Funnily enough, it started on a metro ride. Nothing dramatic; it was a Thursday like any other – a packed train, body fuelled on caffeine, and my brain doing that thing it always did on the commute, which was calculating the number of stops until I saw the dreaded glass building, a.k.a., my corporate office. It was 25th of April, 2024; you’ll see why I remember. It was one of those days that rearranged my life, regardless of my lack of readiness.
I had been ruminating on learning how to swim for years. This was the kind of idea that you keep in a drawer with your favourite trinkets, take out occasionally, admire, and put back because it doesn’t feel like the right time, ever. That morning, though, somewhere between stations and stand-up calls, the drawer opened and refused to close again. It was no longer just “I should learn to swim; it’s a survival skill.” It had shifted to “I could totally become a certified diver!” Bold, I know. I didn’t know how those words would translate to reality, not back then.
Cut to 25th of April, 2026. I surfaced from my 100th dive, at Barren Island.
If that name doesn’t ring a bell, let me draw a picture for you: it is India’s only active volcano, ~350 metres tall, sitting utterly alone in the Andaman Sea. This volcanic island keeps its own company; only ash, rocks, and the occasional plume of smoke rising off the crater. It is uninhabited and doesn’t allow anyone to land on it. Yes, you need permits just to approach the island. Underwater though, wrapped around this very geological magnificence, are reefs so alive they look straight out of an artist’s sketchbook.
So, that’s the thing about diving at Barren Island. It’s rare. It commands preparedness. And you have to want it, badly.
And I did – badly enough that I kept tossing and turning the night before. Reporting time was 03:30 am, but there were no complaints. I was even in bed by 08:00 pm. My body hadn’t behaved like this since school picnics, when the promise of tomorrow would rob me of every wink of sleep. Turns out, everyone else had spent the night the same way. And on the boat, we were trying our best to catch a nap while mulling over the day before it had a chance to surprise us.
The ride out was supposed to be at least 2 hours long, enough for a few quick naps, but boy was I totally unprepared for the adrenaline of it. The Sun came up over the open Ocean with nothing to interrupt it – no skyline, no land; just the slowly rising orange insistence that morning was, in fact, arriving. And then the dolphins showed up, cruising alongside the boat like they’d been sent specifically to greet us. They were so unbothered by our cheers, like they had gotten used to putting on such a show for their visitors.
And then, we went under.
Okay, I have been diving for almost 2 years now. And most of those have been in the Andamans. I thought I had seen the most beautiful, awe-inspiring reefs Andamans had to offer. Barren scoffed at that very thought.
At the site called ‘Purple Haze’, the soft corals moved like they’re being conducted in an orchestra – swaying with the current, like the reef was breathing to a rhythm. The wall itself dropped into a blue so deep, it started looking like the sky hanging upside down for the day. At another site called ‘F’n Missed It!’ (the name is a story for another day), jacks circled us in numbers I stopped trying to count, a wall of silver that refused to have a beginning or an end. Then, there was ‘Black Magic’ – a name so well suited, you do feel like you are in a daze. The ridges of black sand served as a constant reminder of the union of ‘Fire & Sea’.
You see, Barren pulls the rug from under your feet with the sightings, sure, but it urges you to soak in the grandeur of the reefs. It didn’t feel like nature, simply because I hadn’t seen it in all its glory until then. At that moment, it felt like fantasy fiction; a writer had been given creative liberty and they exercised it like there’s no tomorrow.
Somewhere amidst all those unfathomable sights, the day stopped being about ‘the dives’.
It became about the people I was diving with; the people who, on land and underwater, have this way of seeing you exactly as you are and deciding that’s the weirdo they like best. It became about the strange, specific luck of getting to check something off your bucket list you weren’t even sure you were allowed to have. It became about the plain, unglamorous fact of being alive enough, awake enough, present enough… to notice that you’re finally living the life you wanted.
I was watching a battery of barracudas swirl above a stretch of garden eels peeking out of the sand, when I realised my mask had flooded with tears and salt water, because I couldn’t stop smiling while crying. I was grateful, in that inconsolable, overflowing kind of way that doesn’t ask for permission before thoroughly embarrassing you (there was snot free-floating in my mask!).
And of course, like the Universe wasn’t done making its point, an Oceanic Manta showed up (on my 100th dive)!
It didn’t just pass us by. It came around. Slow, enormous, utterly unfazed, gliding through a moment already too full to hold anything else. I heard myself scream into my regulator. And then I heard the others – that muffled, ridiculous, overjoyed noise divers make when words aren’t an option but silence isn’t either. A hundred dives, and the Universe pulled a solid one for me!
I think about the version of me on that metro ride two years ago sometimes. She was a corporate employee who borderline-hated her job. She wanted to be far away from the city. And as plot twists go… she had no idea she was about to spend the next two years trying to get as close as possible to the Ocean.The drawer she’d opened by accident held more than just swimming lessons; they held an active volcano, a Manta, dolphins at sunrise, friends to celebrate life with, and the adventurous version of herself she hadn’t met yet.
I don’t have a moral for this one. I am not sure it needs one. This story is about a singular realization for me and it’s this: sometimes you should say yes to plans before you’ve thought them through and maybe, two years later, your wishes (which you once considered your wildest daydreams) will be granted to you on a random morning. So yes, let the Universe have its way. Sometimes, just sometimes, it makes every second of the leap worth your life.
Funnily enough, it started on a metro ride. Nothing dramatic; it was a Thursday like any other – a packed train, body fuelled on caffeine, and my brain doing that thing it always did on the commute, which was calculating the number of stops until I saw the dreaded glass building, a.k.a., my corporate office. It was 25th of April, 2024; you’ll see why I remember. It was one of those days that rearranged my life, regardless of my lack of readiness.
I had been ruminating on learning how to swim for years. This was the kind of idea that you keep in a drawer with your favourite trinkets, take out occasionally, admire, and put back because it doesn’t feel like the right time, ever. That morning, though, somewhere between stations and stand-up calls, the drawer opened and refused to close again. It was no longer just “I should learn to swim; it’s a survival skill.” It had shifted to “I could totally become a certified diver!” Bold, I know. I didn’t know how those words would translate to reality, not back then.
Cut to 25th of April, 2026. I surfaced from my 100th dive, at Barren Island.
If that name doesn’t ring a bell, let me draw a picture for you: it is India’s only active volcano, ~350 metres tall, sitting utterly alone in the Andaman Sea. This volcanic island keeps its own company; only ash, rocks, and the occasional plume of smoke rising off the crater. It is uninhabited and doesn’t allow anyone to land on it. Yes, you need permits just to approach the island. Underwater though, wrapped around this very geological magnificence, are reefs so alive they look straight out of an artist’s sketchbook.
So, that’s the thing about diving at Barren Island. It’s rare. It commands preparedness. And you have to want it, badly.
And I did – badly enough that I kept tossing and turning the night before. Reporting time was 03:30 am, but there were no complaints. I was even in bed by 08:00 pm. My body hadn’t behaved like this since school picnics, when the promise of tomorrow would rob me of every wink of sleep. Turns out, everyone else had spent the night the same way. And on the boat, we were trying our best to catch a nap while mulling over the day before it had a chance to surprise us.
The ride out was supposed to be at least 2 hours long, enough for a few quick naps, but boy was I totally unprepared for the adrenaline of it. The Sun came up over the open Ocean with nothing to interrupt it – no skyline, no land; just the slowly rising orange insistence that morning was, in fact, arriving. And then the dolphins showed up, cruising alongside the boat like they’d been sent specifically to greet us. They were so unbothered by our cheers, like they had gotten used to putting on such a show for their visitors.
And then, we went under.
Okay, I have been diving for almost 2 years now. And most of those have been in the Andamans. I thought I had seen the most beautiful, awe-inspiring reefs Andamans had to offer. Barren scoffed at that very thought.
At the site called ‘Purple Haze’, the soft corals moved like they’re being conducted in an orchestra – swaying with the current, like the reef was breathing to a rhythm. The wall itself dropped into a blue so deep, it started looking like the sky hanging upside down for the day. At another site called ‘F’n Missed It!’ (the name is a story for another day), jacks circled us in numbers I stopped trying to count, a wall of silver that refused to have a beginning or an end. Then, there was ‘Black Magic’ – a name so well suited, you do feel like you are in a daze. The ridges of black sand served as a constant reminder of the union of ‘Fire & Sea’.
You see, Barren pulls the rug from under your feet with the sightings, sure, but it urges you to soak in the grandeur of the reefs. It didn’t feel like nature, simply because I hadn’t seen it in all its glory until then. At that moment, it felt like fantasy fiction; a writer had been given creative liberty and they exercised it like there’s no tomorrow.
Somewhere amidst all those unfathomable sights, the day stopped being about ‘the dives’.
It became about the people I was diving with; the people who, on land and underwater, have this way of seeing you exactly as you are and deciding that’s the weirdo they like best. It became about the strange, specific luck of getting to check something off your bucket list you weren’t even sure you were allowed to have. It became about the plain, unglamorous fact of being alive enough, awake enough, present enough… to notice that you’re finally living the life you wanted.
I was watching a battery of barracudas swirl above a stretch of garden eels peeking out of the sand, when I realised my mask had flooded with tears and salt water, because I couldn’t stop smiling while crying. I was grateful, in that inconsolable, overflowing kind of way that doesn’t ask for permission before thoroughly embarrassing you (there was snot free-floating in my mask!).
And of course, like the Universe wasn’t done making its point, an Oceanic Manta showed up (on my 100th dive)!
It didn’t just pass us by. It came around. Slow, enormous, utterly unfazed, gliding through a moment already too full to hold anything else. I heard myself scream into my regulator. And then I heard the others – that muffled, ridiculous, overjoyed noise divers make when words aren’t an option but silence isn’t either. A hundred dives, and the Universe pulled a solid one for me!
I think about the version of me on that metro ride two years ago sometimes. She was a corporate employee who borderline-hated her job. She wanted to be far away from the city. And as plot twists go… she had no idea she was about to spend the next two years trying to get as close as possible to the Ocean.The drawer she’d opened by accident held more than just swimming lessons; they held an active volcano, a Manta, dolphins at sunrise, friends to celebrate life with, and the adventurous version of herself she hadn’t met yet.
I don’t have a moral for this one. I am not sure it needs one. This story is about a singular realization for me and it’s this: sometimes you should say yes to plans before you’ve thought them through and maybe, two years later, your wishes (which you once considered your wildest daydreams) will be granted to you on a random morning. So yes, let the Universe have its way. Sometimes, just sometimes, it makes every second of the leap worth your life.
