Day 1 - Nicobar Diaries

9th November 2017, Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team (ANET) field base, Wandoor

We got here late last evening, just in time to kick start the field season with all the ANET veterans and Sanjay's* food - cooked in his characteristic there's-a-party-tonight haste. 

With a lot on my mind, I hardly got any sleep last night. I completely awoke with the sun at around 5 am, listening to the Andaman shama's oddly husky song. I was ready to go to the Forest Department and plead for work permits way before I needed to be. Akshay** was still asleep, recuperating from the previous night. I was sitting outside the ANET hall waiting until it was time to leave when I saw four young skinks that seemed to have just hatched. I watched the tiny, skinny, glossy fellows until they all dispersed. Even at that early stage, it seemed like they had their own personalities. Two scurried away in a terrible hurry, one was ever-cautious (finally choosing to take shelter under the stone slab he emerged from) and one basked openly and began foraging. I must have been watching them for nearly an hour.

We stopped at Delanipur for breakfast (hello again, Kerala parotta) and some scooter inquiries which got me nowhere***. We then went to A's office in the Van Sadan building - I was meeting her for the first time. She was dressed in a crisp, well-ironed, classy-coloured saree; she got up and shook my hand. She immediately seemed like a person who is both well-aware of her power and careful about how she uses it.

Together, we drafted a letter to B, requesting the provision of permits without my proposal going through the Research Advisory Committee. It was utterly useless, though. He was a large-headed, spectacled wall off of which my pleas bounced back and smacked me in the face. He asked me to meet C instead.

Although C looked like an intimidating diamond merchant who was cheesed off with the world, he seemed to be the only person from the Forest Department who had the clarity of thought to know how and when to break through the bureaucracy. He sat back in his large, black chair, rubbing his eyes as though in exasperation, while he told me things like****:

1. You have to tell these department people to keep their ideas to themselves. When their work load is light, they end up harassing people like you with unnecessary meetings.

2. Are you mad? Who asked you to submit a proposal to begin with? You've got yourself into this mess. You don't even need permits.

3. Damned people, all sitting around like they're unemployed. No one does any real work, they just spread tension.

4. (When A mentioned that I was worried sick about not getting permits) Oh no, then why did I tell her to go ahead? I could have kept her in tension for another 10 days (followed by hysterical laughter).

5. You just want to stand on the road and look at monkeys like a tourist would, right? So go! Quietly head to Great Nicobar and don't hand in any more papers.

 He didn't even look at my paperwork. I couldn't tell whether to be relieved or worried further about the unofficial shadiness. But then again, it isn't unofficial or illegal since I don't really need a permit. I decided to stay relieved. I called the Deputy Forest Officer in Campbell Bay (Great Nicobar Division) and informed him of the situation. It was all good (?).

Somehow, I had the go-ahead I needed on the FIRST DAY. My schedule suddenly moved up a couple of weeks and I had nothing but logistics to figure out.

On the way back to ANET, I stopped by Switz Bakerz for a celebratory piece of cake. The moment I squeezed onto the Subhashini bus, heard the familiar playlist of obscure Bollywood songs and shared a nod of recognition with the conductor, everything began to sink in and feel normal. Plus, I had Sanjay's cooking to look forward to at the end of it all. 

Took a walk up to the beach with Akshay before turning in at night. On the way back, I looked up at the sky and remembered my walk along the same path on the last night of our marine biology course in the islands. That night, I had welled up immensely, wondering if I'd ever have the opportunity to come back to this place which felt so strangely like home. I felt silly in that moment for ever worrying.

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* Sanjay is one of the ANET field staff - a brilliant cook with low tolerance for dilly-dallying, an obscure sense of humour, fantastic taste in dance music and the latest "in" hairstyle.

** Akshay is my former batch mate, dear friend and tree-ID whiz. We envisioned our master's projects in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and got to travel together and meet intermittently because of it. He's beautiful.

*** I needed to buy a scooter in Port Blair so I could put it on a ship and transport it to Great Nicobar where I'd be doing my field work.

**** All of this was in Hindi in my diary, translated here for better understand-ability. It has, in the process, lost some magic.