IN A DIFFERENT LEAGUE

Sumer Verma wears many hats: partner in the oldest dive school of India; director at a reef conservation organisation; underwater photographer and cinematographer; and now, a hotelier. He reveals what it was like to navigate the waters of an unknown world two decades ago and what he’s eyeing next.

When a 21-year-old Sumer Verma first dived into the Laccadive Sea from the Bangaram island of Lakshadweep in 1997, there was only one dive school in the country. But he was so hooked that he kept returning for advanced courses to eventually become an instructor at the same dive school, Lacadives (lacadives.com), in 2000. Today, he says, there are 25 dive centres along the coastline, and many pool training facilities in metro cities.

Back in the early aughts, Verma developed an interest in photography while working on ad films with Prahlad Kakar—the founder of Lacadives and Verma’s would-be business partner. “When you go diving, you have crystal clear water, light filtering through the surface and creating beautiful streaks, and amazing marine life. You instinctively want to capture it,” says Verma. He began with videos since he didn’t have access to still cameras. “Video is more difficult—any body movement reflects in the footage,” he adds. Slowly, he started making paid videos for his diving clients.

While shooting video did make him a better diver and earned him extra cash to sustain his hobby, it would also shape his future. Cut to 2021, Verma has an impressive body of cinematography under his weight belt. After getting his break in Mariyan (2013), he has shot underwater sequences for Bollywood films like The Sky Is Pink, Raabta, Bhuj, and some big-ticket productions in Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam. His other source of income is fashion and ad shoots.

While he is no longer donning the instructor wetsuit, Verma’s love for marine life hasn’t dimmed. “Shooting wildlife is my therapy; I’m going to do it till the day I die,” he swears.

That might also explain his other role, that of a director at ReefWatch Marine Conservation (reefwatchindia.org), an NGO started by the founders of Lacadives for ocean conservation, education, and research. In Andamans, the organisation is generating artificial reefs with broken coral fragments. “Three years on, squids, lionfish, cuttlefish, scorpionfish, boxfish, baby stingrays, and clownfish have congregated around these 10 reefs.” On the Goa-Karnataka coastline, it has set up two rescue and rehabilitation centres for injured and sick marine life that washes ashore.

Meanwhile, Lacadives has expanded its turf—with three dive centres on Havelock, including big contracts with CGH Earth (cghearth.com) and Taj (tajhotels.com), and two centres on Chidya Tapu, where they set up base in 2010. Verma and Kakar have also partnered to start a hotel, Big Tree Resort (bigtreeresort.com), on Chidiya Tapu.

A separate dream of his is coming true in Alibaug, where Verma has set up a temperature-controlled 20m x 10m pool with three depths for his conceptual brand work and film projects. “I will also conduct underwater photography workshops for those starting out,” promises the pioneer.

Favourite dive site: Darwin’s Arch (now called The Pillars of Evolution) in the Galápagos Islands On the bucket list: Snorkelling with humpback whales in Tonga; diving with tiger sharks in the Maldives