It is not often that our national newspapers carry informed and thoughtful articles about ecology and conservation, especially concerning our islands and coasts. The Hindu, taking a lead on this, has published a series of six articles in the Sunday Magazine spanning concerns in ecology and society in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The articles […]

Like the proboscis of a malarial mosquito the Andaman Trunk Road pierces the Jarawa forest. The road carries a steady stream of vehicles, bunched into convoys with guards. By the road are heaps of stones and the claw marks of heavy machinery: the road will soon be wider. Just beyond, on either side, stretches the […]

If this is a vision of dying, it is a reassuringly rowdy affair, more bar-room brawl than somber wake.  The corpse lies all around, its skeleton slowly decaying and it is difficult to reanimate her in your imagination from the scattered ribs that remain.  Rowdy rabbles swarm around, and every so often, soundless scuffles break […]

On a visit to Chowra Island in the Nicobar archipelago in October 2008, on being told to wait until evening to contact my islander informants, I was passing time with an assortment of police constables on duty on the islands’ lookout-post. They were involved in an intense game of cards, while I sat around bored […]

Chowra is slow to show its welcome, but soon, behind the stoic, rarely smiling faces, you see a shy curiosity, a matter-of-fact hospitality, and even a kind of warmth.  I was supposed to have left today for Karmota to catch the ship to Port Blair, but the fickleness of vessel schedules dictates that I will […]

My pen feels strange to my fingers.  I have to relearn gently the act of writing.  The QWERTY keyboard has taken over my fingertips, and reduced my writing to emails excusing myself for mails unresponded to.  Perhaps I have to retreat to remote islands such as these if I have to rediscover the nib and […]