A DEEP DIVE INTO AN ALTERNATIVE REALITY: THE MALDIVES

SANGEETA WADDHWANI TAKES A LEAP OF FAITH SIGNING UP FOR AN ALL-GIRLS TRIP TO THIS NATURAL PARADISE FOR A SPECIAL DATE…A BIRTHDAY AND HOLI…ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT EVERYDAY IS A CELEBRATION HERE!

They say life happens when you are busy making plans. I say that’s bs*! Life happens when you DO make plans! Or perhaps life is at its best when your daydreams align with manifest opportunities…

Like many out there who felt a sense of FOMO looking at posts from celebrities at the Maldives during the initial lockdowns of 2020, I too started wishing to ‘manifest’ a Maldivian holiday. There had been many a reason to escape the drudgery of the last two years. Plus, while my erstwhile HELLO! team had done some fabulous cover story shoots there, I as a writer was never a part of them. Somehow budgets were restricted and I would in good faith do phone interviews with the star post shoot. But once the pictures came in…it literally felt like the team had been to “Para, Para, Paradise” (Coldplay melody!)

To cut to the chase, browsing through Instagram, I saw an ad for an all-inclusive, all-girls package tour to Heaven-On-Earth. It included flights, resort stay, most meals, and super exciting experiences like snorkeling, swimming with sharks, dolphin spotting, beach picnics, with optional experiences like Para Sailing, Tube Boating, Jet Sking, etc. As my Content Shop, San Creatives, was off to a rocking start…AND I do believe March 17 this year was so many things…Holi, Satya Narayan Pooja, St Patrick’s Day….I opted for the trip going from March 17 to March 21.

Boy did it galvanize my mental, physical and emotional states into a world filled with beauty! And being an all-woman ensemble (spunky and fiesty girls who had traversed many life experiences)…the collective energy was sparkling! Every time our speedboat hit a big bump on the high seas…we collectively yelled and laughed…and all our city bred manners were literally gone with the wind!

For me personally, traveling to a destination solo to team up with new co-travellers, had happened before. Like when I did the Jewels Of Italy tour…and met people largely from the US. But that was an older…almost retired demographic. So what really worked was the experience of seeing the epic Vatican City, the Sisteenth Chapel, Florence’s legendary museums with its David statue…grabbing Gelato at the Trevis Fountain and sampling blue champagnes in Tuscany.

Italy was about history, art, sculpture, jewels..a sense of surrealism in the watery bylanes of Venice…and awe-inspiring jokes by our sing song Italian guides, who referred to me as “San Cheeta the Celebreeety” because I was always five minutes late reporting back to the bus:)

IN MERMAID MODE

The Maldives brought us fathomless water bodies dressed in their winking, dancing, seductive best. Everywhere we looked, we were hypnotized by arresting shades of aqua, aquamarine, turquoise and sky blues, playing out like a perpetual palette waiting for a paintbrush to dip in. Only in this case, we became the brushes that dove in!

What a world we witnessed down there! I was the first to get into mermaid mode, with my snorkeling skills in place from a previous experience in Lakshwadeep. I felt a strange sense of peace envelop me in sea consciousness…fishes moving in a carefree dance, going everywhere and nowhere. Such an abundance of sea life, coral reefs…a symphony that one easily becomes a part of…and lo! Once the pictures of my experience emerged, it actually looked like I had found a piscean soulmate in a Nemo lookalike:) He looked happiest besides me and saddest when I waved a goodbye!

That is the beauty of stepping beyond the urban comfort zone. One is always humbled by the infinite forms of life we share our planet with…and more humbled when realizing how we have dumped all the waste of our civilization into the legitimate home of our sea life. The Pandemic showed us a reverse colonization.. where creatures of nature asserted their spaces in our concrete jungles. What a powerful reminder that we are flatmates checkmating our own habitats…!

WHAT IS THE MALDIVIAN MYTH?

The Maldivian seas MUST have some mystical, mythical history, I felt. There is an ancient tendency in India to associate rivers with goddesses…and the Narmada is said to be dauntless and most alluring, while the Ganges is adored for her pure spiritual lineage…pouring down from the heavens and through the matted locks of Lord Shiva.The oceans here must have a panoramic oceanic deity, because the native people who worked around her waters had a stoic dignity and simplicity all at once. We called them our Chocolate Boys, as they were universally dark skinned with delicate features and light, water friendly buoyant bodies. Our speedboat driver, Hafeez, looked like a replica of Lord Shiva…and by faith he was Muslim! Another man called Suja who tirelessly captured our underwater shenanigans had every mannerism of a Jim Sarbh…and one of the ladies openly admitted to a crush on him!

A SEA CHANGE

The Maldives, comprising of about 1200 islands, let’s not forget, are framed by The INDIAN Ocean…beguiling, pure, rich in sea life. Our cities..including Goa…have the ARABIAN Sea all around…the difference in colour and character between the two seas, feels like the difference between a black and white cinematic experience vs living in a technicoloured universe. I remember an expat at a party in Mumbai once sharing with me that although “Mumbai is surrounded by the sea, one doesn’t feel the sea or sense it much.” I reckon it is because our Arabian Sea just has a hint of blue in the winter…and looks like a dowager in 50 Shades of Grey most of the year, merging perfectly well into our concrete setting. Grey sea, Grey skies, Grey buildings, Grey streets. Also most big cities push the sea further away with reclamation projects…until you see more concrete than sea.

By contrast we learned that almost 600 to 700 islands in the Maldives are abandoned and totally uninhabited. We even had a lunch picnic on one of them, the shores and beaches were entirely ours to play with!

The other islands are moderately inhabited….while Maafushi where we stayed, was fully developed as a resort and tourist town. And what I truly felt happy about was that everything was a walking distance from our hotel…cafés, restaurants, watersports vendors, souvenir shops, juice bars. We even had resident South African ‘pet’ parrots fluttering around and preening themselves all day, and then sleeping perched at various non alcoholic beverage bars at night!

It does seem ironic that a paradise would consider alcohol illegal…but it is a Muslim country, and as one bar tender explained, “we can arrange for tourists, no problem but for residents it can lead to police arrests!”

We were also told that swimwear should ideally be conservative..but at Kaani Palm Beach all was ok, as we were located next to the Bikini Beach! What a luxury!

What I loved was the natural affinity with Indians and India, among the local people we met. Michael, who helped us with our group activities, was a Tamilian originally from Chennai. He had worked at a Taj property in Chennai before his former boss moved to the Kaani Palm Beach resort, taking him along. Another guide, Kaasun was from Sri Lanka. In most of the shops, the moment they saw Indian faces, they came down on prices, as if in homage to India! And later, at the Floating Bar, my Sri Lankan friend Kasun confessed of ” loving Bollywood music, Indian food and India!”

So one really felt at home, as many of the Chocolate Boys even understood Hindi! On our speedboat, they blasted Indian pop hits like Aaj Blue Hai Paani Paani…or soul stirring ballads from a host of Indian artists.

When looking back, I feel a particular sense of gratitude to my new friend, Sneh Tom hanker Doomray, who saw that no bday cake was available on order, and so created a cake from an assembly of dessert slices of ginger cake, painting a Happy Birthday in the Maldives message on a dinner plate…and getting a proper cake cutting ceremony in place! We later even managed a night of hookahs and storytelling at the nearby Moonlit bar, and another night of wild dancing onboard the Floating Bar.

We have sleeping dreams and waking dreams, luminous oceans and heaving grey seas…when we landed back in the bay, it was as if forced to wake up from a surreal reverie filled with nature at her prettiest. But once we got over the colour-shock and adjusted to this world, I learned to appreciate that cities are vibrant and have another raison d’etre. People…good, bad, ugly. I told myself that the Bollywood music danced to all over the UAE, Asia…was born here. Lots was happening and will continue to happen in maximum city.

But the Maldives islands? They offer fresh ink to the writer, fresh colours to the artist, and new meditations to lovers of nature. The islands took me to childhood fairytales and taught me to redream old dreams where one would draw a house, a beach, a nuclear family, a sky….and then swallow some clouds!

The Maldives remind us that Heaven is under our feet, as well as over our heads. It reminds us that the earth loves to feel your bare feet and her winds love to play with your hair…