A Segue to Ceylon

A few weeks ago, I was visiting the somewhat Francophone Indian province of Pondicherry. It is a charming, small city on India's East (Indian Ocean) coast, about 150 kilometers south of Chennai, the capital of neighboring Tamil Nadu state. Pondicherry bears the distinction of having been the penultimate European colony to revert to Indian control; it was returned by the French in 1954 (the last was Goa, not returned by a laggardly Portuguese fascist dictatorship until 1961).

Pondicherry was a pleasant place. Although it was humid, there was usually a breeze from the coast to keep the heat from becoming unbearable. The streets, many of which bore French names, were filled with cracked and faded, but still charming, colonial style edifices of the type one might expect to find in Cuba. Although Tamil and English are now, without a doubt, the dominant languages in Pondicherry, one still occassionally hears even among the locals exchanges such as 'Bonjour! Ça va?' a remaining echo of a not too distant colonial past. Also, there are a fair number of French bakeries and restaurants in the streets.

It was at one of these places that I was sitting down, sipping a cafe latte and munching on a perfect croissant as I scanned a local newspaper (English-language).

COLOMBO, June 14, 2011 (AFP) - A passenger ferry began operations between India and Sri Lanka for the first time in 28 years on Tuesday after a previous service was disrupted by the island's ethnic war, officials said.
The 1,044-passenger Scotia Prince docked in Colombo harbour after setting off from the southern Indian port of Tuticorin on Monday on its inaugural run with 201 passengers, a port official said.

For people who are used to traveling in Europe, where even places that are relatively far are usually well connected by ferries, rail, and air, it is hard to fathom that a country which, at its closest point, is only 18 miles from another would have no ferry service to connect it. Indeed, over one thousand years ago, in the 10^th and 11^th centuries, the South Indian Chola dynasty had employed its own ships to invade Sri Lanka and annex it to its empire. But it was in fact another war, a brutal nearly three-decades long civil war, between Sri Lanka's majority Sinha population and the minority Tamils, led by the Tamil Tigers, which had severed India's sea connection to Sri Lanka, until now. Four days later, I boarded the third passenger ferry between India to run in 28 years (the first and second had run the previous week).

The moment I set foot on the boat that would take me to Sri Lanka, I noticed that this would not be a typical ferry ride. There were a few dozen passengers on a boat designed to hold over a thousand. I wandered through the empty corridors on three floors, and found a casino filled with slot-machines equipped to take dollars (the machines were switched off), and two unstocked bars and a duty-free store empty of merchandise. The walls of the boat were covered with touristy pictures of seemingly random destinations such as the Yucatan Peninsula and Nova Scotia. As churning monsoon-season waters of the Laccadive Sea rocked the boat from side to side, I began to feel disoriented. So I talked to some of the crew on the boat, a mixture of Hondurans, Jamaicans, and Eastern Europeans, as well as the captain (an Indian).

They told me that the boat had originally ferried travelers between Maine and Nova Scotia, and later between Florida and Mexico. For a time, it was used to house evacuees from Hurricaine Katrina in New Orleans. Subsequently, they told me, it had been used for cruises in the Mediterranean, and recently to evacuate people from Libya during the recent unrest there. At least a few of the crew members had been with the ship during all of its incarnations. I looked at a picture on the wall of a white man cutting into large juicy steak which invited people to go to the ship's restaurant (now open only twice a day and serving a decidedly more Indian fare) and wondered what the ship's crew must have made of their new location and passengers.

I also talked to the passengers, most of whom were Indians, who, like me, had read about the ferry service and had boarded out of curiosity. It was during one of these conversations that it was announced that the bar would be opening (for one hour). On tap: Sri Lanka beer, French brandy, Swedish Vodka, and Scottish Scotch (believe it or not, there is such a thing as Indian Scotch). Suddenly the Hollywood Bar, which had been vacant just a few minutes before, was filled with Indian men, mostly from the 50 plus age-group, sitting in small groups and swilling brandy and scotch, laughing and talking loudly to each other (just an hour later, the combined effect of the rocky sea and the strong liquor would prove too much for many of these men to bear).