Steep cliffs of the eastern coast of Tillanchong

We were camping on an uninhabited island called Tillangchong. The island has always remained a mystery even to researchers as getting access is very difficult. That’s why we chose to come here.

The island has about 5 bays, and in each of these bays extends a reef, and these reefs surface in low tide as they start from the low tide line at a depth of less than one meter and extend all the way into deep waters as deep as 25 meters. The island is about 100 km away from Camorta, in Central Nicobar. The narrow stretch of island has a mountainous terrain, and dense forest estimated at about 80-85 percent forest cover. My aim, in the visit to this island, was to evaluate the biological efficacy of the traditional management systems that exists in and around this island.

For several years, the coastal land of this island has yielded coconut plantations which are traditionally harvested by the villagers of Kakana district in Camorta and Trinket Island in the month of March. During the rest of the year the only other inhabitants are Thai or Burmese poachers, reputed to roam with sophisticated weapons and steal from people or kill on sight. Rumours float around that they are powerfully built and in their own country they are often thieves, murderers, major mafia figures and even former warlords. We have always been warned to be extra cautious while working on this island.

We had arrived four days ago on an expedition to survey corals and sea grass. We reached the island during the early hours of the morning, cleared the camp site, set the fire and put up the tent. That morning we walked along the beach and collected plenty of flotsam. In the afternoon we stretched out under the shade of large Pandanus trees along the shore when at a distance we sighted a dinghy headed straight for us. “These are Burmese poachers,” Emanuel said based on the years of experience to this island, “And as far as I know they are here to poach sea cucumbers.  They won’t harm us and will try to befriend us.” The dinghy stopped 100 m from our camping site and we all ran into the woods. We watched them through the leaves and they watched us through their binoculars. We did not move, they waited and waved at us and after 15 minutes continued their boat ride.

The next day we set off to survey the east coast of the island. We had just moved around the first head rock when we sighted the same dinghy of the previous day. Elrika insisted that we turn back but after contemplating we decided to move on. As we neared, we saw five men busy fishing under the hot sun. Elrika being the only girl on the boat decided it best to go unnoticed. She hid inside the hatch. The poachers looked at us and waved, and we waved back. They were calling us towards their boat; we signalled that we would come later. That afternoon we surveyed the entire eastern coast and got back to our camp late in the evening. That night I did not sleep well and had strange dreams of being attacked. A couple of times I heard the sound of their dingy and hoped that that would not turn to reality.

A rocky outcrop at the southern tip of the island

On the third day we cast off to survey the west coast of the island, a vital part of the island with mountainous volcanic-like terrain and beautiful corals. We raced down the vast blue-green water and headed north of the island. The tropical sun was hot and I felt it burn my skin even through my shirt. Sea birds were dancing along the shore. The water was crystal clear and the sun’s reflection through the water made it even brighter. We were diving and following standard procedures of data collection. Our boat was anchored close to the shore and Emanuel, Euriel and Cain were waiting on the boat.

We finished our dive and as we surfaced, Emanuel screamed “look there are men on the shore”. We got onto the boat and looked carefully. Three men were walking on the nearby shore. Yoayela started the boat engine and we approached the shore. We anchored the dinghy 100m away. Elrika hid.

Near the den of the poacher’s camp; their dinghies almost camouflaged

As we neared, the men ran taking shelter in the coastal forest. We spotted many heads. “They are Burmese and this is their camp site” said Emanuel. We waited for 10 minutes and signalled them to come out. We scanned the shore and at one end we saw 2 camouflaged dinghies. We were curious and we decided to go closer. As we neared, six men appeared from the forest. We stopped the engine and anchored the boat. They waved at us and called us onto the shore. Yoayela, our Karen (a Burmese tribe) field assistant was confident of making conversation as he knew a few words of Burmese. So Emanuel and he jumped into the water and swam toward them while we watched from a distance. Emanuel and Yoayela reached, and the men encircled them. In a while, they were shaking hands and communicating. The Burmese took them to one side of the shore and they sat down in a circle on the sand.

By now curiosity was killing me. I wanted to get to the shore but Elrika stopped me. I had to take a decision. Where would I ever get such an opportunity to meet them again…but a bit of fear held me immobile – What if they kill me? It’s a reasonable risk, I knew. But I couldn’t resist the temptation. “Okay I’m going”, I told myself sternly. I took a packet of biscuits and swam to the shore – for a brief instant I felt heroic.

As I neared the beach, two men approached me with a broad smile; I shook hands with them and gave them the packet of biscuits.   The shorter man kept one hand at all times around his machete slung behind him across his shoulder. He looked at me through the top of his cold, killer eyes and hit his hand on his chest pronouncing loudly: “I am Burma.” In response I hit my hand on my chest and said “I am India”. A tattered T-shirt hung from his muscular shoulders, and a dirty round cap was perched on his angular face. “Tenha yistin yealak” said he and started walking (I got here only yesterday and it took us five days to reach this island). I nodded my face and walked with them. The people at a distance seemed suspicious of my presence. They thought I was from the Navy or Police. But as they saw me closely, they were convinced. So far, so good, I thought. We all shook hands and sat down.

Some of them were comprehensively, celestially and magnificently stoned. They looked at me closely, inquisitive and uninhibited. They tried my snorkelling gear and touched my T-shirt, my curly hair and the tuft of long hair hanging at the nape of my neck. There was nothing invasive about these moments, since they arose from pure and untainted inquisitiveness. One of them climbed a nearby coconut tree, plucked tender coconuts and cut open a few and offered them to us. We soon got involved in a conversation. I realised Yoayela was interacting fluently with one man. His name was Saw Athoo and he too knew the Karen language.  So Yoayela and Athoo played the role of respective translators. He then sought to explain about me to the others by recounting how good I was and that I had met other Karens and he also made up a story about me being adopted and brought up in the Nicobars.

Yoayela, asked them why they chose travelling such a great distance illegally into foreign waters over finding means to earn money back in their hometown. Saw Athoo explained, “Our paddy fields have been submerged due to cyclones and other calamities. Half of the produce from the remaining land has to be given to our government. We are therefore left with no option but to travel foreign waters as it fetches more money to support our families”. I could not help thinking of the differences in our existence. When his family needs he must depart on a tiring dangerous journey. At home, I pop down to the local supermarket and in minutes I can find almost anything I want, although I rarely contemplate the convenience of this luxury.

We spoke of religion, politics, climate, economics, culture, marine life and life in general between the two countries, Yoayela and Athoo translating. We spent almost 1 hour together. As we were ready to leave, the short man gave me a 25-liter jerry can with diesel and said “this is Burma gift.” I refused to accept the gift but he insisted that I take it. In return, I had nothing to offer except my sincerest thanks, once again we shook hands and we swam back to the boat. Back on the boat, Elrika and the others were waiting anxiously. I was bombarded with questions and I answered them all. This was a happy day for me. I had interacted and shared a bond of friendship with strangers who are notorious for their acts.

Friends or foes?

The next day we surveyed the eastern part of the island and the bay where we were camping. At around 4 in the evening I walked through the forest to the small pond to take a much needed cleaning, with Elrika following. I was walking fast in the forest to avoid the mosquitoes waiting to feast on me. All of a sudden, I felt something strike my toe. I continued to walk but just managed to take a few steps and felt a bit uneasy. I sat down to examine the prick on my toe. I thought the thorn of a Pandanus leaf had lodged into my skin. There was a sudden excruciating pain and I could see a drop of blood trickle down. I held my foot tight in agony. Elrika ran toward me with a stick and moved the beast that was all ready to strike again. A sudden fear gripped me; I realized that I was just bitten by a Pit Viper. Elrika calmed me down and suggested that we get back to the camp as quickly as possible. I limped my way back and though the distance was not more than 200m, the path seemed never ending. I reached my tent and slumped on the ground, exhausted.

My new fear

Elrika called out to everyone and told them about the incident. Within minutes Yeaoyela, Euriel, Cain and Emanuel arrived – and the pace of action accelerated. Emanuel looked worried but at the same time he was calm and composed. He ran into the forest and got some jungle medicines, while Yeayola ran to the boat and got the machete. Meanwhile I kept myself busy recounting the details of the incident. In five minutes Emanuel was back with a bunch of leaves. Slowly he squeezed the juice out of those leaves on my entire foot. By now the toe was turning blue and we realized the importance of a lesion in order to let out the venom. Emanuel ordered me to hold my foot and he set off to make a tiny cut with the machete. I was scared. Common sense screamed, “Allow them to make the slit,” but the pain triggered my instinct to react otherwise.  I held my fist tighter and pushed everybody away. Repeated attempts were made to convince me but I was reluctant. Finally I took the needle and pierced myself.  Few drop of blood oozed out. I wiped out the blood but the foot continued to turn blue.

I could see the fear in Elrika’s eyes that manifested into anger because of my stubbornness. “VARDHAN! DO YOU WANT TO LOSE YOUR LEG?” she had the shaft of her hand stretched across my shoulder blade, pushing her weight against mine to pin me down, “Gangrene, Vardhan, that’s what it’ll lead to if you don’t treat it now!” Yoayela turned to her about to say something. He turned back to me, then turned to her and popped the question: “Should we take him to the poacher’s camp? It’s only a half hour away by dinghi.” He reasoned that there would be experienced elders who would be in a position to help me out. I saw the reservation in my heart reflected in Elrika’s eyes. They were Burmese…and poachers. We knew there were 22 of them, of which we had earlier only met six – what if the leader decided to kill us; that they didn’t want us around. But the nearest island with medical facilities was six hours away by boat. It was unanimously decided that I should be taken to the Burmese camp. Emanuel carried me to the boat. Yoayela and Cain started the boat engine and once again we were set off to meet the poachers. It had already turned dark and the only sound I could hear was the thumping of the boat engine and my heart beats, loud and clear, anxious to reach the destination of hope. I was watching the stars and holding my foot tighter. The pain was getting unbearable. I was counting every minute. Though I knew, I quietly asked Emanuel “How long will we travel?”

Forty minutes later, we were at their camp site. We anchored close to the shore and waited for some time. A group of poachers came to greet us on the shore. On seeing Emanuel carry me across the sand they realised something was wrong. Yoayela, explained to them about the snake bite. They examined my toe and tied a tourniquet below my calf muscle. They offered their shoulders for support while I limped along a winding path through the coastal forest that seemed to have no end. All the way they calmed me down and assured me that I would be fine. Mosquitoes and sand flies were having a feast on my poisoned blood.

Through the twists and turns I saw the light of their camp growing stronger and brighter till I was sure we’d reached their den. It was an open space, a clearing of almost 250 square meters – quite a surprise after the narrow winding path. On the left stood a wooden platform on stilts, 2 men stood at the edge of the platform boiling sea cucumbers in metal drums below. Their faces were blazing with the burning fire that made them sweat profusely. One of them smiled at me and came closer while the other continued working. On the right were three large wooden structures on stilts. The walls of these structures were made of bamboo mats. I was soon encircled by men and everybody seemed concerned. They were all talking a language that was difficult to understand but soothing to the ears. I was so amazed at the site that for a moment I forgot about the pain. Not for long.

I was offered to sit on a nearby platform next to a leathery old man. He was smiling, a distinct vast smile that covered almost half his face, as if he had been frozen in the middle of a belly laugh. When he learned of my misfortune, his expression changed to a strange mix of pride and worry. The wrinkles seemed to steady his hands with experience…or was it really mine they were steadying?

He put his hand on my chest and told me to calm down. He offered me water, lit a cigar, and immediately set to work. He instructed the others to hold my foot on the ground while he burned the area around the snake bite with the lit cigar. Emanuel, who had experienced my strength of resistance an hour earlier pinned my back into immobility between his knees and his arms, while three Burmese poachers held my leg down. Watching it made every jab of his burning cigar against my sensitised skin even more painful.

And then he applied some strong smelling balm which set my nerves ablaze. The old man wasted not a minute to heat the surgical blade which would slit a portion of my toe open; at one point I allowed hysteria to take refuge within me. Another man bit me, to remove the venom, but why was he hurting me? I wanted them to stop; just make it stop. And it did. The man stopped. I could hear, I could see, I could smell beyond pain. The pain stopped.

The old man believed in touch as the ultimate means of communion between man and man. He put his hand on my chest and assured me that I would be alright within a week. There was a confidence on his face and his touch. That touch from a stranger had a healing power. Suddenly I felt better. Later I was offered green tea and an energy drink. I gulped it down quickly. I offered my sincerest thanks to everybody around for getting the venom out of my body. One of them knew a few words of English. He asked me inquisitively, “What is your name,” and I answered. I asked him the same and he said “Pochala.” Later he asked me, “When Navy come?” I answered “I don’t know,” and told them, “You should not stay here and move away from here as fast as you’ll can”.

In a while, a pile of rice topped up with gravy was placed on my hand. We had to have dinner before we left the place. I looked at the pile of rice and looked at my watch. We had already spent 2 hours at their base camp and my thoughts were of Elrika. She was alone at the camp and it had turned dark. What must she be thinking? Will she be worried for our safety? Will she find the torch? What will she do sitting alone for so long? What if a wild boar or the crocodile whose tracks were found close to our camp attacked her in the darkness? I had to go back fast. Without hesitation I ate the entire chunk of rice. The food was spicy and tasty. I particularly liked the gravy and the meat pieces. Later I was told that the delicious meat was of a reptile – a Water-Monitor Lizard.

A water-Monitor lizard at the poacher’s camp

Having done that, I stood and said a final good bye to everybody. The old man decided to stay on at the camp. I looked into the old man’s eye and offered my thanks. I don’t know if he understood my feelings, but I guess my body language said everything that I had to say. He patted me on the back and I shook hands with him. Emanuel and Athoo gave me their shoulders and I limped to the shore as the others focused the torch on the small jungle path. The night was bright. I looked towards the water. Moonlight shattered on the water, shedding streaks in the crystal clear water. I was carried to the boat. I said a last good bye to my new friends that I may never meet in my lifetime. I thanked them a million times and I thanked my stars. In the minutes before the dingy started and spluttered away from the shore the short man I met first – the one who kept one hand on his machete while he shook mine with his free hand – held my hand once more and lightly squeezed them as a bond of friendship. I waved goodbye and continued till I could see them no longer.

Back at the camp Elrika was sitting alone on the shore, waiting for me and the others. I told her about all that had happened and she listened intently as if I was telling her a fairy tale. She was happy that they had got the venom out. I was tired and fell asleep in no time. That night I tossed and turned in my tent deliriously wandering through a dream world, alternately sodden with sweat and then racked with the intense foot pain. The morning brought no relief. We packed our tent and our bags. I was once again carried to the boat. In minutes the dinghy started and we moved further away from the island. The sea appeared wide and sluggish; I lay asleep on the boat on a pile of bags, with the hot breeze hitting my face. The sun seared my eyes; flares of cerise and magenta were steaming out of the island. I looked across rile and ruffle of the bay, I tried to fit my feelings within a frame of thoughts and facts. I thought of something my mother had once told me, “There is a kind of luck that is not more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that is not more than doing the right thing in right way, and both only happen when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself completely, to the golden, fate filled moment. I was never sure what she meant by “giving yourself to golden fate filled moment” but with this incident I understood what she meant. The entire experience shunned me and probably helped me to understand the dimension of humanity.

*For die-hard fans of Pink Floyd, a disclaimer that I have taken the liberty to caption pictures with some of their song titles—and have tweaked some of the song titles for my own happiness!

In the 1970s, Pink Floyd released the song ‘Pigs on the wing’ in the album ’Animals’. A youthful fascination for the song made me wonder then if pigs could ever fly. The answer is strangely enough ‘Yes’, only if you consider cockroaches to be piggier than regular pigs. Let me explain.

These thoughts came back to me recently as I stood listening to a bunch of nurses and hospital staff fervently singing ‘Hark the herald angels sing’. It was December of 2009 and we were all passengers on a cockroach-ridden ship returning to Port Blair from the Nicobar Islands. My mind wandered back to Floyd’s psychedelic fancies; cockroaches I imagined could be angels hovering above the bunch of men and women heralding in Christmas.

Sheep (after the sing song)

The tub we were on, the M.V. Sentinel, is an old ship still cutting water after more than 30 years at sea. She had been patched with ‘m-seal’ and coal tar over her rusty edges and then painted up to guarantee a certificate of sea worthiness. Her passengers were ostensibly human, but her main cargo seemed to be cockroaches, bed bugs, rats, and other scurrying creatures. The ships blowers and air conditioner gave up on that journey, and, as the crew’s bunks were located closest to the engine room, it must have been hell for them. I suspect it was to avoid a mutiny, that the Captain decided to let the passenger cabins be used by the crew, with only bunk and deck space available for passengers!

The MV Sentinel in all her resplendent glory docked at Kamorta jetty

I was returning from another bout of field work at three sites in the Nicobar Islands. The Islands are where I attempt to fathom the intricacies of natural resource use and management among islander communities in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. The Nicobaris lived along the coast, fishing, tending pigs and chicken, and harvesting their coconut plantations – the mainstay of their former economy. The coast harbored a host of natural resources and species within easy reach, some which were protected through local regulations and others through seemingly benign consumption practices. The Islands harbor biological diversity despite centuries of use by indigenous Islanders. Their unique management system has largely consisted of access to resources through permissions and sharing among and between themselves. Cheating was rare and strictly reprimanded. The tsunami not only reduced the available coastal resources, but also created unusual social upheavals amidst the rehabilitative process.

'Echoes' of squeals grunts and clucks from the past

My work in the Islands was stressful as I was constantly reminded of how the lives of the Nicobaris had changed after the tsunami unleashed its destruction four years ago. Uncertainty is the cloud that many Islanders travel on today. Soon after the event some were not sure what to make of their circumstances, with the damage caused by the tsunami and the deluge of rehabilitative aid thereafter. For others, this was the moment to amass some wealth by cadging any government largesse through compensation. For many others, the old life that they had been comfortable with made more sense and they patiently struggled to weave back those strands. Through all of these attitudinal shifts I try to understand how events have affected their sharing and cooperation patterns over the use of natural and domestic resources.

Shine on you crazy diamonds. - A dance session in celebration of a new house 2001

Understandably I was weary and the ticket on the old ship back to the base wasn’t a mood-enhancer. Given the condition of the ship, passengers had two choices, the company of bed bugs and cockroaches in steaming hot bunks below, or rats, cockroaches and the occasional bug for company on the airy deck. I’d been on this journey many times before and knew better than to meekly accept what lay in store. After loafing around on the deck till evening – passing time by staring into the blue sea and skimming through my book – I finally came across a friend, the Second Officer. I stored my precious equipment and belongings in his cabin and he kindly offered me a spare sofa to sleep on. Within minutes however, one of the ship’s bedbugs got to me! My friend handed me a few swigs of ‘Royal Challenge’ whisky saying, ‘Drink, you will soon be in a coma and the bugs will disappear!’ I hate the thought of a roach peering up my nostril, or cuddling up with a bed bug in bed. So I chatted with him till he went on to attend duties at the ship’s bridge and then hurried over to my preferred spot—the SOPEP locker on the upper deck! This is a large box containing life jackets, hoses, helmets and other paraphernalia to tackle pollution at sea; being an elevated region on deck, this was my safest bet.

Goodbye blue sky- at the far side, the remnants of Kakana village Central Nicobar

The dark side of the moon-plantations and coastal forests destroyed after the tsunami of 2004

Astronomy domine- at dusk before the stars take over

I laid myself comfortably and looked up at the ships smoke stacks puffing at the stars above. The eager hospital staff nearby were not finished with their carol singing. I imagined the angel Gabriel as a large cockroach descending upon them and lifting them to heavenly bliss twitching its feelers over them soothing them to sound sleep. I was the one who couldn’t sleep. Gabriel is also the name of one of my key informants from a Nicobarese village where natural resources were wiped clean by the tsunami. Survivors of the tsunami including Gabriel were relocated to the heights on a grassland on Kamorta Island as a precautionary measure, though other factors of livelihood were not considered in this monocular vision of safety after the tsunami. The grasslands are a beautiful landscape that is desolate as far as livelihood resources are concerned; given this predicament the villagers relocated to such regions have survived for the past five years on Government aid and dole. Gabriel is one of the few to bounce back and begin recreating some of what he lost.

On the turning away- Housing style post tsunami for nuclear families on the grassland

The majority lived in pecuniary delight for a while, given the flood of cash compensations and their inability to do much else on the grassland. They live distant from the coast now, with few canoes and functional boats. Fish are far to come by unlike in the past. Feeding their domestic pigs is now restricted to few days in a week, compared to the daily routine before. There are many more uncertainties ahead. I looked up above to see the moon obscured by a ghoulish and cottony cloud on its journey across the sky. The stars literally twinkled and danced about. I felt good on my elevated bed; safe, rocking free on the sea’s swell below the ship, breathing the clean cool air of the night. I didn’t have to worry about a livelihood on the grassland, or of what a governmental rehabilitation program meant, or of who stole coconuts kept aside to feed my pigs. Mosquitoes that come to life at dusk are normal; the heat of the day under tin roofed houses on the open grassland is abnormal. Life before the tsunami was lived under the shade of coconut palms on the beach, with the sea throwing up wonderful surprises on the shore each day, sometimes from distant lands. Rope, wooden planks, plastic or wooden toys, footwear from around the globe, containers of all types from the ubiquitous plastic water bottle to jerry cans and even biscuit packets that arrived every blue moon. There wasn’t much need to go shopping often, as the sea threw up different goods every now and then that could be put to some use or the other. It was possible to innovate with goods available for free on the shore. The rest of the world bought and used those goods, then discarded or emptied their bins into drains that led to the sea. The sea’s currents took over and distributed goods for all those along its shores. There is an old saying – the sea knows how to keep itself clean; what we throw into it, comes back on some shoreline. Islanders the world over and those on the coast have made best of these opportunities with the assortment of trash that washes ashore. Uses of this trash apart, seeing the mess on beaches only increases the disgust I have for urban spoils and chaos.

Welcome to the machine- in the days of wind and oar propelled canoes

Interstellar overdrive-a family waits on the beach to sail to their village

Meddle- a beached Akai television to look at yourself

Material goods came with colonizers from distant lands with the promise of development, but largely to make money and lives of people like themselves more comfortable. The locals were soon won over. The few shops in town were for special occasions when cash was available and rations had to be sourced for lean periods such as the beginning of the monsoon. Otherwise life on the coast was a wholesome existence. Fish and other marine life were within easy reach, coconuts with multiple uses hung just above and the tree’s fronds shaded comfortable stilt houses close to the beach. Many families lived together and ate from a common kitchen, now with ‘permanent shelters’ they all live separate and on cement floors. Around those former stilted homesteads, domesticated pigs squealed and grunted while chickens clucked and crowed providing daily life some percussion. The sea’s breeze kept spirits high along with toddy sessions at the ready for any occasion. Canoes slid into and out of the water whenever needed. There were few motorized boats (if at all) then and the putting of an engine would make every head turn to see who passed by or arrived. Life had surely changed with one tsunami.  For me, life on the SOPEP locker was good except for the thought of them pigs on the wing below.

Comfortably numb- a pleasant toddy session

Shifting my thoughts, I reflected on times when I had seen animals at sea. There were places where I saw real marine angels- manta rays gliding below the sea’s surface like dark shadows from the deep. Such sights were in contrast to the periscope like stare of saltwater crocodiles lying still on the surface of estuarine creeks. There were dolphins and sometimes porpoises that made an appearance while sailing, spinning or somersaulting out of the water or just popping around our dinghy smirking at us slowpokes. The grandest sight was a multitude, literally thousands of dolphins as far as my eye could see. This was when I sailed south to the Nicobar Islands more than a decade ago. It was some sort of mass migration that I’ve never seen again. The ship I was on seemed atom like amidst the sea of dolphins.

Learning to fly

'Hey you'- if you didn't believe that dolphins can smirk!

My biggest surprise was seeing Orcas in the Bay of Bengal one November in 1999. I was returning to the mainland for a short holiday, and saw large fins shearing the water’s surface and moving perpendicular to the ships path at dusk on our second day at sea. Only when I saw the large flipper of one of the males in the pod did I realize they were Killer whales. Seeing a sperm whale spouting into the sky at sea was very different from an occasion when an adult made its way into Port Blair harbor getting stuck and confused for two whole days until it oriented itself seaward and to freedom. Underwater life while snorkeling is another dreamy world of colour, grace and shapes as you glide above the reef peering through the confines of a mask. What’s seen on the surface is usually fleeting, ephemeral, and all about luck. I realized I was lucky to have seen these and more. I was safe from the ravaging cockroaches for now, and I turned myself to sleep.

The narrow way- part 3. Dolphins cavorting

It was the 25^th and I woke up to a beautiful early morning sky tinged orange and blue with a slight but cool breeze. The nurses and hospital staff were still asleep and I had my early morning peace. I sat up cross legged on my prop like crow’s nest, blinking myself awake. The silhouettes of the Andaman Islands were coming into view through the early morning haze. The ship heaved and pitched over a lazy swell taking us closer to urban Port Blair. I reflected on the short visit to my field sites, knowing that it could be a while before I got back again. I idealistically hoped that things would change in the Nicobar Islands and that life wouldn’t be lived on the grasslands forever. My ideal is the beach. Then my eye caught sight of a being below. Just a few yards away from the ship, a huge grey brown shape appeared on the surface, moving in an opposite direction alongside. I thought ‘shark’! but ….in a few seconds, I saw its flat tail and a rounded head that could belong to only one creature- a dugong! It drifted by without a care, being heaved by the swell of the sea and carried on a current past the ship’s wake. A few seconds more and it was gone. The early morning sun reflected off the sea’s surface obscuring any further view. This was it then! Hark the herald O angels! This was a beautiful and rare sight-and a total surprise. An obese but graceful animal that is rare to see was my sight of that morning. I smiled to myself; In the Andaman’s, as in other areas, dugongs are called ‘sea pigs’…nothing close to the notion of being mermaids of the sea, but certainly a lot better than those pigs on the wing. In retrospect those pigs on the wing were the reason I got to see the fat mermaid at the gates of dawn-yet another sight to remember!

See Emily play

The combination of ideas in this account may seem strange (the account is true by the way), but when I wrote them out, I realized that I happen to have a fancy for ‘living in the past’, and have lamented on the changes in lifestyle among the Nicobar Islanders. I do not turn back from that lament, but look forward to the surprises that lie ahead. Through my field research I have come across many instances of resilience among many friends and others islanders I meet. As every turn along the beach can turn up surprises, I do acknowledge that social and ecological processes do take unexpected turns-sometimes churning up beautiful versions of change.

Wish you were here

Our being here is a violation surely, another sacred space invaded in the increasing commodification of voyeuristic experience, and if I am not entirely uncomfortable with being part of this grave-diving party, it is because we are not the first ones here. The giant sweetlips, motionless above the drop-off gives us a patient, tired look as we disturb his hunting ground. There is a quiet disdain in his assessment: with lycra skins, plastic fins, silicone eyes and artificial respirators, we are more synthetic than organic, and rather inelegant aliens in his silent universe. I guess he knows from experience that if he tolerates our presence another hour, either our weak physiologies or our primitive technologies will force us to surface leaving the busy shipwreck to get on with the long, elaborate business of decay.

And as you surface, you look back once more at the wreck below.  From out in the blue the ship is a laceration on the face of the reef, a deep gash that starts at 17 meters and continues until it meets the breakers at the surface. The island of Minicoy has several such wounds on her reef face – steam ships that ran aground on trans-Indic voyages, carrying grain and cotton and spices and travellers between Europe and the Indies.  After 1885 the wrecks are less frequent after a lighthouse was erected on the southern tip of the island.  The lighthouse is manned still; the lighthouse keeper is a gentleman in the old manner – a self-styled naturalist, a collector of flotsam, keenly aware of the historical symbolism of his post, a proud custodian of his craft.  He accompanies us up the winding iron staircase of the lighthouse, and from this height you can just about make out where the wrecks of old wounded the reef before this tower was built.

Wounds heal.  After the grinding crush of iron keel on aragonite coral, after the life rafts are deployed and the passengers rescued, after the cargo holds are salvaged and the ship stripped of every useable part, the reef calls on its resources to try, as best it can, to repair the tear in its ecological skin.  The fish are the first to venture back, and for species that thrive on structure, a fresh wreck can be choice real estate.  The benthos takes a little longer.  Coralline algae will eventually cover the metal remains, and where there is coralline algae, coral is not far behind.  Slowly, the aragonite will grow back again, and although the scars will always show, the reef does its best to embrace the alien structure and make it part of its own complex framework.  Given enough time, the wreck is little more than a cicatrix on the bark of the reef, a mild blemish of rusting metal and flourishing coral.

The reef is good at mending bruises.  From its pre-Cambrian origins, it has spent most of its existence on a turbulent earth, shifting and gurgling with earthquakes and tsunamis, storms and high waves, extreme tides and shifts in temperature.  And by now the threats of ocean warming and El Niño events on coral reefs are familiar tropes to a media-suffused populace.  We have all seen, and  are perhaps even a little weary of those dramatic images of bleaching coral and dying reefs.

When a small disturbance scales up to catastrophe like this, the self-healing capacities of the reef are put seriously to test.  Yet even here, a healthy reef can recover.  Much is dependent on having good neighbours close at hand. If a few of these reefs escaped the big catastrophe, they can seed the bare spaces with coral. Like white blood cells to the site of a lesion, a flood of coral spat will descend on the spot made dead and vacant by the disturbance, and occupy every free space.  And if the reefs still have a fair complement of grazing herbivores – surgeonfish, parrotfish and the like – those opportunistic algae that can quickly bully out the coral will be kept under check. Given a period of relative calm, and this spat will quickly grow, engaging in a serious-as-death struggle with its compatriots for a space in the sun. Within a decade or so, the wound is mended.

Even in a healthy reef, scars remain long after the healing.  Some species of fish and coral may never recolonize a reef if their populations fail.  These absences often go completely unrecorded, because we often have no baselines to help us determine the loss.  The species that remain have strange demographies, dominated by young individuals, or with some ages completely missing from the population.  These populations, like some post-war generation of lost young soldiers, will carry the signature of this loss for a long time after the disturbance has gone.

Back down in the reefs of the Minicoy you can read this signature everywhere. Minicoy bears the burden of its isolation heavily when hit by large disturbances.  The once effulgent abundances of branching Acropora are there no longer, and you suspect (although you have no way of knowing) that many of the genus are probably locally extinct.  The coral that remain are either very large – survivors of the last mass bleaching – or very small – individuals that managed to recruit to the reef after the event.

As you descend to the wreck for one last time, you realise, that viewed in one way, the scornful dismal of the sweetlips on your previous visit, was actually a fair metaphor for the wreck itself.  Much like you, the wreck is a bionic entity – and after all these years, the identities blur between human and natural forging.  This is not new of course. The ability of coral to take human structures and make them its own is well known.  And it does not take long for us to wonder if this ability can be used to help reefs in the process of wound healing – hurry along a repair that would otherwise take decades.  It is a neat idea surely, and it appeals to the engineers in us.  We are a meddling lot, and it is difficult to leave well-enough alone. Already, on experimental and larger scales, there are efforts afoot to restore reefs through artificial means, using many of the same techniques the reef uses when dealing with a shipwreck.  Concrete blocks of different configurations are being cemented to the reef, waiting for recruits of coral to descend.  Complex electrified contraptions are being established, with the purported aim of encouraging calcium deposition.  For many, even these relatively passive means are not fast enough.  Nurseries of coral are being constructed, where coral from the reef is broken into bits and coaxed to grow into individual heads.  These will later be taken and cemented to the reef, to produce, in the reasoning of the coral nurserymen, instant reefs.

If I come across as a tad sceptical, it is not because I do not believe that these techniques of engineering reefs are a solution.  What I am not entirely sure about is what problem they are a solution for.  The dilemmas the reef face today from local and global pressures are complex ecological dilemmas, and trying to solve them with simple – dare I say, simplistic – engineering solutions is appealing surely, but almost certainly blinkered.  If it is our meddling that has brought reefs to the current brink of disaster, it is a vain presumption to believe that all it will take is a little more meddling to right those wrongs.  More seriously for me, it appears to absolve us of deeper responsibilities – to understand the underlying processes that drive the reef’s immune system in the face of disturbance and catastrophe, and to ensure that these processes are protected.  This takes more imagination of course.   It requires a certain humility to recognise the boundaries of our own accomplishments. And it requires an intellectual investment beyond cement and epoxy. In the absence of this knowledge, the future for reefs is uncertain. We are traveling without a lighthouse here, and shallow strands are everywhere.

A version of this post first appeared on the NDTV blog site.

My music player switched songs to ‘The Wind cries Mary’ just as my eyes wandered towards some trees. A speck of white on one of the tree trunks caught my eye. I looked again and noticed more white circles along the side of the tree trunk.  With a guitar wailing in my ears and my mind doing a scan of the bark for a possible critter, I moved closer to the tree. The white circles had more dimensions than I thought. They were eggs.

The gecko as 'nanny' of the brood

My mind instantly raced back to a rock crevice I had seen many years ago on a hill in Vellore. I had spent many years there during my childhood, exploring the hillsides and seeing lizards of all kinds—rock agamas, golden geckos, garden lizards, monitors, termite hill geckos, and of course common house geckos. Of these, the golden geckos got some scientific attention when the area became part of a range extension in their distribution across India. It was also here that I got to see gecko eggs cemented on the sides of a rock and learnt that this was how some geckos ‘nested’.

Back at Chowra, I walked up to the tree and gazed at the spherical moon-shaped blobs stuck on the tree trunk. There were eight in all, in four pairs, a little distance from each other. I wondered which gecko could have laid such large eggs when there was a movement next to the eggs and there appeared a flat-tailed gliding gecko (Ptychozoon nicobarensis). She was large and beautifully camouflaged against the bark, and obviously didn’t like the look of me, for when I took two pictures of her, she disappeared behind the trunk and out of view. I figured she was mom to those eggs. (Rom Whitaker later told me that she would have laid only a pair, and other females quite possibly laid the rest in pairs, as if in a nursery, with one female taking the responsibility as nanny of the brood.)

Despite my attempts to creep up behind her, she always had the advantage of stealth and camouflage and I had to return in the dark to get a few more pictures. In the evening, she was more approachable and decidedly more active in the comfort of the darkness. She hunted insects along the trunk, spotting potential prey, creeping over, and flicking her flat tail with a flourish, then leaping if need be to return to her perch to munch and swallow her food. She would then look out eagerly with her large eyes for more prey, licking her chaps in with a grin. This was my first brush with wildlife on Chowra (I had seen a few species of birds during the day, but the birds being finicky and airborne much of the time, I didn’t get a chance to observe most).

Gliding gecko hunting at night; note her flat tail.

A few days later, while interviewing a young Chowra couple—beautiful hosts who were the first to invite me to a lovely lunch of spicy fish curry with chillies and rice—we heard a screech and looked around to see children race out from near a young coconut tree where they were playing. They were pointing to a slithering snake on the branch. I left my notebook and lunged for the snake. It was a bronzeback tree snake but with unusual black blotches along its neck. Thin and graceful, it was all the more fascinating for its fearlessness at my approach.

The bronzeback snake

Within a few seconds, it calmed down and all I had to do was give it enough assurance that I was not going to do it any harm. I was the centre of attention, having grabbed a snake. ‘Paich’—the word for snake in Sanenyo, the language of Chowra Islanders—was uttered by everyone as more people came to see the commotion. They knew that it was a non-poisonous snake, but asked me why I wasn’t scared that it would try and get inside me through the orifices on my body—specifically the one in my rear! This was of course the strangest of thoughts, and I quickly dismissed it with a laugh. Snakes slithering through the anus—it was a strange but imaginative connection! Then I had a problem. No one was willing to help me photograph the snake by holding it while I took pictures. I resorted to holding it with one hand and the camera with the other. Thank god for auto-focus digital cameras! I got a few decent pictures before I released it onto the tree, after assuring the villagers of the snake’s decided non-preference for regions like human rears, nostrils and ears.

The snake slithering away (not through the anus!)

This was getting better—first a lovely and large flying gecko and then this gorgeous bronzeback. After a few days of fieldwork, I planned a visit to the swiftlet caves on Chowra. These were located on a cliff within a small forest. We trudged past a few plantations and kitchen gardens beyond the main village before entering the forest. At the base of the cliff, I was asked to wait along with a few others while the owner of the cave climbed up past the craggy rocks, using the roots of a Ficus tree draped over the cliff as handholds and footholds.  We followed suit and I took a host of pictures before we returned in single file to the forest floor. I was the last on the path, when a brown tail in a crevice caught my attention—snake?  All of us had placed our hands in this crevice, using it as a handhold while climbing up and down the cliff. I stopped and peeked in and saw a pit viper, its head resting on its coils, unmindful of our proximity or the use of its den. This was the best yet!

I had not expected to see a pit viper, because I was told they were quite rare on the island. I took as many shots as I could and didn’t disturb it with an intrusive scale count—thinking rather of showing the picture to people who were interested in taxonomy to find out which species of pit viper it was. I was happy and pleased that within just five days of ethnographic work on the island, I came across more than one species of herp. The wind cried ‘Mary!’ as Jimi Hendrix’s song played itself out in my first brush with the gecko, giving me luck and a song to play in my mind—making what was otherwise a focused field trip far more exciting than I’d expected.

The more we speak to people here, Manish and I, wandering from house to house with notebooks, Dictaphones and cameras, the more blurred the boundaries become between the Newtonian world I choose to live in, and the pragmatic metaphysical universe of symbol and myth that Chowra constructs for itself.  At one level the community is held together with some of the most far-sighted institutions – all rules, justice, equity and fair play, maintained by strong bonds of reciprocity and kinship.  At another, the island mindscape is sculpted deep with superstition and living myth.  Giant octopi. Vengeful, ship-wrecking fish.  Ghosts of drowned fishers that swim the reef.  Shamans and the power they can wield over a naïve soul.  And a host of complex ritual and belief that governs the calendar of the Chowra islander.  Christianity takes little away from this, adding yet another layer to this rich tapestry of symbol.

So, this evening, after Lenten Vespers (Abide With Me sung in Car Nicobarese), the islanders walked around the village bare-chested, with banana leaf garlands around their necks, their bodies smeared with pig blood.  Christ on the cross. The Lamb of God. Spirit into flesh. A slaughtered pig.  The 39 lashes. Flesh into spirit. Rites of spring.  All these curiously intertwined images made vividly real on the chiselled red glistening bodies walking around the village.

And just when you are ready to succumb completely to the tribal haze, the island generator comes on, and the bloody bodies all become transfixed to the television in the Tribal Council Chief’s house, watching a lurid Tamil film dubbed into Hindi.  Here too the homogenisation of cultures is proceeding apace.  As we walk back to our sad alien capsule on the border of the grasslands, every household we pass has a small gathering of families paying homage at the altar of their post-tsunami television sets.

And yet…

And yet…

A culture that still smears pig blood on their bodies as a part of their catechesis must surely be more resilient against the relentlessness of something as mere as the cathode ray tube.

Right?

Four and a half years after the tsunami, and it still dominates the land and daily discourse of Chowra.  Dead coral rubble and broken tree branches – rainforest and reef – intertwine together like a crown of thorns around the white sand circumference of the island.  The villages we walk through are dignified shanties, corrugated tin, slashed together with what scraps the islanders could salvage from their old homesteads. A shattered jetty.  Broken roads.  And the ubiquity of government contractors that descend on every disaster with their own particular government-sponsored recipe for decadence.  In the case of Chowra, they plan to relocate and reconstruct entire villages well away from the coast, making this an island that turns its back to the sea.  They are eating away at the central grasslands to build their planned concrete slum, replacing the romantic village roundhouses of grass thatch and wood with square characterless cement matchboxes.  Each family will be given a single nuclear house, thus breaking apart the complex joint clan structure that holds the community together.

Sitting in David’s house – makeshift roof and walls, half-a-century-old floorings – I wonder how long it takes for a community to completely recover from a catastrophe as large as the tsunami.  Somehow I am not convinced, as I eat the lovingly cooked meal that is offered us, that the government policy of providing free rice and lentils for five years running contributes any to this resilience.  Goodness of intent is often the mask behind which deadness of imagination hides.

Yet, through the washed-up, beaten-about flotsam village that Chowra appears to have become, it is clear that resilience is something less mensurable than tin roofs, broken roads and numbers dead.  Stripped of more than I can imagine would be bearable as a community, the island of Chowra responds with a self-possessed certitude in the strength of their community institutions in holding them together as a people.

The Chief Captain, Jonathan, is a man of very few words, but it is clear that everyone on the island reveres him.  He  politely welcomes us to his island, but equally politely conveys his suspicions to us and decides that for the time being, we are to be treated as ‘other’, and have to live in the government ‘guest house’ along with the other ‘others’.  It is a small, firm gesture, but it gives us a clear sense of where we belong in relation to this island.  David, worldly-wise, young, trilingual, is put in charge of us while we are here.

Last evening we spoke to the Tribal Council Chief about the Hokgnok system that provides the principle governance structure of the island.  The Hokgnok revolves around clan groups and plantations, and dictates the patterns of resource sharing within the community.  The small crowd that gathered around us spent over an hour describing for us the Panwahnot, the big Pig Festival that happens every year in November.  It appears to drive the Chowra calendar, and each Hokgnok gets its turn to take charge of the preparations, with help from the other Hokgnoks.  Preparations begin in March, with the preparation of orchards, and the repairing of houses and plantation fences.  When the time arrives, pigs, bananas, chickens, cloth and a variety of other festive items are gathered in large quantities for the start of the festival.  Fifteen days of dancing follow, and it all culminates in a big canoe race.

As they spoke, their eyes lit up with pride at the magnificence of their feasting but also at the strength of the community that allows them to pull it off.  There was something else in their voices as well which I could not completely understand until just before we left.  They spoke about the Pig Festival in a vibrant living tense. I asked them casually about the number of pigs they had killed in last years’ ceremony.  And that is when it came out.  The last time they had celebrated the Panwahnot was a month before the tsunami, and never since.  Yet they were holding on to their present continuous as firmly as they could, as though the maintenance of tense itself was sufficient to keep alive the tradition.

Perhaps there is truth here.  Perhaps this is one of those impalpable metrics of resilience that keeps communities together.  The people of Chowra have enough evident pride to leave me with the conviction that they will weather their changes with dignity and wisdom.  They will celebrate the Panwahnot again, they say. I want it to be true. My only regret is that I may not be here when the pigs are slaughtered next.

This November, they assure me.