.....the Ide's of March.....passing very peacefully here as of date...as I pen down the latest.....this being the Election Year & a new found Democracy... there is jockeying & positioning for the Apple pie of Sept.instant...with a small community interspersed in 240 plus habitated Islands out of a nearly 1800,the demography concentration is in a handful few & the majority remotely & sparsely populated..its a logistic wonder & a nightmare in the same breath I must say....!....the undersea ridge extending frm far south of the Chagos Islands to India's Laccadives thru Maldives is the seat for these coral pearls of an archipelago.....so 8yrs.frm now,whn the Dash8 aircraft  flew frm Male' late eve with our 103kg of baggage load,flying low :the sea simmering over the moonlit nite,the moon appeared a handshake away as it was fulmoon,heading down south....220kms frm Male'....little Doel & Archana peered thru the panes to identify twinkling lites of a few Islands we flew past down south.....the moon menacingly near...as it is seen in the Doldrums : the latitude....!!!....shaking of all timidity we landed tht late evening in a Southern Atoll Island to be our abode in the nxt few mths....!!!...to chalk out a coarse of history....& tryst with Destiny.....!!(...to be Concluded...)