Shooting Stars and Flying Fish: Swapping the boardroom for the seven seas

by Nancy Knudsen

  We celebrate our first Christmas away from home at a five-star hotel, where they turn on everything from turkey to plum pudding in true English style. For New Year, we take our bicycles to Fort Cochin, a trendy suburb on the southern foreshore of Kochi Harbour, as we’ve learned that the New Year celebrations there are worth experiencing. It also has some well-known historic sites. We find a small hotel, and take our first holiday from Blackwattle.

  On arrival at our small hotel, we are pleased to find a life-sized Santa Clause decorating the front garden.

  I ask our host why he is still there.

  ‘Oh, we don’t build the Santa Claus until December 31. Then, at midnight, we burn him.’

  ‘You what? You burn Santa Claus?’ I can’t be hearing right. The seven-year-old inside me is reeling with horror. ‘You’re joking. What do you mean?’

  ‘Yes, we burn Santa, at midnight.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the street, in front of the house.’

  ‘In the middle of the street? Does everyone do that?’

  ‘Oh yes. At midnight you will see all the Santa Clauses burning in front of all the houses here.’

  ‘But what about the children? Don’t they mind burning Santa Claus?’

  ‘No, they like the fire – it is tradition, you see.’

  And so it happens. We visit several of the wild street parties where only the men dance, the women watch demurely, and other men march round dressed in grotesque Santa Claus or Grim Reaper costumes. Almost every house and tree is brightly lit with flashing Christmas lights and, sure enough, many have a life-sized Santa – red fur-lined coat and matching hat, big Santa beard – gracing their front gardens.

  At the stroke of midnight, when at home we would be kissing each other, misty-eyed and roaring with good humour and ‘Auld Lang Syne’, hundreds of Santas are burned as children watch with glee. I learn later that burning Santa Claus symbolises good riddance to the old year and the ushering in of the new.

  We go to the New Year parade the next day. It is gaudy, extravagant and extensive in scope. The splendid costumes, the grand variety of music and dancing, the euphoria of the watching crowd (many of whom trail the procession) have us transfixed. We see men hugging each other as they meet and then dancing together; teenagers, all sober, clapping and thumping their way along the streets; children dancing with each other and with their parents. It is a wild high-spirited celebration, untrammelled by any call for that deceptive god called Dignity.

  It amazes me how quickly I have become used to the less-than-perfectly painted buildings and to the dust underfoot, so swamped are my senses by the rich sensory attack that is India. I reflect with amusement on my changing attitudes: Well, why shouldn’t men hug each other? . . . Does the dust matter when these children run so free and safe? . . . I’ve never seen anyone singing in the street in Sydney unless they are drunk . . . And I can’t see a single policeman.

  Without consciously realising it, my automatic acceptance of many ingrained Western characteristics are, one by one, swirling away in the slurries of dust, flying with the cormorants over the muddy waters around Bolgatty Palace and disappearing into the harbour of Kochi.

  Over the next couple of days we enjoy roaming the tiny streets on our cycles from the Maldives, stopping at small unusual shops and dining at little cafes. The charm of the place is bewitching. The streets are lined with houses of classic Portuguese architecture, centuries old, spilling with bougainvillea and hibiscus. We find the gracious white Church of St Francis and Vasco da Gama’s sombre tomb. We enter the synagogue of the famed Jews of Cochin and speak softly of earthly things with one of the few Jews who remain. We stand in ghostly gloom, transfixed by the swinging glass lights and the delft tiles made famous by Salman Rushdie in his novel The Moor’s Last Sigh.

  The streets we cycle are peppered with individuals of many kinds: Sikhs, with their heads wrapped in clever folds, traditional Indian men in their ironed dhotis, the ubiquitous saris making vivid splashes of colour, kids everywhere – from older boys in full Western gear of T-shirts and jeans, with their baseball caps turned backwards, to little girls with limpid coffee-coloured eyes, dressed quaintly like dolls in long pink voile frills with large bows.

  Back on the boat it’s dirty; the smog of the city settles in layers on the awnings, the topsides. Grime is everywhere – the wharf, the pathways to the wharves, the dusty streets, the cars, the alleyways. The ‘footpaths’ are made of thousands of concrete blocks that look like old manhole covers thrown in a fairly higgledy-piggledy fashion over the open sewers. Where there are gaps, the perfume is nostril-rocking, nose-shocking, breath-clogging.

  It is the saris that I love most of all – saris covering the dusky bodies of the beautiful coal-eyed women who never seem to sweat or look ruffled. Their chocolate feet are all powdery with dust, flat leather thongs or scuffs peeping below the gorgeous floating silks. In a thousand brilliant colours, like delicate orchids, they wrap and rewrap, a finger touch here, a slight brushing with the hand there, as the fabrics billow and float in the wind. I never get tired of watching them.

  Nazar, our faithful helper, who has visited us daily – doing our laundry, finding workmen for us, assisting in a thousand small ways – invites us to lunch with his family on Sunday, his one day of rest.

  On the appointed Sunday he appears in his rowboat, dressed in a clean white dhoti, accompanied by his wife, a quiet shy woman, and his daughter, who seems intimidated by our presence and is almost too shy to look in our direction. It takes him forty-five minutes, standing in the sun in his easy legs-apart fashion, to row us to the other side of Kochi Harbour, where he docks the boat among a heap of crumbling and unpainted buildings. We follow him through narrow streets, lined with shanties. Gradually, members of his extended family leave their houses and join us in a growing crowd – young girls in colourful saris, old men who can hardly keep up the pace of our walk, women, many with a scattering of children. By the time Nazar stops before a tiny house, there are around fifty people with us.

  ‘This,’ he says with tremendous pride, ‘is my house.’ We enter. Inside is just one room. The walls and floors have been covered with swatches of fabric, all worn-looking but clean. There are some cupboards, on top of which are plates and cups. A small alcove off to the side is referred to as the kitchen. There is nothing else yet, he says. He and his wife and four children live in this house. By now, all of the people who followed us down the street have tried to enter the house with us. Those who don’t fit spill out into the street. Inside there is hardly room to move, and it’s difficult to breathe in the heat. Nazar pushes his way importantly through the crowd to find two folding chairs, and makes room for them in the middle of the throng.

  ‘Please, you sit, you sit,’ he urges.

  Obediently, we sit – there would be no room for anyone else to sit anyway. Now, with the crowd pressing above us, Nazar introduces his relatives in order of their importance in the family – his mother first, the tiniest children last.

  ‘My give you Coca-Cola?’ he asks.

  We accept, and it arrives, passed hand to hand overhead. The drinks are warm; they have no refrigeration. No one else drinks with us. They simply watch.

  We have brought presents, but not nearly enough for all the people in the room. I am embarrassed, but following Nazar’s cue, give them to the most important – the most elderly – people.

  I am relieved when two of the young women begin to speak English, and some pleasant time is passed while they tell us about their lives, their education, their secretarial jobs, and shake their heads, giggling, when I ask them if they have boyfriends. They translate this question at the insistence of the others, and this brings amusement from their friends, guffawing laughter from the adolescent boys, mock-horror and the shaking of fingers from the elderly. But during most of the conversation the others, understanding nothing
, stare wide-eyed from face to face, seemingly content to watch our expressions. After a couple of hours, we take our leave and Nazar rows us the forty-five minutes back across the harbour.

  By such excursions is our journey made rich, and I wonder at the warmth and proud generosity of these beautiful people.

  One last lunch and swim at the Bolgatty Palace Hotel, and drinks in the afternoon in the bar with the rest of the yachties in the anchorage to say farewell. I have been to India several times before, but this was so different. Arriving as sailors, not as tourists, we have been privileged to share a little of the local lifestyle and I am left admiring the daily wisdom and practical tolerance of the multitude, the warmth of their relationships with each other, and the unbounded joy of their festivities.

  It’s time, though, to move on. Our next challenge awaits.

  6. Through Pirate Alley with the Spanish Navy

  Oman to Eritrea

  Up and away again, with sadness and glee together. Away past the tree-drenched jetty with the tap of purest drinking water, past the ancient Bolgatty Palace, past the other yachts, blown kisses, waves, honks of horns, away past the grimy town ferries, through the small channel, dredging our way along the muddy bottom, revs up and up and up, engine roaring, scraping our way out into the soupy swirl of the main channel.

  Now past more ferry boats, fishing boats, dredges, petrol tankers, navy ships, Customs on our left, mangroves on our right. On and on past the cantilevered Chinese fishing nets, arms up to the sky, past the beaches of Fort Cochin and their poor burnt Santa Clauses, on and on down the khaki-coloured channel – green buoys to the left, red to the right. On and away past the Fairway Buoy and out past the fishing boats coming home, over to the drop-off – one minute it’s forty-five metres of water and then the depth metre stops reading as we pass the plunging underwater cliff to arrive into the deep, deep Lakshadweep Sea . . . and on and on and back into the navy-blue womb of our beloved, clean Indian Ocean.

  There’s a smart wind just off the nose, and we set out in great spirits. The Arabian Sea has a reputation for benign weather. We’re headed for Salalah in Oman.

  However, the thought of transiting the ‘pirate zone’ of the Gulf of Aden, beyond Salalah, is never far from our minds, and we plan and replan our strategy. We may meet either Yemeni fishermen or Somali people smugglers, both of whom, given the opportunity, have turned pirate in the past. Often they raid yachts with terrified refugees still crammed aboard, huddled in the bottom of the open boats while their ‘saviours’ wave around AK-47s. After much research, we know our best chance of passing without attack is to sail through the danger area – about a hundred nautical miles between longitude of 047 degrees to 049 degrees east – on a moonless night, without lights, without using the VHF radio, mid-week, at least fifty miles from Yemen, and 200 miles from Somalia.

  Soon after leaving Kochi we use the long-range radio to join ‘the Red Sea Net’, an informal group of about fifteen boats headed for Salalah and then the Red Sea this season, and start exchanging information each day at appointed times. We hope to be able to form a convoy with two to four other boats for the transit.

  It takes thirteen days to get to Salalah, a journey distinguished by twice being becalmed (once for two days), a number of storms, the usual number of maintenance issues, a collision with two small pilot whales who immediately dive out of sight, and some spectacular bioluminescence shows at night. One pod of dolphins that passes us is so vast their hordes of leaping bodies take up the whole ocean as far as the eye can see.

  It’s the birds, as usual, that herald our approach to the coastline – white flocks gliding low in the distance. Then, out of a dust haze, immense yellow mountains appear to the north. They’re sixty kilometres away, but they’re so high it looks like six.

  In the last few miles, dust falls onto the salt-encrusted deck and cabin top, and the boat becomes dusty-salt-caked all over. Entering the port we can hardly see the other shore for the dust. There’s not a sign of a tree in any direction, just sand-coloured flat-topped buildings against a background of haze.

  We already know that Oman, housing around 2.5 million citizens with an extra workforce of around half a million imported Asian labourers, has less than one per cent of arable land, the rest being desert. It’s ruled by a sultan, but it is more forward-looking than many of its Arab neighbours – maybe it’s a necessary forwardness, as its oil reserves are dwindling. Oman produces dates, limes, bananas, alfalfa, vegetables, camels, some cattle and some fish, but must import the balance of its supplies. Apart from crude-oil production and refining it has branched out into liquefied natural-gas production and other industries: construction, cement, copper, steel, chemicals, optic fibre. So it’s not surprising to see that the port is busy with many merchant ships. What is surprising is the number of warships towering above us from the US-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’, the force which patrols the region because of the war in Iraq. We grab binoculars and strain to identify the flags – British, French, Italian, Spanish and, most amazing, not one but four Japanese warships.

  We are instructed to go to the small yacht harbour. The rocky bottom means it takes eight attempts before our temperamental CQR anchor holds against a strong pull (1500 revs) in reverse gear. Yes, we are learning . . .

  Soon we meet the yacht ‘agent’. Abdullah is a well-built six-foot-six African, his smile a white shock in his very black face. He strides around the dock in a long, flowing, snow-white dasha with head-wrap trailing in the wind, a different colour for each day of the week. From the neck down he looks like an escaped granny in her nightdress, and from the neck up he looks like a pirate, but he makes the bureaucracy soft and easy.

  The town of Salalah is seven kilometres away via a six-lane highway almost devoid of cars. Whenever we want, a minibus is organised for provisioning expeditions, and we are able to observe the life here.

  In the streets during the day, boys play football in the laneways after school, old men sit in coffeehouses smoking shisha pipes, younger men wander along chatting, or stride purposefully. However, there’s not a woman or girl anywhere. I think about those unseen girls – indoors, all their small lives. What do they think as their brothers race into the street to play? Even the supermarkets are mostly frequented by male shoppers. These supermarkets display lush and exotic goods, but only the occasional ghost in flowing black shrouds drifts silently among the men.

  One day I share a coffee with another cruiser in a small restaurant. While listening to the conversation, my attention is taken by the men over her shoulder, all wearing swathes of dirty clothes, who, faced with what seems like a chicken and rice dish, grab handfuls and stuff the food into their mouths. The food dribbles between their fingers as they clutch and squeeze the soft mush, and their mouths, cheeks and chins are smeared with oil. Watching, repelled but fascinated, I find myself gagging.

  I grow more conscious of the other diners. There are no women besides us, and there is no laughter – almost as though it were impolite to smile or laugh – and the men eating with their fingers ogle us from time to time surreptitiously. I begin to feel uncomfortable, and am glad that our transport car is waiting outside.

  I refocus on our conversation. My friend is telling the story of an Omani woman whom she had met in Europe. ‘It is my dearest wish,’ the Omani woman had said, ‘to marry a European man – any European man. Why? Because in Oman, even if a wife does nothing bad during the day, she will still have a fifty per cent chance of being beaten by her husband in the evening.’

  I return to the boat with a burden of sadnesses – for the women I can’t see in the streets, for the Omani woman with ambitions to marry a European just so she won’t be beaten.

  We go touring with Abdullah as guide, driving the coast roads dug into high cliffs. They wind around headland after headland, and far below we can see beaches and some grass in the valleys. The mountains are parched, with Bedouin-
owned camels roaming wild. Sometimes camels walk with their minders, wizened old men or young boys in shabby robes with crooked sticks in their hands. We visit a camel farm, but the miserableness of the shacks and fences and squalor of the kids with matted hair make it difficult to concentrate on the camels.

  We enjoy the experience of hubbly-bubbly or shisha water pipes in a restaurant one evening, escorted by Abdullah and his Dutch girlfriend. Here, as a group of eight, we watch as stern, unsmiling men arrive with their black-robed and veiled women. They sit at a table. Then, when the food is to be served, the waiters scurry to place high screens around each table so that the women can remove their face covering enough to eat the meal. Every other table in the restaurant is eventually surrounded by screens. We continue to eat and laugh alone.

  Just outside the security gate of the port, on a hill with a pleasant view over the harbour and coastline, the Port Authority of Salalah has built a ‘club’ – the aptly named Oasis Club – in the middle of this ‘strictly no alcohol’ country. With an excellent Western-style restaurant, Sky TV, outdoor barbecue area and a number of pool tables it is the hangout for the crews of the Western warships and, naturally, for the yachties. Hordes of Japanese sailors play pool as they laugh and drink, but staying vertical is not one of their greatest skills after a few hours at the club. We are slowly getting used to such extraordinary contrasts, taking each day as it comes.

  A flurry of boats are to leave on Saturday, us among them. The moon is waning, and we’ll pass through the danger zone mid-week, when the nights will be moonless. The tension between the twelve boats due to leave the port is palpable.