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Journalism of Courage
I’m back on the beach probably for the last time during this visit to Goa and the first thing that crosses my mind as I step out onto the cool sand and relish the fresh breeze is how appallingly criminal it is to make our kids inhale the malicious, toxic, sandpaper air in places like Delhi. Here the breeze is clean and crisp as a salad and lacy wavelets wash over our feet. But now it’s time to focus: what will this session of tide-pooling yield? The tide is well out, and surfers along with their coach are setting out. But there, behind a rocky escarpment are two girls crouched over the sand, excitedly picking up something from the sand.
You make your way towards them, momentarily sidetracked en-route –
and do what no naturalist should do: interfere with the process of nature. Up ahead is a crow showing an extreme, breakfast interest in something lying on the sand: it’s a stranded starfish lying belly-up. You deprive the crow of its breakfast (and promise it a piece of toast from your breakfast later on), examine the starfish and put it back on the rock you found it on. Hmm… you decide, maybe placing it on the sand would be a better idea, because that crow could still be around no matter what you promised it for breakfast – and it is far too exposed and hot out on the bare rocks. Right side up the starfish blends perfectly with the sand, it is much paler underneath, which would make it difficult for predators swimming beneath it to spot it against the brighter sky above.
The two happy girls are collecting tiny empty butterfly shells with all the keenness of a pair of herons and you tell them about the starfish. They are delighted, even as you warn them not to collect it – because it will stink to high heavens. Also, it is alive. They move on as do you.
Next up, are a pair of what looks like sea snails, locked together in embrace. But then a claw sticks out of one of them and snails don’t have claws. You pick up the pair: they are your old friends – hermit crabs, and they are grappling with each other like wrestlers. One is about half the size of the other. In your palm, they stop momentarily, perhaps embarrassed, but once you put them back on the sand, furious combat resumes.
I check with my tide-pooling guru Sejal Mehta (author of ‘Superpowers on the Shore’, Penguin 2022) and she tells me that probably the little guy was trying to oust the larger one from its residence so it could move up in life. He was one ambitious fellow because he was about half the size of the owner of the mansion he wanted. Sejal informs me that she’s seen one clean rip off the limbs of another in one such battle. The loser of such battles, rendered shell-less, is usually quickly devoured. Well, I thought, with our dispensations we just go and bulldoze the houses of those we do not agree with, which is like throwing the baby out along with the bathwater. But at least the hermit crabs have a genuine reason for such deplorable conduct: They don’t have the hard exoskeleton of ‘ true’ crabs and have tender, exposed bottoms (abdomens) – juicy bites for any predator. So, they protect themselves by backing into empty, discarded shells and hook onto these tightly. And since like children, they keep growing, they have to be fitted out with larger-sized clothes every now and then. In their case entirely new, bigger homes. And here clearly the message going out was ‘Dude, your home is now my home, so beat it.’
By now, you have learned that the place to look closely at is the underhung, portions of partially submerged rocks. You scan the pools and there it is: a gleaming, glistening crab. I’m not sure of its identity – it crouched at the entrance to the overhang, which was prettily fringed with what looked like pale green streamers. Its claws were at the ready to embrace the first meal that came its way, its beady orange eyes implacable – a yogic ambusher this one, doing what my sister called the ‘yum-yum’ asana.
One discovery happily led to another and there just nearby was my second-ever anemone: its petal-like tentacles extended, looking like a bronzed chrysanthemum, and what appeared to be its cave-like mouth open. Those tentacles are poison tipped, and trap unwary prey. Anemones reproduce by splitting themselves in two or by spewing sperm and eggs out through their mouths – they have no compulsive need to go in search of partners, and is a killjoy way of making babies, but there it is.
The rangoli patterns of the sand bubbler crabs are everywhere and you are brought up short by the sight of sand actually bubbling up (almost hookah-style) as a wavelet retreats – it’s like mud boiling up from miniature underwater volcanic vents. You meander back and check on your stranded starfish and are happy to note that yes, it was very much alive and has shimmered its way under the sand: you can merely make out its shadowy shape now.
As you tuck into breakfast on the shack deck, a couple of crows turn up, eyeing your toast with a predatory interest. Ah, but neither has proof of identity so I can’ t be sure that either of them was the one I had promised to treat on the beach. So, no my breakfast doesn’t become their breakfast.
