Manjula goes blogging...

The simplest way to get across Great Nicobar Island to the beaches on the west coast was to catch a ride part way with someone driving along the single paved road that cut across the island in one of the very few motorized vehicles on Great Nicobar. Several plans were made and canceled - the bad mountain road and the deplorable condition of the jeep with its tractionless tires and ready-to-jump-off body parts delayed the expedition. Finally, Ratnam and I hitched a ride with a doctor and a teacher who were headed to “Shompen Complex”, a collection of 2-3 huts in the middle of the rainforest - a controversial attempt to provide education and medical care to the Shompens, a primitive tribe found in the deep forested interior and occasionally along the coast of only Great Nicobar. The Shompens are a seminomadic tribe of Mongoloid origin and apparently fewer than 200 of them remain. Their interactions have been largely limited to the coastal Nicobari tribe, with minimum contact with the non-tribal settlers (although this trend may be changing). In the two years that the doctor had been there, he had never had a patient and the teacher who had written out the Hindi alphabet on the blackboard had never had a student. Apparently, if the Shompens did come, they collected the food being offered, indulged in some wrestling, and disappeared into the forest. Very little of their language is known and the only times I met Shompens (only men, never women) along this road, it was mostly a silent encounter during which they exchanged honey combs for tobacco/cigarettes with the local non-tribal men...

Another time, Ratnam and I met a Shompen walking on the beach along a river we were preparing to wade across. He was wearing a styrofoam box on his head and carrying a long stick and probing for turtle nests. (Although sea turtles are protected under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, the indigenous tribes are exempt from this Act). Again, few words were exchanged, but he rowed us across the river one at a time in his dugout - possibly an ordinary moment for him and Ratnam, but different for me.