From the islands

Chennai floods and the Tsunami before that remind us that in our pursuit of progress, we must not overlook the enduring lessons preserved by those who have harmonised with nature for millennia

Snakes slithered into homes and a crocodile was spotted on a flooded street. The city was submerged, again. Lives were lost and displaced, again. Questions on urban planning were raised, again.

Between the December deluge of 2015 and Cyclone Michaung of December 2023, Chennai, it appeared, hadn’t moved an inch in preparedness. If there were lessons from the past, those had been forgotten, again.

Let’s turn the clock back to another December day when another calamity, a far worse one, had come riding on the waves: The tsunami of 2004. Triggered by a massive undersea earthquake, which the scientists named the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake after its origin, it killed more than 200,000 people across 14 countries, becoming one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

As relief and rescue operations began, Coast Guard helicopters were sent to check on the Andaman Islands as well. Had the tsunami wiped out the archipelago’s indigenous tribes — the Great Andamanese, the Jarawas, the Shompens, the Onges and the reclusive Sentinelese, some of whom date back 70,000 years? The probability of that was high, but the world was in for a pleasant surprise.

The tribes had survived. Even the Sentinelese, who want to have nothing to do with the world outside of theirs, were spotted — alive, well and as fiercely protective of their island as ever. One Sentinelese man was caught on camera aiming his bow and arrow at a Coast Guard helicopter flying overhead in what was an unambiguous message: Go away and let us be. So hostile are the Sentinelese to outside intrusion that in November 2018, an American man who thought he could convert them to Christianity was killed with arrows shortly after he landed on their island.

Lessons learnt — and remembered — over generations on how to read signs from nature had saved these tribes from the wrath of the tsunami.

Anvita Abbi, a Delhi-based linguist who has extensively researched the languages and culture of the Great Andamanese, was full of stories on how these tribes had survived when I met her some years ago while researching for an article on the disappearing languages of India.

They recognised the changing pattern of the waves, for instance. The Onge, she said, spotted a fish of a certain colour that never comes to the surface unless the sea is turning “upside down”. It was their fishing time when the tsunami came, but by then they had already run to higher levels and had scrambled up trees. Many of them spent two days on treetops. An Andamanese father named Nao Jr, she said, made his six kids climb on a tree and kept swimming around it for seven hours.

Nao Jr, who died in February 2009, worked closely with Professor Abbi to bring out the first ever dictionary of the Great Andamanese. This dictionary has more than 150 words for fish, over 120 for birds, many for sea creatures, and so much more.

The “civilised” human today is taking great pains to homogenise everything — from food to architecture to ways of living. The recognition that there are other ways of being human and being evolved is fading.

The Jarawas, for example, would traditionally never add salt to their food. They would consume it in natural form from seafood and seaweeds. The modern world is now waking up to the benefits of seaweed and is consuming it as a superfood.

Among the things that saved the Andaman dwellers from the tsunami was the alertness brought upon by their senses: The way the air smells, the way the wind feels, the way the sea looks, the way the birds and animals sound. These are all senses that we are losing, with our eyes glued to screens and our ears plugged with headsets.

The Great Andamanese distinguish the world by smell, Professor Abbi narrated back then. Smell and spirit (things that don’t have a smell) together make the cosmos for them.

Through her dictionary project, Professor Abbi has attempted to not just rescue a language but also a way of life from oblivion. “A dictionary is a place where words can just hang around and wait, where language can interact and grow,” she said.

Languages can die with their speakers unless someone intervenes in time and salvages them. One such language, Aka-Bo, would have been blown away by the wind of time had it not been for Professor Abbi’s intervention. This linguist managed to record the language and songs of a Great Andamanese elder named Boa Sr, the last speaker of Aka-Bo. Boa died in 2010. Aka-Bo lives on in the recordings.

The Andamanese tribes have lived 70,000 years. If we don’t disturb them, Professor Abbi said, they will live another 70,000. Some things need to be rescued. Others demand a hands-off approach. Wisdom lies in recognising this, and in drawing lessons from the past.