OFF THE MAINLAND: The Andaman Experience

 

 

‘Are you from the mainland?’ was the first question I faced as I checked out of Port Blair’s quaint little Veer Savarkar airport. My flight from Chennai had just landed (on time, I must say!) and the person asking me the question happened to be a cabbie, whose years of experience had surely flagged me off as a first timer to these lovely, mystical and magnificent islands that formed the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The remark was obviously casual and, I am pretty sure, rhetorical, but it set me thinking. And that’s when I realised what a profoundly different experience visiting the islands is compared to your ordinary getaway.

That you have come from the ‘mainland’, gives you a feeling that you have a entered a new world altogether. Feeling a fraction Christopher Columbus and a fraction Ferdinand Magellan, I was taken through the sleepy little capital, where a third of the total population of the islands lives, to my hotel. Nestled in the hills, the roads climbed up and down taking me past the bay, the Old Clock tower at the marketplace and the Cellular Jail. The islands have had a chequered history (referred in early historical writings of Roman geographer Ptolemy and in Marco Polo’s description as an island of fierce and cannibalistic people), and the stark reminder of one particularly dark chapter of that past is the Cellular Jail. This was ‘Kaala Paani’, built to confine Indian freedom fighters by the British in the late 19th Century and initially had seven wings, with the watch tower at the centre. Today, only three remain (the rest had been destroyed by the Japanese during World War II), and the Jail itself is a national monument, dedicated to the nation by the late Morarji Desai.

It was the first place I visited, because that’s all I knew about Andaman at that point of time. One can go around the courtyard, see the cells and the gallows (creepy!) and also look over the horizon from atop the wings. A piece of trivia: the sight of the lighthouse and the island imprinted on rupees twenty notes is a view from the top of this wing facing the sea. Rummaging my pockets for a Rs 20 note, I finally found one, and happily clicked a photograph to prove it!

A visit to Cellular jail is incomplete without attending the ‘Son et Lumiere’ or the sound and light show that gives a backgrounder on the history of the jail and the atrocities suffered by the prisoners here through a very neatly arranged array of lights (inside the cells, along the walls, on the tree in the courtyard – which happens to be the main narrator) and a powerful and tightly scripted narrative featuring voiceovers from Tom Alter, Om Puri and the like. The music, dialogues and the ambience take one back in time to the days of tortured freedom fighters in dingy jails – the story is as unsettling as it is uplifting. The next day, I had planned an excursion out to ‘Baratang’ somewhere in the Middle Andaman region. The area has a set of limestone caves, a serene beach called the ‘Balu Dera’ beach, and a ‘mud volcano’. But more than that was the alluring, though remote prospect of spotting the tribals as the bus went through a ‘tribal reserve’. Of course, the buses weren’t allowed to move without a police escort and we were strictly warned against clicking any photographs, stopping, and throwing any food items in case we spotted one. For a guilty moment, it felt like we were in a zoo, and hoped to catch sight of one.

As luck would have it, I did catch a glimpse of a couple of ‘Jarawas’ standing, spears in hand in their traditional attire, which by the way, is practically nothing! Eventually, the whole busload did go on a boat in the backwaters to the limestone caves, as well as to the ‘mud volcano’, but that glimpse of man – pimordial yet real – was on everyone’s minds. One of the elders of a family of tourists walking just ahead of me, snapped “If we can’t see a tribal, what’s the use of coming all the way here!” It was as if the value proposition of his entire trip lay in that one instance!

The next day’s expedition was via the ferry as I headed out to Ross Island, where the British had their headquarters in their heyday. Today, Ross Island is like a collection of ruins, part damaged by the recent tsunami and part ravaged by time. Even the corals haven’t recovered as yet. But the experience overall remains unchanged. Though I longed to explore more, the Islands up North have sparse connections, and some of them like the Sentinel islands are out of bounds for tourists. The four days that I had seemed to have drifted in a jiffy, as I tried to soak in the whole experience. Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a destination sort of grows on you, fuelled by the numerous stories, accounts and even urban legends about the islands, the indigenous people and a whole lot more. Fascinating just about begins to describe it, intriguing defines it, and enthralling perhaps completes the experience. There is a lot to learn and savour on a trip here, and enriching won’t be a bad adjective to use either. From a lost world

So fascinating and spectacular is the story of the tribes in Andaman that it is worthy of a National Geographic award winning documentary! There are about 12 such tribal units, and among them the major ones being the Jarawas, Shompen, Nicobarese, The Great Andmanese, The Little Andamanese, The Onges and the Sentinelese.

The origins of these tribes have been difficult to establish, although the most accepted theory remains that the Negritos made their way into the islands from the east in Myanmar. The Jarawas, the tribe that I had a glimpse of, inhabit middle Andaman and South Andaman, and are of Negroid origin and are mostly hunters and foragers. On the Nicobar Island live the Nicobarese, of Mongoloid origin, and as legend would have it, they are descendants of an exiled prince of Myanmar.

This tribe is the most advanced of the lot in the sense that they use modern agricultural and animal rearing methods unlike the other tribes who are mostly hunters and foragers. Then there are the Onges, who live on the Little Andaman and Rutland Islands. Part of the Nicobarese, the Shompen (about 200 of them remain today) live on the Great Nicobar islands.

The Sentinelese are Negritos – reportedly the fiercest and most evasive of the lot and inhabit the Sentinel Islands. Most of these tribes have little or no contact with the settlers in the island except for the Nicobarese.

Despite the isolation, the aborigines right to their resources and way of life has increasingly been under threat for the past few decades, as the influx of settlers has passed on diseases, increased deforestation, and cut off access to resources (like the Andaman Trunk Road running through the Andaman Island that has limited the Jarawas reach into fresh hunting grounds) and posed a threat to these rare communities.