Sanjiv Anand

Early Life

Sanjiv Anand was conceived as a last-ditch effort by his parents to save a failing marriage. It did not work. As such, he spent his childhood living with his mother in Trinidad for half the year and with his father in Jaipur, Rajasthan for the other half. His sister Sandhya–four years older–was his constant companion in both hemispheres. Fortunately, he adored his older sister and Sandhya was likewise smitten with her little brother from day one.

Their father was a theoretical physicist and big proponent of scholarship and academic excellence, so the pair spent a great deal of their time in Jaipur studying. They were also members of Bharat Scouts and Guides and thoroughly enjoyed all the outdoorsy activities that provided.

Their mother did whatever she liked at any given moment, but was ALSO a big proponent of scholarship and academic excellence as she didn’t want to be seen as the lax parent. She did give the siblings slightly more free time while they lived with her in Trinidad, but as “part-timers” on the island, they dealt with some social exclusion. When Sanjiv was five, Sandhya decided that the pair should take up tassa drumming, which eventually landed them in a band and allowed them to play at local festivals.

Both siblings were persistently warm and friendly, and by the time Sanjiv was around ten, they’d both finally made some lasting friends on both sides of the world. Even so, they always kept a tight orbit around each other. Sanjiv’s friends all knew his cool older sister, the one he often confided in because she gave such good advice. Sandhya’s friends all knew her charming younger brother, the one who couldn’t let a day go by without doing something to make her laugh.

Adolescence

As he grew older, Sanjiv became adamant that he wanted to join Starfleet, largely because Sandhya became adamant that she wanted to join Starfleet. And Sandhya wanted to join Starfleet largely because both their parents hated Starfleet: their mother had a very insular and anti-expansionist bent, and their father was rejected by Starfleet Academy multiple times.

(As Sanjiv got older and learned about concepts like “emotional neglect” and “parentification of elder siblings”, the desire to stick it to his parents also factored in more strongly as a motivation.)

Much to their parents’ chagrin, the siblings had been provided with just the sort of educational and extracurricular background that would give them a leg up in their application. Sandhya was accepted into Starfleet Academy on her first try.

His sister leaving home(s) was a little disorienting, as she was the most important source of familial affection in his life. He did have lovely aunts, uncles, and cousins, but they all had each other for a full year while he only saw them for half, and he felt that disconnect. The silver linings were that he got to visit her on campus often, and that he had his own studies and activities to keep him busy.

The back-to-back calamities of war with the Klingon Empire, the Borg invasion, and war with the Dominion only strengthened his resolve to follow his sister into the academy. He was 16 when the Breen joined forces with the Dominion and attacked San Francisco. The hours until he was able to get in contact with Sandhya were some of the worst of his life, but the relief he felt when he finally heard from her was dampened when he learned that one of her close friends had been killed.

Knowing that Sandhya wouldn’t want to stay with either of their parents and have her grief compounded by their insistence that she drop out of the academy, Sanjiv switched to remote schooling and went to stay with her in the apartment that she’d been sharing with her friend while the academy was closed. He even convinced her to take the additional bereavement leave that Starfleet Academy was offering. After a few weeks, Sandhya asked him if he’d like to make the move permanent, and he readily agreed.

So he finished his last two years of secondary school in San Francisco, applied to Starfleet Academy, and also got in on his first try. Barely. To this day, he has no idea that the admissions officer who approved him nudged him over the “accepted” side of that teetering edge on the basis of good character.

Starfleet Academy

In his first year at the Academy, Anand embedded himself into extracurriculars even more thoroughly than he had in secondary school. He ran for and was elected to student government where he served as a transfer student representative. He played multi-tenor drums in the Starfleet Academy marching band. After a concussion in tryouts for the cricket team, he decided to stop pressing his luck and just watch the games instead.

When it came to his actual schooling, though, he struggled to find direction. It wasn’t too much of a problem the first two years, but after jumping from engineering to psychology to flight control in the span of three semesters, his advisor became a bit concerned. It was sheer luck that he caught an on-campus presentation from the JAG office that featured a segment on their Safety Investigation Bureau. He would graduate a semester late, but he’d have a degree in Forensics to show for it.

Ever the consummate extrovert, Anand still found (or rather, made) time to date at the academy. Most were brief encounters, flings, and the like. It was in his fourth year that he met Ladhem, a Farian who worked at one of the bars near campus. The two hit it off immediately, but beyond their initial chemistry, their similar personality types contrasted by their very different backgrounds proved fertile ground for something deeper to take root. They dated for over ten months.

The end of their relationship came in a cruel and unexpected way just before Anand’s final semester, when Ladhem was killed at the bar where he worked. To this day, Anand’s not entirely sure what happened beyond what he read in the news, as local law enforcement had no reason to release any information to him. It was a crushingly lonely time for him. Since Ladhem was a Farian, rumors flew that he was killed by the Orion Syndicate. Friends that had once remarked on what a charming, unlikely pair Anand and Ladhem were now assured Anand that he had dodged a bullet, and said that he really shouldn’t have been dating such a sketchy guy to begin with.

Counseling helped. Throwing himself into his studies in his final semester helped. Talking to his sister might have helped, but he never told her what happened. They’d been speaking less and less the further Sandhya travelled from Earth, and anyway, she was still carrying the weight of her own loss. Miraculously, he still graduated on his pre-established timetable.

Early Career

In addition to proper coursework at the academy, a position in the Safety Investigation Bureau requires time spent in both flight control and engineering positions, so Anand was rotated through a variety of ships to get an overview of as many classes as possible. It did not make socializing easy, but as the weeks and months went by, neither did Anand. He became quiet, withdrawn, and only left his quarters for duty shifts. The temporary nature of his assignments caused his crewmates to assume he was just unsociable. Fortunately, he still had the wherewithal to realize on his own that he needed help.

There’s a lot of things that Anand doesn’t know about his parents, so it was news to him that he inherited Major Depressive Disorder from both sides. He started seeing a counselor again, and started a medical treatment regimen that he still undergoes semi-annually to this day (ask him to tell you about bio-electric field generators as scaffolding cues for artificial neurotrophic factors! he knows so much about that specific thing, it’s like he’s being possessed by the ghost of a neurologist).

Protostar and Mars

His first official day on the job as an investigation officer with the Bureau was a little hectic: it was the day after the USS Protostar incident. The learning curve on what his superior officers kept referring to as a “wholly unprecedented incident” was rather steep, and he was tossed headfirst into the grim duty of interviewing survivors. As it turned out, the amount of interviews he conducted in conjunction with the quality of data he gathered from them surprised everyone on his team, and just like that, Anand became the go-to “interview guy”. It was a task no one on the investigative team ever wanted anyway.

Anand was perfectly content to be the “interview guy” as long as he was getting hands-on experience in all other investigative duties, and he was. It was a very productive and enlightening year for him. And then Mars happened.

By the end of 2385, Anand was seeing two counselors: his own, and the Starfleet-mandated occupational counselor. It wasn’t enough. He needed a break. Fortunately, his sister’s marriage gave him an excuse to take leave, and he took his sweet time getting back to work. When his niece was born two years later, he took leave again to visit. His sister caught on to how strung out he was, and started inviting him on regular family outings. After several of those, he finally started to remember how to socialize again.

He met Esen Burakgazi, a lawyer in JAG, at a speed dating event in 2389. They dated for three years before deciding that their similar personalities, similar hobbies, and similar life plans made them a perfect fit, and they married in 2392.

They were divorced three years later when it turned out that their personalities were perhaps a bit too similar. Being emotionally avoidant in exactly the same ways could only work for them for so long. It wasn’t a particularly bitter divorce, and the two are still good friends, but it was enough to cause Anand to seek out a change of scenery. He transferred to the JAG office at Starbase Bravo several months later.

Starbase Bravo

He worked there for three years, and it changed something in him. There was something about finally being away from Earth–from San Francisco–and living in a city in space. There was something about being able to watch the starships coming and going. There was something about the smaller office that allowed him to relax and think a bit more. He started thinking that maybe the next time he was on a starship he could be exploring, instead of just traveling to investigate the next disaster.

In 2398, he enrolled in command school and attended the Starfleet Academy campus on Mellstoxx III. There, he was coached in developing a leadership style that worked with his natural emotional intelligence and the communication skills he’d honed through years of work in investigations. He found his stride as the first officer on a training cruise. The prospect of being the ultimate go-between for the commanding officer and the department heads was exciting for both him and his instructors, as it suited his skill set perfectly.

Command Track

In fact, the academy instructors were so confident of this that they assigned him to a known “problem CO” as soon as the year of training had officially ended. Said captain had already gone through two executive officers in his first year of command, but he was doing fine by the books, and crew morale–at least, documented crew morale–had not slipped low enough to be cause for intervention. The hope was that Anand’s empathetic nature and encouraging leadership style would fill in the gap that seemed to exist between the CO and his crew, and that Anand’s patience would allow him to withstand the CO’s harsh personality.

It sort of worked. Anand lasted four times as long as the last two first officers did, but after two years of trying to build a bridge between an unyielding captain and a wary crew, up to and including recruiting officers to the ship that meshed better with that captain’s particular command style, Anand had to admit he was no longer up to the task. He requested a transfer to another ship in need of an executive officer.

Unfortunately, by luck of timing (and because he had done a comparatively good job at his previous posting), what he got was a promotion and a command. He didn’t want a command (too much responsibility, not enough away missions!), but he didn’t feel particularly able to turn it down since it had come with a promotion, and because he’d been the one to request a transfer in the first place. Fortunately for him, it was a small ship with a straightforward mission profile, so he figured he’d probably be able to handle it.

Probably.