It started with an innocent question. “So,” said I, looking around at the quaint town of Port Blair, “do you belong here?” I was in an auto rickshaw, driving to Aberdeen Bazaar, and this was one of my standard conversation openers. The driver sighed, thought for a while and replied. “I don’t know.” Then he added: “Although I was born here, and my father and his father have lived on these islands, I somehow still think I don’t really belong here.” Silence reigned for the next few minutes as the auto rickshaw sputtered asthmatically on the road meandering uphill. This was not the answer I’d expected, for in the Andamans, most people you meet will cheerfully tell you they don’t belong there, but have come from the “mainland” — a generic term for Bengal, Tamil Nadu and anywhere else in India. So I asked him, “Where are you originally from?” And so he told me his story.
“My grandfather was Burmese, and arrived here as a prisoner of the Japanese in 1940. They’d taken over the Andamans and put their prisoners in Cellular Jail,” said he. When the Second World War ended five years later, the prisoners were freed. “My grandfather used to tell us how at that time, the Andaman islands were totally wild — just jungles, hills, wild animals … and, of course, the deep blue sea!” Port Blair, said he, had the infamous Cellular Jail, the officers’ quarters and little else. It was, he recounted, a strange combination of great natural beauty and extreme inhospitality. The waters, so deceptively tranquil, had proved treacherous for many a ship. Malarial fevers often claimed those who survived jail, wrecked ships and other ignominies. Escape from the island, which was flanked by impenetrable rainforests and the deep sea, was well nigh impossible.
“Consequently, he could never ever appreciate the beauty of the islands without thinking of the pitfalls they hid,” said he, “In fact, my grandfather always found it oppressive here, he longed to go back home.”
Yet, inexplicably, when he was freed in 1942, he decided to stay back. “Instead, my grandfather set up a small logging business in Port Blair,” the driver said, adding, “He left it to the traders to risk the long sea voyage to the mainland!” He married a local girl, and died from malaria years later, still yearning for his homeland.
The grandfather’s attitude to the islands also coloured his family’s perception of them. “My father grew up hatching plans to escape. Then logging became illegal in the Andamans, and their business had to be closed,” said he. Once again, the family was at a crossroads. They had the option of going back “home” and setting up a new business. “You know how a captured bird feels its captor’s hands upon it long after they’ve been taken away. In the same way, the islands continued to tie my family with invisible shackles…,” the driver said.
“Growing up, I was very confused. My family still rigidly called Burma their home, but the islands were where my friends and family were,” said he. Then a cousin offered to take him to Rangoon to look for work. “I’d have been the first in three generations to leave the islands. Yet, I hesitated,” said he. Eventually, fate intervened. His father became sick and he couldn’t go. Instead, 15 years ago, when auto rickshaws were introduced in Port Blair, he was among the first to buy one.
“Now this provides a decent livelihood, and I’ve long forgotten my plans of working in Rangoon,” said he, adding, “But once in a while, I wonder what life would have been like if we’d actually grown up at “home” instead of here…”
