Life History notes

I am Indian by birth and citizenship, though I have spent much of my life outside of India. Childhood, for instance, was spent in my backyard watching those purple with orange head Agamas running around and bobbing their heads, doing pushups. I also spent some time fighting with baboons for sugarcane that we had harvested on our walk to a lake, only to be reprimanded by my parents for not being scared of the animal. And then there was all the cat poop and uneaten cat meal (usually still alive mice, rats and birds) left for me to examine; and of course the living room carpet that I had to clean up. To justify my interest in anatomy I have savoured all of the vertebrate groups, of course a good diveristy of species in both the raw and variously cooked forms. To justify my principles of conservation (biology) and population control of introduced species I have also been important in a rather unpleasant exercise with my cat's offspring (she was not pleased and pooped in my sleeping bag for the next month). Various alcohoic brews and unsightly kitchens and utensils have helped build my immunity. Rarely do we realize what desparate situations can take us to - when I got lost on an island at night alone for over 8 hours and no water, I resorted to drinking off the forest floor from leaves that had among all the litter some tadpoles too. Talking about desparate situations - It lead me once to close down my university for a whole day, something I am quite proud of, but I doubt it looks good on my CV. But the truth is I could not have closed the university alone. I had a few good friends, about five of us, we drew a plan rallied a crowd, lost hope and disbanded the crowd. An hour later the crowd came back to us and asked us to execute our plan. The next day, the university did open, only for a few hours. I am still fascinated by the draw it had on students who got up and walked out of their classes.

In the summer of 1999, I was in the Western Ghats with a senior colleague. This was pretty much my early exposure to wildlife sciences and the amazing diversity of Calotes species (Agamidae) piqued my interest in systematics. No one there was able to give me clear and reasonable explanations as to why otherwise similar agamids were different species, with the exception of course of certain autapomorphies. I was also piqued by the concentration of Calotes diversity in the Ghats against the wide distribution of C. versicolor . It is in this context that my current research interests have been influenced. Consequently I had realized that my experience at Pondicherry rather than arming me with knowledge was not just disarming me but also decapitating and raping my psyche. I chose to come to the US to put myself through some much needed re-education (I believe course work is not compusory in Europe or Australia) and to take control of my decapitated fledgling career and to stay far away from the inbred science and ideas in India. However, after my six month exile in the Nicobars picking up my career was a hard decision. While I can manage my career here I have got distanced from my homes in the islands and become an outcast to some Indian Biologists.

   

    My present interest in these islands began four years ago (2000) during a survey of Sea Turtles and their prime nesting beaches in India. I was dropped of on an island (which is officially the southern most part of India). On this southern beach I spent six months PIT tagging Leatherback turtles and also monitoring the Olive Ridley and other sea-turtles. I got little time to explore the islands but what I had seen and experienced (including typhoid, 6 bouts of malaria including cerebral malaria over the next one year) was enough to keep me coming back (forget Atkins diet, I lost over 30 lbs before getting the typhoid or malaria). In 2002, I went back to another group of islands in this archipelago with the objective of exploring the herpetofauna. Summer of 2003, I just got back from these islands having commenced a few collaborative projects to examine questions of species boundaries among different reptilian taxa, and related questions of the biogeographic (historical and contemporary) origins of these fauna. Summer 2004, I completed data collection and trying to not be a student. Over the last few years I have made some interesting collections, some of which I still have to deposit in the museums and some are being (re)described and many interesting observations and many great island friends. Summer 2005 - I am not a student.