Name
Whichever
way you go,
Old
legends will beckon,
Ram,
Laxman, Sita
And
the stories are reborn
As
if, Ayodhya, Mithila lies
Here
on this very isle
Lanka,
Kishkindha perhaps
A
further few more mile
A
little bit of myth
And
religion in these names,
Ah,
we lesser mortals
And
all our silly games
The
sacral texts all reckoned
To
name stretches of sand
Yet,
the islands named on sons
Born in a different land
Perhaps
legends they were as well,
Neill,
and Havelock too
Soldiers
on their duty
Faraway
from this blue
And
as Raghav showed the way
That
duty’s above all
We
should forgive these men
Who
came to their country’s call
They
do exist in harmony though
The
names don’t care or feel,
Ramnagar
and Bharatpur
In
the island that of Neill…
15th
June, 2024
When
I first landed on Neill Island and looked at a map of its beaches, I was struck
by their names – on the four directions of the tiny island lay the beaches of
Ramnagar, Sitapur, Bharatpur and Laxmanpur. I was already overwhelmed by Radhanagar
in the earlier island pitstop at Havelock. And yet these islands themselves were
named after soldiers who fought for the East India Company in the Sepoy Mutiny
of 1857. Henry Havelock and James Neill died during or just after the Mutiny in
Kanpur and Lucknow, and were remembered far away on these little islands. Yes, Havelock
and Neill Islands have recently been renamed to Swaraj and Shaheed Dweep,but
the anglicised names are still more popular.
As
I was strolling about in Laxmanpur Beach, I realised though that the everyday
locals here would neither know nor remember the men whose names decorate their
homelands. But then, does it even matter? If they are at peace, who are we outsiders
to judge?
More
importantly, do the names even matter? The waves continue to caress the white
sands, as they have done so for millennia – they do not care about the
judgemental monikers of a species that exists for a blip of a second in
the eternity of their existence…
Cover Image - Laxmanpur Beach, Neill Island
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