Reflections

The Komodo island  Ben, in the meantime filled us in with information about Flores and the surrounding islands. He is a huge fan of the President, Joko Widodo, crediting him with trying to develop the far off provinces of Indonesia instead of concentrating only on Java and Sumatra as, he claimed, earlier incumbents did. Ben is Catholic, which, he said, was the main religion in Flores. The name itself came from the Portuguese for flower and it was Portuguese missionaries who had converted his forefathers from their pagan religion.   The economy depended on fishing and agriculture, coffee and spice plantations were the lifeblood, though paddy was also grown extensively. The languages also differ, even from region to region within Flores. According to Benjamin, it may be difficult sometimes for somebody from the eastern part of the island to understand the dialect spoken in the West. Nowadays, tourism is becoming an important part of the economy and is being encouraged...

I am blogging after almost a year's break. Sorry for the interruption as they used to say on Indian TV in my younger days. I hope now to be regular in my updates.  It was in the eighties that I first saw the Komodo dragon in a David Attenborough documentary in Doordarshan, then India’s only television channel. I am not sure which series it was. It was perhaps “Wildlife in One” or maybe it was not; no matter. The point is that the sight of these ‘dragons” captivated me and since then I nurtured what was then an impossible dream of seeing these animals somewhere: perhaps in a zoo? It never occurred to me in those pre liberalization days that I may be able to travel to the Komodo Island to see the dragons in their natural habitat. When I came to Malaysia, I realized that it was within the bounds of possibility that I may be able to make my dream come true. But it was only this year that my daughter who lives in Singapore planned and organized  the trip of which I am writ...

I was flying to Jakarta for the second time in less than a month. This time I was at a window seat and the sky was clear. Under such circumstances the flight can be really enjoyable as you can see the islands of the Indonesian archipelago floating, as it were, on a turquoise sea. There are over three thousand islands, I gather, that make up Indonesia, many of them stamp sized and often uninhabited. You can see several of them as you fly down to Java, one of the principal islands and the site of its capital Jakarta. The countryside (as seen from the air) around Jakarta is very familiar. There are cultivated fields, large waterbodies all very reminiscent of Bengal. Jakarta airport is like most South East Asian airports modern, efficient, but not so crowded. The visa on arrival process took all of three minutes and I was waved into Indonesia with a smile. The luggage took ages to arrive, and I always suffer from agonies of apprehension if my luggage is a little late to arrive, wondering ...