THE MAKING - Andaman Adventure - The Jarawa

Can you imagine a people leading a Stone Age
existence today? In our modern world, with its cars
and computers and gadgetry it seems improbable, right?
But such people do exist. Out in the Andaman Islands we have
tribals who wear no clothes, who hunt with bows and arrows, and
who live the nomadic hunter-gatherer existence our ancestors once did.

These people are Indian citizens like you and me, but unlike for us, citizenship means little to them. For them, their home is the forest. What the forest has taught them is all they know. Its bounty and its security is all they seek and want.
Their forests are precious to them and they fiercely protect them.
They are hostile to those who enter and sometimes kill to protect
the only home they know.

On the Andaman Islands there were once several tribes that lived simple hunter-gatherer lives. Now most are gone. Of the tribes that survive, only two – the Jarawa and the Sentinelese – live deep in the forest and remain hostile to those who dare enter their territory. This story is about one of these tribes – the Jarawa.

I have always admired the Jarawa for their resilience and their ability to survive against all odds. First it was the British who hunted them; then during the occupation of the Andaman Islands in the Second World War, the Japanese waged a brutal war against them. Now, we the ‘civilized’ Indians are pressing in on their forests from all sides.

Yet, the Jarawa continue to thrive. But it isn’t only their survival capabilities that impress me. What I admire even more is the way they live, particularly the simplicity of their existence. Their forests, like forests anywhere in the world, are rich with natural resources. The Jarawa seek their food and shelter from the forest. Unlike us who always crave for more, they ask for little else. In return for the bounty the forests supply them, the Jarawa protect them, ensuring their health and survival. It is this that we, the so-called educated and civilized people, have to learn from the simple, uneducated Jarawa – the one great lesson they can teach us – the ability to live in harmony with nature.

The Jarawa forests are off limits to all visitors. This is as much for our protection as it is for them. I was one of the lucky ones allowed in…

THE MAKING - Andaman Adventure - Barren Island

If it were your mission to log the remotest outposts of India, then Barren Island would surely qualify in your list. The island is a tiny speck in the vastness of the Andaman Sea, probably the most distant of all Indian territories from the mainland. I had to wait for weeks to find a boat to take me to there, but finally I made it.

The volcano on the island was hissing and steaming when I set foot on its lonely shore. There was something going on beneath Barren’s cone. Magma was sloshing and churning, seeking to blast itself out from the confines of the volcano’s crater. I could feel it. When I stood on the crater I knew it in my bones that there was a force of immense power beneath my feet.

A few months after I visited a powerful earthquake struck the region. The magnitude of the earthquake was such that it generated a tsunami that killed a 100,000 people. Barren Island sits squarely on top of the fault line that triggered the earthquake. The killer Tsunami of December 2004 not only spread havoc and death across South Asia, but it also set Barren Island alight, blasting a hole through its crater and hurling lava and smoke into the sky. The volcano on Barren went live again.