We’d gotten good at sneaking around. Back at the center, there was a guest cottage, where the walls were woven bamboo, the bed soft, the windows shuttered. It had a quaint, pastoral quality, albeit disrupted by the dotted boxers on the floor and the tongue scraper on the edge of the sink. (I found it weird and endearing that he brought his tongue scraper to our sleepovers. “You don’t clean your tongue?” he asked me, prim with shock.) It was cool whenever I stepped inside, the air humming with possibility, a sensation I carried back to my suite before dawn. I never saw Teddy on those nights, which led me to assume, with blissful indifference, that Teddy had never seen me.
Finished with exteriors, we met Ravi at the foot of the steps. “Shall we?” Ravi said, grinding his cigarette underfoot.
Teddy frowned. “Shall we what?”
“Meet with Samina Madame,” Ravi said.
“She speaks English, right? So we don’t need an interpreter.” Teddy glanced at me. “It’s best to have some privacy during these interviews. The smaller the audience, the better.”
Ravi grinned like we were being ridiculous. “I know Samina Madame very well. What is so private she couldn’t tell me?”
There was an edge to Ravi’s voice. He looked to me, as did Teddy, awaiting my call.
“I have your number,” I said to Ravi. “You could grab a bite, come back?”
“Grab a bite,” Ravi repeated.
“A snack or something—”
“I know what it means,” he said, already walking away.
Before Teddy could muse on what had crawled up Ravi’s ass, I was climbing the steps.
Inside, an old man in green uniform sat at a desk, behind stalagmites of time cards and file folders. He seemed unperturbed by that wilderness of paperwork or maybe half blind to it, being that his right eye was glazed in white. He fixed us with his stern working eye as we introduced ourselves, then led us down the hall, past a room with an enigmatic sign over the door: wireless. The room was empty, aside from a chair that seated four cell phones in a row, all suckling from a single power strip.
We rounded a corner and entered an office to find Samina Hakim quickly blotting her lipstick on a napkin. She raised her gaze and smiled. There was a dollish prettiness to her features — bow mouth, wide eyes — planted in an ample face. She shook each of our hands, pausing briefly over Teddy’s henna before refreshing her smile.
Ms. Hakim said she had only a limited window of time, so we sprang into action. Teddy set up the camera while I softened her up with chitchat, which she seemed happy to make. Among other things, we discussed the magnificence of South Indian coffee. “In America, coffee is not just coffee,” she opined. “You ask for coffee, they ask: What size? You ask for milk, they ask: How fatty? Here, coffee is coffee.”
“Excellent coffee,” I affirmed, clipping a lav mic between the pleats that spread fanlike over her chest. She looked at the fly-sized lav with a degree of suspicion.
“This way I can focus on you,” I explained, “instead of holding a mic in your face.”
“I see. No problem.”
After checking her levels, I asked Ms. Hakim if she’d like to begin. She straightened up, shoulders back, and clasped her hands on the desk like a newscaster, all her warmth displaced by wooden courtesy.
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH SAMINA HAKIM, DIVISIONAL RANGE OFFICER
SAMINA HAKIM: I am Samina Hakim, Divisional Range Officer for Kavanar region. We work closely with the Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, which was established in partnership with the Kerala Forest Department.
Just like that, her personality turned automated as she summarized her father’s work as a ranger, her own brief stint as a software engineer in Techno Park, and her quick ascent to becoming the first female range officer in India, at which point she sat back, as if she’d finished her meal and were waiting for the check.
I was caught off guard by her sudden brusqueness and, in fumbling for something to say, happened on a cliché—
EMMA: Your father must be proud.
— which caught Samina off guard. There was a long pause.
SAMINA: My father is not alive. He was killed in a gunfight with poachers in 1992.
EMMA: Oh, I’m so sorry … Was that the year you applied?
SAMINA: Yes. (Pause.) This is a film about the Rescue Center, no?
EMMA: It is, but we’re also interested in the people who come in contact with the center. Of course you’re not obligated to discuss anything you don’t want to. I just find your background compelling, especially as a woman stepping into unfamiliar territory.
SAMINA HAKIM: The territory suits me very well.
EMMA: Yeah, it looks like poaching has gone way down under your tenure. How’ve you made that happen?
SAMINA HAKIM: We have increased the number of cases registered, and we have established protection strategies and antipoaching camps.
EMMA: I’ve heard people say you’re a lot more effective than your predecessor — Mr. P. K. Kurian?
SAMINA HAKIM: I will not comment on that. Simply I have made wildlife and conservation my topmost priority.
EMMA: Did Mr. Kurian have a different priority?
SAMINA HAKIM: No, no, I will not say that. I prefer to focus on positive things, such as, for example, we have been making great strides in protecting forest areas from habitat destruction. We are involving local communities by training them in sustainable extraction methods of nontimber forest products including honey and cardamom, and, as such, we are making the protection of the forest a priority for all people.
EMMA: I see.
SAMINA HAKIM: Any more questions? I have limited time today.
EMMA: Of course, sure …
(Extended pause.)
Just switching gears for a second … I was reading about a particular case involving the Shankar Timber Company.
SAMINA HAKIM: …
EMMA: It was about a protest by a number of villagers who were upset that the Forest Department had allowed a timber company to cut down all the trees on what they perceived—
SAMINA HAKIM: Where did you read this?
EMMA: I don’t remember where actually.
SAMINA HAKIM: You know what? These villagers are upset because they see the profit from cutting timber. They want license to do so as well. The Forest Department cannot allow unregulated removal of timber and degradation of the forest. We only give clearance after careful consideration as to whether the outcome is in the public interest.
EMMA: Were the villagers consulted? Or even warned?
SAMINA HAKIM: No.
EMMA: Isn’t that a violation of your conservationist principles, like the involvement of local communities—
SAMINA HAKIM: I have answered enough. I think we are finished.
EMMA: There’s nothing more you’d like to add?
SAMINA HAKIM: Off it. Off the camera, please.
As we left the office, Teddy peppered me with questions, all to do with where I’d gotten my intel on Shankar Timber. I told him I’d explain later, when Ravi wasn’t waiting by the car.
I hadn’t planned to bring up the Shankar Timber case, but as the interview went on, and her answers took on the practiced cadence of a recitation (as such … such as … as such), I’d realized there was no other way of cracking her Teflon veneer. No way but one. The scandal was fair game; it had been in the news, after all. I hadn’t jumped her while she was at home in a bathrobe. She had to know the topic might come up.
And yet, judging by her response — the way her hands fused into a gridiron clasp — it was clear she hadn’t foreseen this turn at all.
Nor had I considered how my questions might affect Ravi, and his opinion of me. It only made sense to keep him in the dark, for the time being.