The bad ship Nicobar

We are aboard the M.V. Nicobar, a large and tired maritime vessel, supposed to take us to the Andaman Islands. At the time of writing, we have been aboard the ship for seventeen hours, and we have not yet left the harbour. Engine trouble is to blame.

There must be some malevolent and well-rooted gremlins in the engine room; Lonely Planet warns that twelve hours spent floating in Chennai harbour is not uncommon. Unfortunately, a fellow passenger discovered the article after we had boarded the ship.

Would this knowledge have put us off, had we discovered it before? Probably not. Nobody goes to India for the well-oiled efficiency of its public services. But as a seventeen-hour delay turns into eighteen hours, there is time enough to wonder: should we have just paid more, and booked a flight?

We wanted to travel to the islands by ship; we still do. Crossing the Bay of Bengal by sea looked like an adventure, and it still does. Flying is so tedious and predictable. To be processed and loaded into a metal tube, just to be regurgitated again in another place, with only an abstract idea of the distance travelled, is not really travelling. It’s a very convenient way of getting somewhere, but it offers little in the way of sensory input for the passenger, beyond the air conditioning, the infotainment system, and the occasional glimpse of geography. It is designed to offer a perfectly standardised and predictable experience for the passenger. And for good reason: hurtling through the sky at thirty thousand feet, people don’t really like surprises.

At least a boat offers something more; the smell of the sea, the opportunity to smoke a cigarette, to mingle and converse with fellow passengers. To marvel at the vast, shallow dome we call the horizon, and wonder how people believed the Earth was flat for so long (and indeed, how the Flat Earth Society persists to this day).

Of course, for any of these advantages to have any practical value, the ship has to reel in its anchor, and navigate out of port. Which is something this vessel is resolutely not doing.

He took our passports: the official at the “Information” kiosk, located on deck four. So there is no way off this boat, in theory or practice. That leaves “us” – the foreigners – particularly helpless in the face of this deviation from the expected programme.

We foreigners number seven people, so far as I can tell, meaning we add up to a little less than one percent of the total passenger list, of around eight hundred. Queueing up to board the boat yesterday, we jostled with the uniformed ranks of the Indian army, who were on their way to one of their strategic sea bases, located in the Andamans. We passed through the usual bottleneck that one encounters whenever large amounts of Indians want to go the same place at the same time: the sluggish mass of humanity scrabbles at the barriers, trying to get a fingerhold, trying to force a gap, balancing outsized packages on heads, squirming and squashing, thoroughly jamming the inadequate aperture deemed appropriate by the ranks of officials standing by, gazing contentedly upon the chaos they have helped to create.

All those outsized packages and bags of all sizes pass through scanners, and it occurs to me that only something really obvious and obnoxious, like an AK-47, or a nuclear warhead, could possibly arouse the attention of the security men detailed with monitoring this river of luggage. And so I am astonished when they open up the large rucksack belonging to Oscar, the twenty-four year-old Swede ahead of me, and pull out a bottle of Absolut. It will be kept for him in secure storage until he reaches the island.

And so, divested of booze, and slung together by nature of our non-Indian status, we board the great ocean-going hulk, and here we still are, twenty hours in, floating in Chennai harbour, waiting for lunch.

Celia and I are traveling bunk class, which works out 2500 rupees each. Other options include a cabin shared with four other people, which is 6000 rupees, or a private cabin, working out at nine thousand rupees each. Carl, an amiable London bricklayer, who spends half the year traveling, who has visited India four times – and who looks uncannily like the comedian Johnny Vegas from a particular angle – has booked one of these private cabins. He tells us he is nearly fifty, and so, he is done with traveling bunk class. Fair enough, I think. The private cabin is not worth the money, he tells me. The fridge is blooming with varieties of mould, and the TV doesn’t work. And there are no sheets on the bed. This is described in the literature as “deluxe”.

On the other hand, our accommodation in “bunk class”, within the bowels of the ship, is serviceable enough, while being basic, as one would expect.

There are dual-stacked bunks running the length of the ship, divided here and there by partitions, with location numbers stamped on them. I have a top bunk, and Celia has the bunk below me. The mattresses are clean, and finished with vinyl, which at least prevents bed bugs from living in them. Happily, the beds are a reasonable size, being almost – but not quite – long enough for my six-foot three-inch frame.

It is fairly noisy down there, what with all the people in close proximity, comprising in large part families with small children. But to be perfectly fair and honest, the children are well-behaved, and in that respect at least, quite unlike their unruly counterparts in my home country.

Also travelling bunk class, and comprising the “foreign” contingent: Oscar, the Swede, who is traveling with Paul, a thirty-three year-old Brit, and a young couple – Leah, who is twenty-three, half English, half German, and her boyfriend Cern, who is English, and in his early twenties.

We met the couple in the shipping office where we bought our tickets, and we saw them board the boat, and then – weirdly – they disappeared. Approaching the twenty-four hour mark of our “delay”, there has been no sign of them, and their absence has been a source of conjecture among the remaining foreigners.

Did they somehow catch wind of the boat problems early on, and abandon the vessel, without us noticing? Are they being kept prisoner in the bowels of the ship? Are they just enjoying each other’s company rather a lot, and would prefer to be left alone?

It’s weird, because there are not so many communal areas aboard the ship. There’s seating on the top deck, with a sometimes-open snack shop on one side, and a rusted, empty swimming pool on the other. Carl, Paul, Oscar, Celia and myself meet here for chai and cigarettes.

There’s the cabin class dining room on the deck below, where anyone can eat if they’re willing to pay 840 rupees for meals to last them the duration of the voyage. It’s worth the money, because the curries are generally good – and sometimes excellent – and anyway, what’s the alternative? Three days of biscuits? Cannibalism?

The dining area is spacious and comfortable, and doubles as a lounge, where people can watch films, write their travel books, and discuss the important matters of the day. We meet here for meals and tend to base ourselves around a couple of tables, where we charge our gadgets, and detach sporadically to drink chai and smoke.

We receive conflicting reports regarding the nature of the delay. We are told “a couple of hours”, “three hours”, or – “there will be an announcement in an hour”. The only announcements we hear are short, garbled affairs, intended for the crew, rather than the passengers.

It is far from satisfactory, but people do not seem particularly bothered. Considering there are all these families on board with young children, who are presumably visiting relatives, or on their way home, or – who knows – on their way to weddings, or birthday celebrations – there has not been so much as a murmur of dissatisfaction detected by my ears, much less a raised voice. People sit or stand on the top deck, or sit around in the dining area / lounge, where I am sitting, writing this, or languishing on their bunks, or languishing in their cabins. The officials walk around largely unperturbed. No one seems to ask them questions, let alone get in their faces, and demand answers. Only we – the foreigners – seem to ask questions, and get the predictably vague and conflicting responses.

Celia has lived in Argentina, and has seen what happens when people think they’re being messed about by the authorities. They get pissed off. We consider how a ship full of Argentinians would have reacted to a twenty-four hour delay, with no explanation, and no booze. Of course, it would never have reached twenty-four hours. The ship would have been torched long before that.

*

Twenty-five hours in. The situation is far from desperate, but I am annoyed. I am annoyed, because there is no accountability. The company feels it can treat its passengers with contempt. No explanations, except for the usual fobbing-off bullshit.

I went to find the captain just now, in the area of the ship marked “Restricted”. He is in a meeting. He is very busy.

Busy? I asked the panicked official, clutching his walkie-talkie, scuttling up the steps after me. Busy? We haven’t even moved. What’s he busy with? Looking for icebergs?

(With profound regret, I didn’t say that last bit. But I will. If the chance arises again. Which it will.)

The official told me that the captain is in a meeting. When will the meeting end? He doesn’t know. So I told him (not consciously channelling Schwarzenegger): I will be back. In one hour. I will return, and if the captain is still hiding pathetically from the passengers to whom he has a profound responsibility, then I will wait for him.

Meanwhile, the missing couple – Leah and Cern – have turned up. They spent a full twenty-four hours below decks before emerging, blinking, into the light. They were sequestering their meals from the bunk class meal counter, of which I had heard rumours, but not seen. Following a lengthy conversation about food (just one of many aboard the ship), it emerged that we were all eating the same stuff, and yet paying different rates, depending on which food counter we went to.

For those willing to remain below decks, eating their meals like nocturnal, burrowing rodents, food could be had for around five hundred rupees. This would cover breakfast, lunch and dinner, for the duration of the journey. For those like myself, Celia, Paul and Oscar, who chose to get our food from the cabin class hatch, and eat it at tables, in natural light – rather than at our bunks – exactly the same fare was costing 840 rupees.

Carl, who had opted for the “deluxe” extravagancies of a room to himself, equipped with its own fungus garden, was paying over a thousand rupees for the same food all the rest of us were eating, but he got to eat it within spitting distance of the captain and his senior staff.

We greeted this realisation with a lot of cynical laughter, followed by some chai and a cigarette on the top deck.

*

After pottering around the deck, smoking a few more cigarettes, drinking a little more chai, listening to and passing on a few more rumours regarding the status of the ship, and gazing with increasingly glassy eyes at the night-time activities of Chennai port, Celia and I finished the film we were watching (Terry Gillian’s evergreen Twelve Monkeys), and returned to our bunks.

No sooner had we returned to our bunks, than a commotion started up in the corridor. Angry and excited voices were spreading through the lower decks. Word reached us that the ship was officially dead in the water, and people were getting off.

We proceeded to the top deck, where we met Oscar and Paul. We could see women gathering in a pool of red saris on the concrete jetty beneath us. Typically, there were no officials to be seen. So once again, I made my way to the Restricted Area, this time in the company of the Swede, and my fellow Brit.

We burned through the nylon ropes that had been hastily lashed to the gate, which opened onto the metal steps, which gave access to the command tower. On entering, we fell in behind a contingent of uniformed officers, ascending to the bridge. No one questioned us. There was perhaps an inevitability to our presence; the delay was by this time hovering around the thirty-hour mark, a sit-down protest was establishing itself outside, and the demand for answers – and accountability – was palpable, even for these supremely unaffected starched white shirts.

We entered the nerve centre – the bridge. Radar screens glowed a sickly shade of green. A lot of people were standing around. The captain was among them, somewhere. He was “busy”.

“What with?!” I howled, incredulously. “Scanning for icebergs??!”

(Damn it – that didn’t happen.)

“I’m bloody well going to find him,” I muttered, instead.

I shouldered past the phalanx of officers and officials and rounded a partition and there was the captain, at the helm of his useless, immobile boat. This was the first time I had seen him since boarding the vessel the day before. He was quite small, and equipped with a neat moustache. I asked him, something like, “What’s wrong with the boat?” and he muttered something like, “Engine trouble.”

“When’s it going to be fixed?”

“I’ll deliver an announcement in an hour…”

“An hour! We’ve been waiting thirty hours already,” I said.

“The passengers are angry,” observed Paul. “People are getting off the ship.”

“No one knows what’s going on,” observed Oscar. “Even your staff have no idea.”

It was true. We had spoken to a Sikh bloke down on the deck who cheerfully admitted he had no idea what was going on, and he worked on the ship.

We fired our questions and criticisms at the captain, while he stood impotently at the controls, surrounded by his senior staff. Most of the retorts were handled by the first officer, who was a garrulous, bulldog-faced man in his sixties. He had been fobbing us off already at the laughably titled “Information” kiosk downstairs, and now the routine was continuing on the bridge. At least he stood and faced us, however, and he was not afraid to venture into the lower levels. The same could not be said of the captain.

Observing him on the hallowed ground of the control deck, I was struck by just how unsuited he seemed to be in the role. I wondered – not for the last time – how a person with no leadership skills whatsoever becomes captain of an ocean-going ship. Not once had I heard his voice on the tannoy, informing us of the nature of the delay. Not once had we seen his face, until we sought out the visage, by scaling the ivory tower in which he was so appropriately ensconced.

We left them and rattled back down the metal steps. Outside the ship, we could see that the protest was gathering strength, and that men were down there too – among the Hindu women, who had started the revolt. Celia was down there, chatting with some of the women. I went down there, with Oscar and Paul, and we joined the growing mass of disgruntled passengers.

We reported on the scene we had encountered on the bridge, the captain’s citation of “engine trouble” – which drew weary groans – and his promise to report something definitive in an hour, which was met with the honest laughter of derision.

As we milled around on the concrete platform, officials of one kind or another would appear from time to time, to be engulfed by the throng, and interrogated. Whatever small nuggets of information could be extracted would be passed from mouth to ear, and generally thrown into the same bin we used for all the information we had received up until that point, marked “bullshit” (or its Hindi / Tamil equivalent).

Only one man could give us the answers we needed. And eventually, he appeared. Flanked by his white-bearded bulldog, and another senior officer, the captain descended the ramp, and – at last – faced the passengers who he had shamefully neglected for so long.

The clamour for answers was great, and the captain was small. As he reached the bottom of the ramp he was instantly subsumed by the mass of protestors. People held their mobile phones aloft, trying to get a clean shot of the man. His senior crewmembers hovered over his shoulders, grimly scanning the crowd. It was at least twenty people deep, radiating from the foot of the ramp. Only a few nearest the captain had any chance of hearing what he said, but word trickled back, helpfully translated for us by speakers of both English and Hindi.

We learned that one of the engines was not working, leaving only one functional motor. Despite efforts to fix it, the broken engine would not respond. A survey was underway to find out if it was safe for the ship to set out with just one engine, and the survey was not yet complete. So there was still no definitive answer regarding the seaworthiness of the ship.

Having delivered this unsatisfactory news, the captain slithered off back up the ramp, leaving his staff to field questions from the crowd. We wanted to know how we could get our money back, and we were told that it would be possible to get a full refund the next morning, for those who wished to leave the ship. Until then, there was not a lot to do except sleep, which was fine by me. I was tired. So we returned to our bunks.

*

The next morning, the ship still hadn’t moved, and the overall mood, among the “foreign” contingent, was: let’s get off this damned ship, get our money back, and book a flight to the Andaman Islands.

Celia was reluctant to abandon the ship. She had struck up good relations with the women she had met the night before, and they were pleased that a western woman had chosen to join their sit down protest. She was impressed with the quiet dignity with which they had conducted their protest, which had forced an appearance from the captain, and an assurance that people would get their money back. She felt a sense of solidarity towards the women, because for them, abandoning the ship was not an option. They couldn’t afford to book flights. As such, they were at the mercy of the shipping company.

Many of them were travelling with children. This made the situation especially tough for them, and especially unfair for the children, as there were no child-friendly facilities on board. It was a bare-bones ship, with a chai shop that opened sporadically, and an empty, rusted swimming pool – which functioned as a giant rubbish pit. Conditions in the toilets were becoming highly unsanitary, and they were not exactly great to begin with. In short, the ship was a blossoming health hazard, and no place for families to be stuck indefinitely.

I leaned towards Celia’s position. Like her, I am a writer. For us, a “travel nightmare” is an opportunity – and there was a story to be told here. A story as old as it is depressingly familiar, featuring a large faceless corporation, dicking over a load of poor people.

So, by the time breakfast was done with, the two of us had agreed to remain with the ship. Our agreement lasted until we got to the information desk, where we were told that the vessel had been deemed unseaworthy, and that everyone was to disembark. There would be another ship in six days.

We packed up our bags and waited for the immigration official, who turned up eventually, and said he would take us to the shipping office to get our money back. In fact, he put us in a car and sent us to a checkpoint, where we were stopped by military men with rifles, demanding to see our immigration papers.

“But we haven’t been anywhere!” we cried. “We’ve been stuck in the port for two days.”

They couldn’t get it into their heads. We were a little anxious (not to mention; flustered, tired and mightily pissed off), because we knew the office usually closed at one o’clock. It was past midday already. And there we were, still stuck in the port, still at the whim of Indian bureaucracy, made lethal by total communications failure.

As the minutes ticked on and tempers flared, a vehicle turned up with the required paperwork, and we were free to pass through the checkpoint. We flagged down tuck tucks and motored off to the shipping office, where we had our boat tickets refunded. This last bit went surprisingly smoothly, and it felt like an almighty relief to put the sorry episode to bed.

Carl told us about a bar on the first floor of a hotel, near where he was staying in Chennai. From 4-7pm it was happy hour – buy one get one free on beer and selected cocktails. Every so often during the non-voyage, he would describe the ice-cold beer, poured into chilled beer glasses, and we would drool at the thought of it. By the time we left the port, we all had a rabid thirst for this magical liquid, and the seven of us agreed to reconvene at the bar at 4pm.

Celia and I checked into a hostel near the centre of Chennai. We bought freshly-made samosas and chai. I trimmed my beard and the sides of my head back down to their default 3mm (back of the head: 5mm. Top: variable), had a shower, changed into clean clothes, and felt approximately one billion times better. We hired a tuck tuck and motored off to the hotel Carl had specified. It was attached to a gigantic shopping centre on Express Avenue. We wandered through it, feeling like ants on the floor of someone’s kitchen, eyes twitching at the big brands peaking over the countertop.

We found the plush hotel and ascended to the first floor, and there was Carl in the darkened bar, with a cold beer in front of him, and two bowls of snacks. The air was chilled by the A/C. The outside was blotted out entirely. It was a space-time anomaly; a bubble, where the sights, and sounds, and smells of India had been erased. We could have been anywhere in the world. I wasn’t complaining. I had a thirst for beer which had reached an unusual pitch. It was a desperate craving – I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Carl’s words, delivered with his lovable dyed-in-the-wool Londoner twang, describing happy hour, and cold, cold beer, had seeped into my soul over the last few days, the way mineral-rich water finds an underground reservoir.

Never mind the fact this was the same shit-quality lager – fittingly titled “British Empire” – which Celia had described as tasting like “fizzy water, with an aftertaste of pure alcohol”. After the two-day boat problem – clocking fifty straight hours, counting the bureaucracy at either end – those tasting notes sounded fine.

We arrived a little after four, and ordered the first of many cold, cold beers. The chunky glasses were frosted from the fridge, as per Carl’s description. The piss-poor lager tasted like tears from heaven – and was helped, I think, by its delivery; being served from the tap, as opposed to the bottle. It enabled us to mentally distance ourselves from the stuff we had been drinking thus far in Tamil Nadu.

Oscar and Paul arrived a little after us, followed by Leah and Cern. It was one of those great afternoon drinking sessions; we were all half-crazed by the thought of a cold beer, and we had formed the kind of sparkling, transient friendship group that travellers form on their travels. We had emerged from a crippled boat, and the bureaucratic maelstrom that inevitably goes with it. We had been refunded in full, and so we felt dangerously cash-rich. We had nothing to do the next day (except for Oscar and Paul, who had flights booked). It was happy hour.

Without wishing to bleat on about it, can I just ask: is there anything better than struggling through adversity, to sit down with your newfound friends, with an ice cold beer?

(The answer, surely, is “No”. However, the quality of the beer matters. A decent lager will heighten the experience. For example, my heart did a somersault when I saw Heineken in the fridge, at the hotel bar. Import charges and tax had pushed its sale price into the stratosphere, however. It cost five hundred rupees for a bottle, and – unlike British Empire, which was half the price – it was not available as a happy hour buy-one-get-one-free. That made it four times the price of B.E., and therefore, unattainable.)

Away from the pressure atmosphere of the stranded ship, we were able to relax, and get to know each other a bit better.

Cern told me that he keeps tarantulas at home. And you know how people tend to resemble their pets…? Well… I’m not going too far with this one. It’s not like the lad has eight eyes, or eight legs – or even that he’s particularly hairy. But there is something there. There is something…

Carl told us about the time he was thrown into a Turkish jail when he was eighteen. He was following the football, having a drink, when violence erupted in the street (of which he had played no part), and he was scooped up by the police. He spent one week in custody before he was released. He described the terrible conditions, and the crushing fear of disappearing into one of the world’s less hospitable prison systems. However, he also described the kindness of the Turkish prisoners, who looked after him, and shielded him from the brutality of the guards.

Carl was supposed to be travelling to India with a friend of his, to watch the cricket. However, the friend baled out at the last minute. Carl is not that bothered about the cricket, but his friend is a devoted fan. So now Carl finds himself rattling from one boring cricket match to another, on his own. To add shocking insult to injury, they do not even serve alcohol at Indian cricket matches. So he watches the mind-numbing spectacle… sober.

Every so often, Celia and I steal away to have a smoke, in a designated smoking room. It’s the type of place that has died out in my home country. And good riddance to them, you would normally say. A foisty, carcinogenic fume box, which leaves you feeling sick to the eyeballs. However, at least this one has air conditioning and ventilation. And it’s a good place to strike up conversation with other patrons, cashing in on happy hour.

We strike up conversation with one such patron, who tells us he comes to this weird drinking den every day. He is a middle-aged Indian man. He confesses that he is a coin collector.

Normally, of course, this admission would be met with a brief, awkward silence, followed by an undignified scramble for the nearest exit. However, I am in an extremely happy boozy frame of mind, and so I ignore the warning flash in Celia’s eyes, and encourage the incurable nurismatist.

He tells us about the supercharged metal detector he has built, which is so powerful it is banned under international law, which is capable of detecting things ten metres under the earth. He goes on to tell us a lot of things about coin collection which I instantly clear from my memory. And then he digs about in his pocket and hands over two thousand year-old coins (that’s two coins, each a thousand years-old) – one to myself, and one to Celia.

They date back to the RajaRaja Chola dynasty of Tamil Nadu, which lasted from 980-1014 AD.

They are ancient relics, worn by the passage of time, and the friction of countless hands and pockets.

Celia and I look from the coins, to the coin collector, back to the coins, and exchange broad, stupid grins. This charming eccentric has just given us coins that are one thousand years-old. That is real history. And who would have thunk it, walking into this curiously antiseptic drinking hole, decked out in the modern, international style – which is the very antithesis of culture, and history?

In addition to my ancient relic, he gives me an Indian coin dating from 1944, stamped with the British crown. At the risk of sounding like a coin collector, it’s a rather charming little token, light and dainty to the touch, stamped in such a way as to leave a hole in the middle. That’s right, it’s shaped like a donut! It’s fashioned from a warm copper alloy, and has weathered the years well.

We thank the gentleman profusely and heed the words from the barman, telling us that happy hour is fast coming to an end. We scramble to order a bunch of cold beers (did I mention they are cold?) to top off the cold beers and cocktails that have put us in such fine fettle already.

Having demolished that last, monstrous round of drinks, Oscar and Paul drop out of the game, citing early morning flights as the reason for their departure. We exchange Facebook contacts and agree to reunite on the Andaman Islands – preferably on a beach, preferably one serving cocktails.

There are five of us left, and we head off in search of the next bar. It turns out to feature another ruthlessly modern interior design job (if “ruthlessly modern” equates to fibre optics, panels of coloured glass, hard surfaces and lots of right angles, which I think it still does).

The drinks are a trifle on the expensive side, but we find that by sticking to a diet of Old Monk and coke we are able to maintain a near-optimal booze intake without murdering our finances too desperately.

Our drinking session reaches its End Game, and we move on to the subject of politics. And monarchy. Carl is a monarchist, and a Brexit supporter. Leah and Cern are left wingers like me, who don’t give a damn about the monarchy. Celia is in this camp too, although she is fading slightly under the volume of alcohol.

The order of battle is set. We face each other across the table: Carl on one side; myself, Leah and Cern on the other. Our rhetorical cannons are polished and ready.

Carl is the first to break cover, letting loose a fusillade along our well-protected flank.

“Immigrants are a drain on the economy… Britain is full… Free movement of labour is destroying the jobs market… The EU is a failed project… It is corrupt…”

We counter with a withering barrage that takes out an ammunition dump. The explosion can be seen for miles.

“Immigrants are tax payers! They enlarge the economy. Who says when Britain is full?! The European Union helps to bind European powers together. What do you want – another war?!”

Carl calls into action some antiquated howitzers, hidden in some protected woodland.

“The Royal Family bring in a lot of revenue from tourism! They are a net benefit to the economy! They are the traditional backbone of the country!”

“You could get rid of the Royal Family, keep the palaces and the crown jewels, and the tourists would still come! They are benefits scroungers! They are an affront to the meritocracy we should be seeking to create!”

Carl’s museum pieces are blasted away, and the forest is ablaze. His forces are in disarray. However, a tactical victory is prevented from becoming a strategic one, as time is called at the bar. Hostilities may, or may not, be resumed – preferably on a beach, preferably armed with Cuba Libres, Mohitos, and Long Island Iced Teas.

Note: this post was originally published 11th January 2017.