A bus ride through Jarawa reserve

By Somya Barpanda (St. Stephen's College)

The tropical forests of Andaman and Nicobar Islands are home to a lot of native tribes. Amongst these, the Jarawas are the most popular. Tourist operators, till last year used to take tourists on bus-rides on the Andaman Trunk Road cutting through their jungles and promising visitors sightings of ‘adivasis’. The government has now banned the entry of tourist buses into the reserve area following many complaints from environmental activists.  In 2009, I went on a similar tour to the Jarawa reserve. Here’s what I experienced.

September. 18.2009, Friday: It was 4:00a.m. We were eagerly awaiting the bus at the deserted bus-stop. My little sister yawned for the umpteenth time and my parents paced up and down the footpath to fight back their dizziness. Some other, equally sleepy, tourists kept us company. I was wide awake. The thought of the impending adventure that I was hoping to experience made me a little too excited. This was going to be my first tryst with actual adivasis-the Jarawas. Our tour agent had promised us that we would take home an experience of a lifetime. My restlessness was replaced with great enthusiasm as I saw the yellow headlights of a luxury bus approaching towards us.

It took us 35 minutes to get out of Port Blair. While my co-passengers snored in their seats, I went through the instructions on the pamphlet that had been distributed to us. The same content was displayed on many big-billboards on our way to the reserve. They said:

CAUTION

The bus crossed the check post and then we were moving in the convoy system- a queue of locomotives-trucks, tourist buses, military jeeps and private cars. Tall tropical trees stood on either side of the Andaman Trunk Road. As we drove deeper into the forest, my disappointment grew....I was expecting tribals merry-making, gorging on fruits and drinking coconut beverages-exactly like I had seen on Discovery shows and in Hollywood movies.... But all I had witnessed till then was a single pukka-road in front and impenetrable forest thickets on the sides. As the pungent smell of diesel seeped into my nostrils, I wondered if the tribals I sought hid behind those curtains of green. And before I could realize, our conductor shouted, “Dekho! Dekho!”. In that fleeting glimpse, I saw a little girl, donning simple red and white attire, standing there on the roadside. Her coal-black hands were outstretched towards the windows of the passing vehicles. Her tongue stuck out and she was making strange sounds. My fellow-travellers seemed suddenly amused. The sight had jerked them out of their slumber. But, “What was that!” I thought, “Tribals are merry people. Aren’t they? They hunt and celebrate their day’s catch in groups. They don’t reach out to their seekers. We were supposed to observe them from behind the bushes”-that was my muse of living an adventure flick! And yet again, there was another Jarawa; a male sitting on his haunches; waiting for the party to pass so that he could

 cross the road. But hey! He wore a red cap!! Yes, the same kind of cap that I was wearing to shield myself from the sun’s glare. People clapped. They clapped again when after 15 minutes they saw a group of native women grinning widely. One of them held a baby resting on her hip. The trip ended. I was not satisfied.

When we got down at the cafeteria, just outside the big gates of the reserve, we were met by a commotion. A young couple was surrounded by some security personnel. The lady looked miserably terrified and upset. I learned that they had halted their Indica and had stepped out to take a view of the forest scene, when a Jarawa group smashed their car windows and ran away with their travel bag. The army-men were admonishing them. I heard one of them say, “Ma’am, they roam around with bows and arrows. You could have been attacked.”

“The cap!” It struck me. So, these people have been stealing stuff, begging for food, threatening tourists! Where has their self-sufficiency gone? Don’t they hunt, build fires at night and lead a simple life? “They used to,” my driver said. “The encroachment by the tourists has made them see an easy way out to survive through the day. Now, they entirely count on the daily-routine trips of the tourists for their meals and clothing. They are too lazy to hunt. Incidents of looting and scuffles with the visitors have become common. Woh toh junglee log hain. That’s why we warn people not to provoke them or give them any chance to come near them.”

The population of this unique tribe is dwindling. They are sensitive to the effluents from the vehicles, to various microbial infections that they contract from the tourists through the food they loot or from all that is offered to them. All my initial excitement had dried up. Instead of that, I felt sad about all that these tribes were being subject to. Recalling how my bus-mates had ogled and jeered at the Jarawas, I wondered as to who the real junglee was.