Hello,

As promised I was back in the Andamans for good. Bag, baggage and uncertainty of starting an absolutely new life in a brand new place (for me). When I arrived at the airport with my to-be wife, I did not know a single soul whom I could ask for assistance. But as the decision was made, the journey completed, I had arrived and touched the soil of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, I sat in aYellow Black Ambassador taxi of Gopal Rao (my first friend in Andamans, who greets me warmly every time we bumped into each other on the roads, in bars and the Aberdeen Bazar) and drove into uncertainty, or call it adventure as Kalamati stared out at the streets of a place she till a few days ago, till my proposal to her, did not know it existed.

I had one telephone number of a friend’s friend’s friend Yudhistir Jena who worked for Action Aid and had a rented flat at Prothrapur, and was living alone as his wife and daughter were in Orissa at the time being. I had spoken to him before I came, and he had warmly invited me to stay with him till we found a place to stay and start our life on tiny dots of a place on the world atlas.

I will talk about many friends, me and my wife made, many homes, restaurants, shops and places that we visited, many tiny beaches we discovered, many snakes that entered our house, and one that bit me at Havelock leaving my right leg puss filled, swollen, painful and with late night feverish shivers for 3 months, and many more experiences, in our sweet struggle to buy a small patch of land and build a home and probably to live here for a very long, long time to come.

(I will talk about my Sikh friend Satnam Singh, who is the editor of a hindi newspaper, a stationary supplier, a civil contractor, an event manager etc. etc. in my coming blogs….you will love him. I will also introduce you to Manglu, my Bengali fisherman friend whose lovely hardworking wife Kusum runs tea stall. I will introduce you to Jharkhandi James working for the Agriculture Department at the very beautiful Carbyn’ s Cove beach, an expert coconut tree climber and his Nepalese wife). And many more.

On September 5 2008, we have shifted to our new home which about 10 kms from Port Blair at Beodnabad village, Burmanullah, close to the sea and the Andaman Trunk Road.