Once upon a time there lived an Octopus, with his long tentacles, and a soft mushy body, small 'serious' eyes. He ruled around his area, caught his preys, camouflaged ,with his adaptable body, from his enemies .....untill the day he swam across a group of snorkelers and eventually ended up in a dinner plate the same evening as Octopus curry ! Damn right, this is the latest blog which happened on the last day of the last decade in a beautiful archipelago of Maldives.
And once again, in the last year i had the opportunity to visit the southern hemisphere (crossing the equator the 5th time) and visit Maldives (for the third time). There has been remarkable changes in that country since the last visit 5years back. Lot of chinese cuisines, new sign boards for the same shops, and the opposite sexes becoming more gutsy and started wearing more tight outfits which, obviously augmented the 'auxiliary fittings' ( eh...I didn't say that!).
And on the last day of the year we , a group of 9 men went for snorkeling in the nearby reef. The snorkeling sets,fins and warnings on "currents" in the area was given free ! We took the first two and disregarded the last one. For me, the last one had a tremendous effect in the form of a creeping fear and it stayed throughout, i guess i shouldn't reiterate on the 'last one' which i mentioned is the "warning" !
Wearing all those fitting and there goes into the water. Once in water, while snorkeling, the few things one will experience is a clear and pure sound of one's heart beat, the sound of the breath you take followed by the mechanical creaking voice of your joints in your body due to movement . One thing about the breath is that , you can actually feel which all parts of your lungs are getting inflated and deflated( that was too technical, I agree).
And the snorkeling went smooth, and the currents taking us to a distance, watching all those beautiful corals, and other creatures (barring sharks, whales and whatnot !) including different fishes, squids and crabs little ones with small claws ( thank god! u know why :-) . For a brief moment, we were all part of the faculty of creations at sea.
I was feeling comfortable watching these, till a spectacular scene which took the wind out of me ( i mean scared me ! yeah you heard it) The deep blue colour of water slowly and steadily fading into void, the indication that "dude, you're out of the reef and is facing the deep waters". That's it; i boarded the boat as soon as I could.
By the time our character of the month, Octopus was caught by our safety diver Ismail and everybody was having a photo session with it. It was brought onboard and i was told that it's a famous delicacy in the islands. After snorkeling we landed the beach nearby and started cleaning up the poor soul with sand, under the supervision of Ismail and Rajiv , the other diver. It was cleaned up, packed and ready to be cooked format and was taken to our ship , which is at anchorage.
The night was for ringing out the previous year and ringing in the new one, the octopus became a wonderful curry in the plate and we celebrated our New Year. I'm sure if I happen to go there once again, i wont find any octopus since a 'statutory warning' might have been issued by the Octopus Association of that reef to be careful about the snorkelers ! Thaz all folks !
