Island's End (23 page)

“It does not matter. We will rebuild it together. I will look after my people from now on.”

“Uido, I am not Ragavan. I want to help your tribe.”

“Ragavan is dead,” Tawai interrupts.

“Dead?” Maya stares at me.

“Yes,” I reply. “They came to visit us and the wave killed him and his two men. We treated their bodies with respect. They are buried in our jungle.”

“How could Ragavan not know the wave was coming?” Tawai asks.

“Our magic does not always work,” Maya says. “Our medicines do not always work. Much we do not know. We do not see waves come and many die.”

I turn to my people. In their eyes, I see the same respect they once gave Lah-ame. I even hear many of the ra-gumul boys murmuring words of support. And my spirit senses the tribe’s deepening faith and love.

“I know we can trust you,” I say to Maya. “But the En-ge must be alone now. If we need your help again, we will find you. I came to your island once, for my brother’s sake. And I may do so again someday.”

Maya looks unhappy. “I wish we can help somehow. Please. I do not understand why you say no.”

“Uncle Paleva would,” I say to her. “But there is one thing you can do, Maya.”

“Tell me it.” Her face brightens a little. “I do what you want.”

“Help continue Uncle Paleva’s work. Help keep strangers away from us.”

She puts her hand on her chest. “Yes, Uido. I do that.”

“And if his spirit waits until you return, tell Uncle Paleva I wish him a good crossing into the Otherworld. Lah-ame’s spirit journeyed there only a few days ago. He is surely waiting to greet his old friend again.”

“I am sorry Lah-ame is gone,” Maya says softly. “No other thing I can do?”

“Perhaps, with your help, your people and mine may share these islands and learn from each other. Thank you for caring about us, Maya. May your heart be in a good place.”

She repeats my words of farewell. ‟
Ngig kuk-l-ar-beringa
, Uido.”

Tawai leaps up into Maya’s arms. When he lets her go, she walks back to her flying boat. Before she gets in, she turns to me and waves her hand back and forth.

I raise my own hand to mimic her gesture of farewell.

She forces her lips into a smile and climbs into the flying boat. The black wings on top whirr faster than a hummingbird’s, then disappear as it rises straight into the air. I wave until the flying boat shrivels into a black spot and is lost from view.

F
or the rest of the day, my people keep busy with work. Kara and his hunters fetch coconuts from the beach. Other men set about making tools and vessels. While the women go gathering in the upper reaches of the jungle, Danna helps me carve a new set of fire tools. We speak of the work that lies ahead—the rebuilding of our village, how long we must wait before we fish again, what animals we can soon hunt.

At dusk, fireflies glow around us. The sea has forgotten its anger. We listen to the gentle waves slosh back and forth as we gather to share the evening meal. The wind changes direction and it no longer carries the smell of death up to us from beach. Instead, it brings a new scent from far across the water. I kindle a warm blaze and Kara feeds the fire with dried coconut leaves. Then we stand together in a circle and I lead the chant to honor the spirits for their gifts of fire and food.

I watch the flames leap like red-orange snakes, twisting together and then slithering apart. The fire keeps changing shape from one instant to the next, yet somehow it also remains the same. So, too, in the face of whatever awaits us, I shall ensure that my people’s spirits never weaken, that we never lose our true selves.

The firelight throws brightness and darkness on the faces of my people. In their eyes, I see strands of hope. These I will braid together into a strong rope to pull ourselves into the future. But first I must wash away the last of our sadness and help those around me who have suffered great loss. As Lah-ame would have done.

Standing against the blaze, I say a prayer of my own making to my people.

“Biliku-waye, Pulug-ame, and all the spirits of the Otherworld, protect us, the En-ge people, and keep us forever safe.

“For a long time we filled the islands with love, and we filled one another with love. Our songs drifted across the seas but we did not care what lay elsewhere, for we had it all, everything we needed, here.

“But that time is gone. The strangers will return when storms do not keep them away from us. And other En-ge will cross over, just as I did.

“Yet our life on these islands is far from over.

“If, on some days, it seems that the strangers’ ways are more powerful than our own, let us climb up here, watch the sea tickle the feet of the cliff, and remember this:

“With our ancient wisdom, we escaped the great wave that killed hundreds of strangers. The spirits told us of the coming of the killing wave; the wave the strangers did not see despite all their magic. Those who believed in the En-ge ways, we who kept our faith, were spared the largeness of grief that struck their world.

“And so I tell you, my people, as we prepare for whatever the future holds: the new journey awaiting us is not death. It is another life.”

My people’s eyes grow as bright as the crackling fire that fills the air with warmth.

Ashu stands up, wobbling slightly, but his voice is steady as he says, “Thank you for my life, Uido-waye.”

Has my brother really said
waye
after my name?

As though in answer to my silent question, Kara rises, his chest swelling with a joyous breath. “Another life, Uido-waye!” he shouts.

Mimi throws her long arms up toward the sky. My tribe takes up the chant. “Another life, Uido-waye!”

The chant grows faster, stronger. It spills over the cliff and rolls across the ocean. It echoes through the jungle and leaps from the uneven land below to the unbroken world above. I run the tips of my fingers over the chauga-ta around my neck, wondering if the voices are loud enough to reach Lah-ame’s spirit. In the warm breeze that strokes my cheeks, I feel the caress of his breath. I see a faint glow stretching across the ocean, as though the spirits of our ancestors and all the oko-jumu who came before me are smiling at us.

But then Danna’s arm slides around my waist. He pulls me back into the bright circle of the living. “Uido-waye, shall we dance?” he asks. “Or are you still worrying about something?”

“I am not worried at all,” I reply.

“Then come, oko-jumu. Quickly, before our problems weigh you down again. Let us not waste precious moments when your spirit dances like moonlight on water.” Danna’s shoulders shake with laughter.

I begin to laugh, too, with all of my body. My laughter reaches into the pit of my stomach and the ends of my toes. In triumph, I raise my hands to the sky, then I slap my thighs with my palms. My bones feel as strong as the great reefs of coral, and my mind as clear as the water of a rushing stream.

Suddenly, all of us are swaying together, laughing at the top of the cliff. And Danna’s feet match mine as we beat out a rhythm of celebration, in perfect unison, on the warm earth of our island.

It seems unbelievable that in today’s world there are human beings who live the way they did thousands of years ago, who refuse to make contact with modern civilization. A few native tribes living in the Andaman Islands of India still struggle to preserve their culture by keeping to themselves in the face of increasing encroachment by modern settlers from the Indian mainland. Though these tribes may go back seventy thousand years, their populations are shockingly low. Recent estimates of the combined count for living members of the Jarawa, Great Andamanese, Onge, Sentinelese and Shom Pen tribes ranged from four hundred to a thousand at the time I started writing this book, some years ago. But the Great Andamanese are thought to have become extinct since then. The future of these ancient people is in jeopardy and they face several grave threats to their survival—including the destruction of their habitat and cultural traditions.

In 1994, on a research trip to the Andaman Islands, I stayed for a brief while in the jungle where the last remaining Onge live. Thus, I am fortunate to count myself among the very few people in this world who have had at least passing contact with an ancient mode of life that pulses with its own special beauty.

When the tsunami of December 26, 2004, wreaked destruction across the globe, several “primitive” groups living on the Andaman Islands escaped to safety. Amazingly, they somehow avoided the killer wave that caused a shockingly high death toll in our modern times. In January 2005, an Associated Press reporter met four tribesmen named Ashu, Tawai, Danna and Lah, who said that their entire tribe (over two hundred strong) had survived. An ancient knowledge of the movement of wind and oceans and a sensitivity to the behavior of sea birds and island creatures may have warned these native people to flee inland in the nick of time. We do not know precisely how they realized that disaster was about to strike or why they were able to take appropriate action. Here, I have used my imagination, in conjunction with research, observation of the tribes and my experience with them, to tell a plausible story of what might have helped one such tribe remain relatively unscathed by this terrible natural disaster.

The opening incident in the book is also based on reports of an actual standoff between the Sentinelese tribe and the crew of a Portugese freighter that was shipwrecked off North Sentinel Island in the 1980s.

My training is in the physics and chemistry of the oceans, not anthropology. In writing this book, I spoke to anthropologists and researched texts and peer-reviewed literature to augment my understanding of indigenous people who once lived or still survive on the Andaman and Nicobar islands. The language, customs and beliefs expressed stem from ethnographic studies of native Andaman Islanders. However, I chose to give Uido’s tribe a fictional name (
En-ge
simply means “people” in the language of the tribe I met on the islands). This helped free me to amalgamate my knowledge and experience to fit Uido’s story—and to remember that I was writing neither an anthropological nor oceanographic text but a novel. Inspired by the spirit of Jorge Luis Borges, I gave my first loyalty in the telling of this tale “to the dream”: Uido’s dream.

ALSO BY

Padma Venkatraman