“Ei, listen. We will only use one torch, one only,” he says. I switch mine off, and someone else puts off her cell phone light. We are walking on a sandy path now, inside the tunnel of darkness, and there is forest on both sides. Our eyes blink. There isn’t enough light to see ahead of us. Nikhil halts. There’s something he is looking at. The single torchlight pools on the ground, the very edge of the pool touching a small black shape that’s moving. Nikhil is fully alert. “No one will step forward,” he hisses. He takes a tiny step ahead. “That’s an Asian palm civet,” he whispers. “And it’s gnawing at the base of the amaltas tree.” We look again. The animal is indeed gnawing at the tree, and it doesn’t seem to mind us.
It raises its neck, its tail like a plume behind it, its movements as graceful as an otter in the water. It has the fuzzy cuteness all small mammals have – the face is like a raccoon’s, the body like a well-set mongoose, the tail swishing and thick like a Madagascan lemur’s. In the greyscale of darkness, it also seems only half-real. Its colour appears...
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