bent upon doing something, I suppose!
After this trip, I understood that actually, however immensely large and deep a sea is, just like an elephant, it is largely peace-loving and forgiving. It is not violent for the most part. It is safe to approach, touch it, and even go deep inside it. It welcomed me. Unlike land where there are several kinds of risks—leave alone the notorious Indian driving making it worse—the sea is largely peaceful. One can safely set aside any fear towards it. If we can take care of just two aspects—breathing and coming up to the top—there is actually nothing to be worried about.
Yes, these two are BIG ones and life-threatening. But thanks to our brilliant minds, we have already developed two very simple and mostly fail-safe tools: oxygen cylinders and fins for legs. They don't fail—far less than the planes that we take anyway, and much less than road accidents where we think we have control.
I cannot say my fear of water has gone away. But the undulations of water levels our cruise boat faced during heavy winds, or the heavy cyclonic rain that our tiny motorized boat had to face mid-sea, did not scare me aggressively. I knew the consequences, but I also understood the low probability. These vehicles are designed to handle eventualities, and a tsunami-like situation from within the sea was so unlikely. Whether my fear of water, and especially the sea, has gone away or not, my confidence in working with the sea certainly did increase multifold.
My motherland's sea taught me that she is actually quite gentle at heart. A sea is a natural place even if it is mammoth in size. It is actually quite a safe place. And a beautiful on. The sea adventures showed me that the tools we already have are adequate to keep me alive and far from drowning. I would now consider myself safer in a large ship than in a large airplane!
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