Hawaii Alias Air Mother

We boarded the ship ‘Pride of Aloha’ on 25^th February 2006 and sailed the same day from Maui Alias Mawshi (Maternal Aunt) towards Kaui alias Kaku -Ai (Paternal aunt). Lahanai (Younger Mother) and Molokai (Elder Mother ) were left on our wake.

Pride of Aloha

I have always felt a kinship towards the Polynesian. No, not ALL Polynesians, but only the ‘good’ ones. There were Polynesians, who were cannibals. There were Polynesians who regarded shrunken heads of their enemies as highly desirable 'objects-de-art'  to decorate their homes with, and like true connoisseures, would kill to get one; and there were Polynesians who were plain vanilla pirates. I do not feel any kinship with them, but I do feel a kinship when I come across any Polynesian word, which clearly has Sanskrit roots, and there are so many of them. The names of the islands as well as the names of their royalty – “Kamahemaha(Kam-Greatest of the Great), Lilauti (Lilawati), Kala Kaua (Black Crow) are reminiscent of their Sanskrit or Hindi counterparts.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia

This link will give more authoritative information about Polynesia, of which Hawaii is one island group. It does not mention anything about Indian origin, but then this is MY blog, isn’t it? So, I WILL write about what I think about the origin of these “loan-words” in the Polynesian languages, and my hypothesis is that these loan-words establish the general direction of migration as India>Indonesia>Polynesia>Americas over a period of thousands of years. How else do you explain names like ‘Montezuma’(MauktiKusuma i.e. Pearl in the Flower in Sanskrit) or ‘Copan’ which is just Sopan (Staircase in Sanskrit)?

Oahu Coast

Smart people !! They took the easy way to USA. They just sailed across 4000 miles of ocean in their frail boats to USA, instead of taking the much harder route of GRE-TOEFL-I 20 form-MS-PhD-H1B visa-Green card-citizenship.

Unfortunately, we have our limitations. We cannot sail on a balsawood raft from Chile to Rarotonga like Thor Heyerdahl, nor can we sail a catamaran from Tahiti to New Zealand using stellar navigation alone without instruments like Dr David Lewis did. What we COULD do was to take a cruise of the Hawaiian islands and that is what we did.

Waterfall Kauai

However, it was not all that simple. I generally find the longitude and latitude of a place to exactitude as well as the altitude to determine whether we have the fortitude to reach there, and was sitting with an atlas spread before me.

“Why, the Hawaiian Islands have almost the same latitude as Mumbai. The weather will be similar” I said.

“Why do you want to go there spending so much money? I will take you to Elephanta instead.” My husband said.

“But we will be able to see live, red-hot lava” I said.

“What is lava anyway? Just molten iron, isn’t it? I will take you to a foundry and you can see molten iron to your heart’s content” he replied.

We can also see whales” I said, thinking, this was an irrefutable point.

“See that goldfish in the goldfish-bowl? Just multiply its size by ten thousand and you have your whale. One fish is just like another anyway” he said.

Can you argue with that kind of logic really? I decided not to argue.

I adopted my ‘Ernie, The Terminator’ stance, narrowed my eyes and looked him sternly in the eye. “I will go” I said firmly.

“OK” he capitulated with a sheepish grin. “But, you will be Back, right?” He added.

After 35 years of married life, one DOES know how to handle a recalcitrant husband.

Blowhole Kauai

Preparation for the cruise was going on for three months at our own pace, but when we tried to book the cruise through well-known Indian travel agents, we came across a snag. None of them had a procedure to book the cruise. Some of them had no idea that such a cruise exists, though all of them were familiar with the Star cruises. At long last, we had to book the cruise through our son-in-law in USA.

We boarded the ship in the afternoon at Maui. We had booked a hotel near the docks for the previous night and spent the morning in shopping at KahumanuShopping Center.

For those interested, I am giving the link below which will give them more information

about the ship and the cruise.

http://www.ncl.com/

This was our first experience of an ocean cruise and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Each day, we visited a new island, went on a shore excursion and watched a show in the evening. The food too was superb. We tried all the restaurants, but found that it takes much more time to eat in restaurants, so we preferred to eat at the buffet. The ship’s services were staffed mostly by students on their summer jobs so there was a youthful atmosphere on the ship despite the majority of octogenarian passengers.  

Hawaii Kona

We were the only Indians on board the ship.

Each island of Hawaii deserves a separate travelogue. The BigIsland probably deserves two, but we could not dock at Hilo. It was raining, and there was a strong swell (what is this?) so the ship moved away from the shore. So, perhaps, I will write only one travelogue on Hawaii. However, I will just mention here in passing that the sight of red hot lava pouring down the cliff into the sea was a most awesome spectacle, and that is the reason we were on the ship. This river of lava started flowing since 1983 and is continuing since then.

There were a lot of activities on board the ship. The swimming pool was always crowded, the bars were always overflowing, the library was being patronized by quieter sorts, and for four days of the week, Kavika, the Hawaiian Ambassador reigned supreme in our Hula dance class and the afternoon handicrafts class.

Kavika was a good teacher, though he was a not Hawaiian. He did not speak Hawaiian, and his ancestry was mixed, like most of the population. He taught us, a bunch of ladies in their sunset years and one lone old Japanese man, Hula dancing and bore the burden manfully.

Thursday night was the BIG EVENT. We gave a most memorable performance of Hula before our admiring audience (mostly our husbands). The dress was casual and we wore flower wreaths on our heads and leaf bracelets and anklets. Even the Japanese man danced with us.

'Nylon' Pine Maui

The next day, I went searching for Kavika. He was our dance Guru and I wanted to give him a small present as ‘Gurudakshina’. He was nowhere to be found. When I asked the staff about his whereabouts, they told me that he had jumped ship and gone ashore. He had decided to go back to his traditional occupation of hunting and fishing.

I fervently hope that his decision had nothing to do with our performance of the previous night.

Later, in Detroit, my 6 year-old grand daughter and myself painted a large cardboard box with flowers and pasted ‘Pride Of Aloha’ on it in bold letters. We sailed the Hawaiian Islands in that box, (i.e. she would sit in the box and I would drag it to different corners)

went on shore excursions, and danced Hula.

We enjoyed this make-believe cruise more than the real one.