The Young Earth Lover's Book Of Nature: A Tour Of Planet's Diversity

Be awed and inspired as this book takes you on a whistle-stop tour of the spectacular diversity of nature in more than 40 classic and modern stories, poems and essays. Read some of the best writing by wildlife experts, bestselling authors, nature writers, adventurers and explorers. Feel oh-so-lucky about being on this life-giving Earth, and open your eyes to how we are harming it and endangering our own future. Because, after all, YOU are going to inherit the one and only blue planet ‐ and take care of it.

An Excerpt From The Young Earth Lover's Book Of Nature

SURFING WITH AN ALIEN IN THE ANDAMAN SEA: Day 2 - Manish Chandi

The unnamed boat and its six travellers had a narrow escape in the storm, helped by their skill, grit and determination against the immense forces of nature, but what happened next? Did the voyagers get home safely?

We sailed in through the creek’s broad mouth right to a turn where a sub-creek turned worm-like into another swampy mangrove patch. We cut off the engine and coasted in alongside an embankment to moor our boat. Fruit bats roosted close by, shrieking and squabbling shrilly for space on their tangled mangrove roosts. These we knew were our only chance of a meal. Our rations were soaked in saltwater and coated with diesel. Except about hundred litres of fresh water in jerry cans, none of our other ‘consumables’ were consumable. We were too tired to go clamming in the mangrove slush or even fishing. We had to find something to eat – and quick.

So, yes, it was going to be flying foxes for dinner. Uncle said we had to get them before they left their roost. We had about an hour or so before they would take off and forage over the forest canopy or fly to neighbouring islands, or across the island to where

Bengali settlers on Little Andaman Island had plantain, areca and other fruit orchards, which the bats visited for their nightly meals.

We fashioned thick sticks we cut off from the surrounding vegetation as clubs, and the four of us – the three boys and I – ascended the mangroves. Handholds along the uneven trunks and curved branches soon led us to the shrieking, nearly foot-long bats. Quickly, we knocked a few down until Uncle told us to stop. With a grapple hook and bamboo poles we gathered those that had fallen in the water and began skinning them.

The metal-bucket stove was readied, and damp wood was doused with diesel. In a few minutes, our fire was crackling, and the small portions of meat salvaged from bats were tossed into our cooking pot. Wet salt was all we could add as seasoning. That night when I slept toward the fore of the boat, where we had cut the meat and cooked our meal, my plank bed smelt of wet blood and diesel. 

The next morning, we ate the leftovers of the dinner, and chugged up the creek. Soon we caught sight of another boat moored in the mangroves, belonging to crab fishermen from Chouldari village, not too far from Wandoor. They were astonished that we had made it through the storm, as their shortwave radio had had several alerts from the Port Blair radio station about inclement weather escalating into a cyclone. That evening we feasted on boiled mangrove crab and rice that the crabbers gave us. 

We decided we couldn’t ask the poor fishermen for more food, so the next two days we ate flying foxes, or fruit bats (this sounds more palatable, doesn’t it?).

We rested on board our boat, waiting for clear weather so we could get ourselves some other food rather than live off the wildlife that was otherwise for us a subject of study and constant fascination. 

We made short forays into the mangrove forest to forage for food and spot wildlife. We gathered shellfish and some edible leaves, but had to rely on a bit more of fruit bats in the mangrove supermarket. Our clothes reeked of all kinds of damp smells as we hadn’t bathed in the four days since leaving Wandoor. My nose could only smell bat blood and diesel all the time, and soon I realized I was smelling me.

Now we had new company on board. The fruit bats we had harvested were host to long-legged spidery parasitical insects that lived off their blood. Our boat was crawling with these insects underneath the woodwork, amid our luggage, and in every nook and cranny! 

The next morning, we washed our boat with saltwater and flushed out the insects from their crevices and tossed them into the creek, hoping the fish would make a meal of them. The weather was nearly normal now, and we planned to find some food at one of the human settlements and wend our way back home.

Uncle remembered being told of an inlet along the north-eastern coast that led to a village called Vivekanandapur. We cranked up the boat’s engine and began yet another journey.

We sailed out and reached the creek mouth to find waves breaking vigorously on the reef ledge all around the island. We stayed strong and raced out on finding a small swell out of which we could enter the sea again. We were back in the ocean, peering ahead.

This was a time when we didn’t use instruments to navigate or find our location. Instead, we used the old method of navigating using landmarks and features

across the silhouette of the islands to determine our position. It took us about two hours to cross over from Bumila Creek to reach the inlet south of Dugong Creek along the north-eastern coast of Little Andaman Island. We saw a small opening along the beach and moved closer to the shore.

Excerpted from The Young Earth Lover's Book Of Nature, edited by Deepa Agarwal; published by Hachette India.