HOLDING ON TO LIFE

The boat left the jetty of Port Blair. My destination was Narcondam, an uninhabited oceanic island of volcanic origin, located about 240 km northeast of Port Blair in the Andaman Islands.

- Sreelekha Chatterjee

The word Narcondam originated from the Tamil word “Naraka Kundam” or the pit of hell. Sprawling over a small area of about 6.8 square kilometers, it had a dormant volcano.

It was the month of December, and the freezing billows of wind moved about me in an unwelcoming mood. I was traveling all alone on an assignment to write about the seldomrecognized geographical locations in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands that had limited biological exploration and research over the last century. While visiting these spots, my guide David mentioned the dormant volcano in Narcondam.

In the boat, we found another 15–20 people headed toward the island.

“You’ll get to see long-nosed monkeys over there.” David said; a man probably in his late forties, with brown eyes and a long nose. “I’m Tara.” I said, smilingly, to a newlywed couple.

“I’m Shiela, and this is my husband, Kunal. We’re on our honeymoon.” The woman said, flaunting the semi-precious stones on the rings adorning her fingers.

Another family introduced themselves—Nivan, probably a thirty-year-old guy with his wife, Ahana, and two daughters, Sara and Zoya. An elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Roy, said they were traveling to all the well-known historical places though this island had no specific factual significance other than that it attracted visitors who wished to get a glimpse of its dormant volcano. Other passengers mostly kept to themselves and didn’t seem quite friendly.

On reaching the shore of the island, we found the enveloping mangrove trees with submerged roots that moved gently into the depth of the emerald-blue seawater.

“There are the long-nosed monkeys. Over there…Can you see them?” David said, pointing to the dense vegetation along the shore. Our eyes shifted toward the coastal vegetation and on failure to detect any living being, back to David.