Stare Port

Long hours at airports, waiting for connecting flights are the coolest places to indulge my habit of people-watching. I usually check into a lounge and hide behind a glass of rum-coke and shamelessly ogle at beauties from around the world. And after many years of staring, I have concluded that Indian, Sri Lankan and Venezuelan women are the most gorgeous of the species.

At Suvarnabhumi airport, I have stared for hours at middle-aged potbellied obese American men and their petite, innocent looking Thai girlfriends. I have never figured out who is taking whom for a ride (or flight in this case) and I have difficulties imagining what calisthenics might be involved in the bedroom for satisfactory results for both parties.

At Schipol airport, I have stared at white couples necking , kissing and groping each other as if they were going to part forever, only to find them on the same flight as mine, headed together for a holiday, and I wonder if this was only foreplay what wondrous debauchery will happen when they reach their destination.

At Indira Gandhi International airport, I have stared at honeymooning couples heading to Switzerland. The demure bride, with her mehendi still bright, red bangles jangling on both hands, sparkling new mangalsutra (extra-long like the saas-bahu tv soaps prescribe), a generous dash of kumkum on forehead, in brand new levi’s low rider jeans (with a bit of a thong showing), short tee et al , lustfully looking at her swashbuckling hero, who is still slightly yellow from the various hindu wedding rites.

At Chhatrapati Shivaji airport, I have stared at middle-aged Gujju men , sneaking a sip from their Johnny Walker bottles hidden in their package tour complimentary bags, giggling like teenagers preparing themselves for conquests in Patpong and Pattaya, while their fat clueless wives exchange shopping lists with each other.

Ah airports…I could go on..

Coral Trance

If there is one super-organism on this planet that makes me feel alien, it is the coral reef systems and the vibrant multicolored forms of life-forms that thrive amongst it.

From my very first glimpse, snorkeling near Andamans as a youngster, to my latest in Menjangan islands near Bali, I am as astonished, disoriented and dismayed as I was the first time. The sparkling blue starfish, the multi-hued fans of corals, the perplexed look of an exquisitely striped clownfish, the cascades of delicate polyps, the quick flip of a startled sea-turtle at a distance, have all left me bewildered and anxious not enthralled or mesmerized. Viewed through snorkeling gear or a glass bottomed boat, the blue underwater world has always been a fretful and uneasy experience.

I have friends who have dived deeper and longer and in far flung places, as professionals and hobbyists, and they confess that they too find the under-sea life forms disconcerting.

What does fascinate me, is the fact that, despite all the documentaries , all the research, all the animation films , technological advances, the eternally supreme human race, unequivocally and humbly acknowledges that it doesn’t know enough about life under sea. It is pathetic but true, that after harvesting the seas for centuries to feed itself and having made it the official disposal site of the entire species’ waste, the wisest on the planet have no effing clue.

No wonder, my worst nightmares feature memories from the coral killing fields at Gulf of Mannar, the warehouse of wasting unsold shell and coral handicrafts near Chonburi, the menu of rare sea-creatures in restaurants in Cebu and Kevin Costner’s webbed feet and gills from Water world. I have always woken up from these nightmares shouting out to Nemo, calling for help, but he swims away to make friends with a funny looking kid with a little bottle of cyanide.

So, don’t psyche yourself, skip all the diving destinations of the world, don’t go, even if it promises you the most ecstatic of times, don’t go , its good for you and good for corals and all those deadly life forms that live in their.