Shark Tales

     One diverting memory that brought in the snigger earlier today was an episode that occured while holidaying in the picturesque Maldives. If there is one holiday destination that I am going to revisit, it is this. I pronounced so the moment I stepped out of the bantam airport and found blue blankets spread right across a single lane street. Crossing the span to behold a stretch of a crease-less azure expanse above me clabbered with white muffs to form a buttermilk sky. And below me was a palette splashed munificently with every conceivable shade of blue between milky foams that the waves were embodying. There was cyan, turquoise, maya right where I stood. A little further where the corals ensconced, the blues took a darker shade encompassing the azure, sapphire and cobalt. And the deepest shades like the Duke, Navy and Ultramarine marked the stretch ahead to as far as my eyes could discern, the dark inkiness accentuating the fathomage. But I digress.

     Returning to the anecdote, we took a catamaran from the airport which dropped us off on an island that housed our resort. As I alighted from the boat onto the gangplank I could see schools of fish drifting right below me, the smaller ones swimming nimbly and enthusiastically while the bigger ones, nonchalantly, humoring the petite. I was drinking in the beauty encircling this archipelago, when a fellow passenger who was promenading a little ahead let out a shriek that sounded oddly like "Sharkkkkkkkkkk". I thought I had misheard her and was wondering what exactly had she uttered, when she obliged by going a few decibels higher and indeed, she had said "Shark". At that I let out an almost audible laugh thinking that this lady definitely was in need of a basic lesson on our animal kingdom. We were right at the shore; if we jumped from the walk-way into the ocean we would be standing in less than knee-deep water. Still chortling while trying to guess which fish had the likeness to be misconstrued as a shark in such shallow waters, I reached the throng which this species or the lady's interjection had drawn. And this was what I saw.

It undeniably was a shark, swimming slowly, lazily, unperturbed by the din above; a 4-5 feet long coral reef shark that infested the waters around the resort almost right till the shores. And the lady would have had the last laugh, if only she knew!

     Three days into my stay, I decided to test the waters (literally) by trying my hand at snorkeling. I am a little less, if not equally, petrified of aquatic creatures than I am of aerial ones. Nevertheless I resolved to set my fears aside and, escorted by R, audaciously waded into the shark infested waters. But only after spending a little more than an hour sizing up the lagoon and making sure that there was no sign whatsoever of a fin breaking the swirly surface. No sooner had I put on the gear and made a couple of splashes, that an inquisitive catfish that was hovering around decided it wanted a closer look and darted right at my face. The underwater goggles have magnifiable glasses. Caught off guard and terror-stricken at what appeared to be a giant fish ogling centimeters from my face, I guzzled in mouthfuls of the brine, before I could get myself to surface. When I did, I let out such a high pitched and a loud screech of "Sharkkkkk" that it put the lady's earlier wail about the same creature, to shame. Since it was an afternoon of burning, scorching sun, there were not many people around. There were a few snorkeling and wouldn't have heard the scream in it's true form, with their ears underwater and only the heads bobbing on the surface. The rest who were out sunbathing, were all definitely within earshot, my voice having carried over at least a mile in radius. I had also jumped onto R's back and was riding on his shoulders with my arms twisted around his neck like the Old Man of the Sea from Sinbad's fifth voyage. All this, while he was spectacleless, aimlessly trashing around and putting in every ounce of the energy he possessed in getting our combined weights back to the shore.  

     But while this melodrama was being enacted (only after I had safely hoisted myself away from the besetting waters) my attention was caught by this one lady who, I had observed earlier, had been sunbathing on a float leisurely reading from a book, not afar from my scene of crime. So startled was she by my howl, that she fell off her float. And so fast did she swim to the shore leaving behind her float and her soddened book that I am pretty sure my scream had conjured up visions of 'Jaws', 'Jaws 2', 'Jaws 3',(Do the arithmetic progression; I am not sure how many they number) complete with the daunting crescendo that is signature to the advent of the villainous shark in all of the movies, drumming in her ears. Not only did she return to the shore but took to her heels (to her room probably) and, I swear, was never seen on the island again by R or me. The population of the occupants is not a large one since the island is tiny and the rooms number a few, so it is almost an accepted fact that I managed to drive her off the island. I am sure no one else can boast of forcing someones hand at cutting short a Maldevian holiday. Now that's a Feather, no wait, a Fin To My Cap! Curtsy :-)