|
 The Ross Island was once a small, sleepy island with dense jungles, intertwining creepers, thick foliage and grandfather trees. In 1858, British ships arrived on its shores to make it their administrative headquarters. Almost overnight, the island was transformed into a thriving imperial settlement with mansions, churches and recreational areas. Numerous trees and gigantic creepers were usurped and marauded to erect this colonial fantasy.
Less than a century later, a massive earthquake in 1941 forced the British to relocate their headquarters at Port Blair. Nature spewed all its pent-up fury and devoured these human edifices in no time at all.
Today, yet again, the Ross Island is teeming with intertwining tropical creepers. This time around in their crushing embrace are the relics of human intervention.
The island bears a haunted look and as one sets foot on it, something stirs within - a feeling of melancholy or fear perhaps. The atmosphere around lends you images of a forgotten past - a bygone era of romantic evenings and enormous ballrooms where people danced to lilting music; of colonial atrocities where convicts and aborigines were meted with numerous cruelties. 
Colonial structures strewn across the island are reminiscent of the opulent Imperial lifestyle. In its prime, the island housed an ice-making factory, a brewery, a church and graveyard, a swimming pool, tennis courts and a cricket pitch, besides other sprawling buildings that were homes to British officers. The chief commissioner’s residence with its huge gardens and grand ballroom was perhaps the most lavish.
As you walk around the island, you will come across small huts that were used to imprison convicts and the aborigines. The island was colonised by the British mainly for use as a penal settlement, where the aborigines were trapped as hostages to ensure good behaviour on the part of the others of their tribe.
 A small settlement of the Indian Navy and some deer are the only inhabitants of the island now, besides the imposing creepers of course. As one goes beyond the stories and relics, one is filled with a sense of awe and reverence for the powerful force of nature, which in this case, has fought back its past splendour!
|
