Rising sea levels caused by global warming may or may not yet sink the Maldives but the weight of Mumbai celebrities who visit it in a revolving door selfie-fest most likely will. Every other day a Mumbai movie star lands on the island in hunt for a yet un-Instagramed (not a word but coined here) corner, drops down to the bare minimum by the spectacularly turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean and gets selfied.
As perhaps the first Indian journalist who extensively reported the threats to the Maldives of submergence under sea water in 1990, I sometimes feel delusionally proprietorial about the islands. I have zero reason to feel that way but I do feel that.
That year I traveled as part of the press corps accompanying then Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh. Journalists were accommodated in a high-end beachside resort on Bandos if memory serves. I remember the first night on the resort after the day’s reporting, lazing by the ocean under a breathtaking sky of the kind I had never seen before. It was deep dark blue sequined with stars which seemed so unreal that for a moment I thought I was inside a planetarium. For about an hour I did absolutely nothing other than staring at the Indian Ocean’s sharply defined horizon slicing the sky in the distance.
The next day I went to the office of the island's environment ministry in the capital Male' because one of the officials had told me about the existential threat posed by the rising sea level. My fellow journalists were not particularly interested in the story. They were more interested in shopping which in those days of a pre-economic liberalization India was quite an attraction. Male' had shops that carried “foreign” goods.
The prediction by environmental officials of the Maldives government then was dire. As I look over three-decades back it is heartening that the island nation has not yet gone under. That is where I fear that the weight of all manners of Mumbai celebrities might speed up that process even without most of their clothes.
The Maldives sure does not mind celebrity visits because they bring in tourism revenues. They might as well make the most of its pristine beaches until such time as they sink, if they sink.
