A Mid-Summer Day's Dream

The breeze cooled my face as the bus picked momentum. A popular number was playing in the background and I nodded my head in beat. We were headed for Baratang Island, a hundred-odd kilometers from Port Blair. The city’s cleanliness still fascinated me. It felt as if the sea had taken upon itself to invade the city while everyone was sleeping, give the roads a thorough scrub, and then tiptoe back to its rightful place right before the first fishermen got up for another hard day’s work.

Today I felt unsettled. Baratang Island, a small blob on the Andaman map is frequented by tourists mainly for its mud volcanoes and rare limestone caves. But to get there, one has to cross the Jarawa reserve, home to the once ferocious Jarawa warrior tribe. The hunter-gatherer tribe had been at war with civilization right from when the British colonialists had set up a penal-colony in Andaman in 1858. When the Indian government initiated construction of the Andaman-Trunk-Road in 1965, the tribe was forced to move deeper into the forests. Today they are amongst the prime attractions that agents promise to tourists. When I asked the bus conductor if I would see a Jarawa, he reassured me that I could feed ‘it’ too.

During the road’s construction, the Jarawas had tried to resist in their violent style and many were brutally killed, most being attributed to electrified fences on the perimeter of the construction area. As the bus pressed down the winding and curving road, the panorama unfolded to display a delightful landscape. The ‘red’ remained hidden.

I think it was I who saw him first. He was short but pristinely sculpted, dark skinned with cropped hair. He stared back piercingly. For a moment, it seemed as if time had completely stood still. It felt as if a single forward step, and I would break through an invisible film and enter into another era, another century, another world. The next moment someone screamed and the reverie was broken.

The whole bus now thronged to get a glimpse of the Jarawa. When we crossed him, he broke into a run and in an incredible display of athleticism, clambered onto the roof. As I heard his feet pound on the metal, my own heart hammered with excitement. I struggled to comprehend what had made the tribe come out in the open since 1997. Was it resignation and acceptance that the ‘other side’ was stronger? Was it the dwindling numbers? A number of them begged near check-posts for food and gifts. Were they just enamored by these new elements in their space?

After a few kilometers, the figure suddenly jumped down from the roof and made for the flanking forest. Then just before he reached the trees, he turned and looked at me just as a king would. He was still free to jump whenever he wanted, still free to follow his soul, still free to be free.

The next moment, he disappeared into the forest.