Hiraeth is more than just a word. The Welsh word has no exact English cognate and it is rather difficult to translate into other languages. It denotes a feeling of grief for places lost,nostalgia, yearning, sadness and homesickness for a home one cannot return to.
I came across this word a couple of years ago. But it was only in the remote Nicobar islands in the eastern Indian Ocean, where I studied the post-tsunami sociocultural change among the indigenous communities of the islands, that I experienced its true meaning.
The Nicobar archipelago, except for a few pockets, is entirely a tribal reserve. Here, a historically isolated indigenous community, the Nicobarese, lived independently—with limited cross-cultural contact—until the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated the archipelago in December 2004. In the aftermath of the catastrophe and the humanitarian response from the government , the Nicobarese experienced a sudden sociocultural rupture. The change was so abrupt that the community, especially the elderly, now see themselves as outsiders in their own islands and feel a strong hiraeth for the pre-tsunami Nicobar—the place, the people, the time and the culture all irretrievably lost.
This feeling of hiraeth is much stronger among the former inhabitants of Trinket—an island that was abandoned after the tsunami. Trinket, 29 sqkm, had a population of 432 spread across four villages—Safed Balu, Trinket, Hockook and Tapiang. The tsunami killed 91 people. The surviving Nicobarese were evacuated and rehabilitated on an adjacent island, Kamorta, where they received compensation, free rations and amenities such as water, electricity, education, medical care, housing and so on. Finally, with the allotment of permanent ‘tsunami shelters’ at Vikas Nagar village on Kamorta Island, Trinket was abandoned permanently.
At Trinket Island
A decade after the tsunami, I visited Trinket along with two Nicobarese—Portifer, the captain (leader) of Vikas Nagar village, and Casper James, the assistant commissioner of the central Nicobar Islands. As soon as our boat reached the shores of Trinket, a Nicobarese boy, Derek, swiftly rowed his hodi (handmade canoe) towards us. It was raining heavily and we rushed to the nearby settlement where Jonathan, a tall muscular Nicobarese, stood holding a ladder that we climbed quickly. Built on 7-8 feet high stilts, Jonathan’s one-room hut could easily accommodate 15 to 20 people but only Jonathan and Derek live in it.
Trinket to tin huts
After some tea, we went turtling. While wading through seawater, I asked Portifer about his experience of the tsunami. He traced a line with his finger from one end of the shore to the other. “The people I had known for decades, one morning, I found their corpses strewn on these shores. We piled up and burnt heaps of dead bodies. It was the most unbelievable and painful sight.”
A long silence followed until we reached a lagoon. “It is crocodile-infested,” Portifer cautioned us against stepping into it. “Trinket seems a resource-rich island, why did people choose to abandon it?” I probed. “We did not abandon Trinket; we lost it to humanitarian aid. While the tsunami took away 91 people, the aid has swept the entire community off the island,” he replied.
The Nicobarese men drinking toddy and relaxing. Tobacco, toddy and supari have a special significance in the Nicobarese society.
Despite geographical vulnerabilities, the Nicobarese had evolved as a strong and a self-sustaining society. The concept of a ‘problem’ is alien to the Nicobarese, as they do not perceive any situation as such. In fact, the word ‘problem’ is quite difficult to translate into the Nicobarese dialect. It is for this reason that despite the tsunami’s massive devastation, the community exhibited unparalleled resilience. Instead of staying in relief camps for long, the captains approached the administration for boats and tools so that they could return to Trinket and rebuild their lives. However, the administration put the community in intermediate tin shelters, provided monetary compensation, and free rations for five years. Later, permanent shelters were allotted at Vikas Nagar that forestalled their return to Trinket.
With negligible livelihood engagement, the islanders sat idle for years and became sedentary, dependent, consumerist—with many turning alcoholic. Due to a sudden lifestyle change, they also suffered from new diseases such as diabetes, asthma, obesity, and hypertension.
Then, recently, the monetary compensation was exhausted and livelihood opportunities at Kamorta were few. The Nicobarese started experiencing ‘real life’. The land allotted to the community in Kamorta was not suitable for coconut cultivation. The absence of other sustainable opportunities that Trinket had traditionally provided now means that the future of the Nicobarese at Vikas Nagar seems uncertain. So is it time to return to Trinket?
‘If it were a canoe’
It’s not so easy. On our way back to Jonathan’s settlement, Derek showed us a canoe that had drifted to Trinket a couple of weeks ago. As he inspected it, Casper looked at Portifer and said, “I think it needs some repair and after that Derek will be able to use it in shallow waters.” “Can’t we fix Trinket like this canoe?” I asked. “I wish Trinket were a canoe that we could fix so easily,” replied Portifer.
Jonathans settlement on Trinket
He spoke of how the post-tsunami dependency and leadership crisis have plagued the entire Nicobarese community into a crisis. The present leaders want the community to return to its traditional habitat and engage in sustainable livelihood practices as before. But a large number of people, especially the youth, are now addicted to the highly consumerist lifestyle. They have neither the willpower nor the desire to make the move.
Humanitarian intervention has made the community wary of outsiders, but at the same time the dwindling trust among the Nicobarese has affected their collective decision-making process. Portifer said, “So much misinformation has been fed to the community in the past decade that now people do not know what to believe and what not to.” The creation of assets in the form of permanent shelters at Vikas Nagar is also a major factor that discourages the Nicobarese from returning to Trinket. They wonder what will happen to their shelters if they leave.
A freshly-caught pig being hauled away for cooking. Pigs are an integral part of the Nicobarese diet and communal feasts.
Post-tsunami, the Nicobarese cultural singularities—self-sustenance, egalitarianism and harmonious coexistence—that the community had protected for centuries are fast vanishing across the Nicobar islands. The elderly, who commanded respect and exercised control over the community by virtue of their knowledge and skills, feel left out in the post-tsunami scenario.
Gopinath of Trinket; Tinfust and Yom of Daring; Mark Paul of Champin; Tafuse of Ramjaw, and James and Muhoh of Little and Great Nicobar are remarkable custodians of oral histories, traditional wisdom, and skills inherited from their ancestors. However, now they find they have nobody to pass their skills on to and fear that with their demise, the centuries-old rituals, traditional medicine, and sustainable livelihood practices of the islanders will also die.
Our people, our hope
A recurring question that bothered me throughout the interaction was this: now that the long symbiotic relationship between Trinket and its people has been snapped, what future do the abandoned island and its former inhabitants have?
Post-tsunami, the administration adopted a top-down approach towards rehabilitation and development in Nicobar. The administration chose Kamorta as a construction site over Trinket due to logistical convenience. The excessive control that the administration exercised over the Nicobarese through its disaster response has undermined their resilience and disempowered them.
The present situation in the Nicobar demands rebuilding of capabilities and resilience through the community’s own active participation. Motivated by this, Casper, who is also the first Nicobarese Assistant Commissioner from central and southern Nicobar, is diligently lobbying with the captains to revive and develop Trinket as a ‘model Nicobarese Island’.
By turning the abandoned Trinket into a model island through the active participation of the community, Casper wants to motivate Nicobarese across the islands to unite and revive their dying culture. He believes that “people will save Trinket and, in return, Trinket will save them.”
The elderly across the islands are hopeful that the disoriented tribal community will soon unite under the leadership of a visionary leader. Mark Paul shared the collective sentiments of the elderly: “We have had enough from outsiders, now our own people are our only hope. Our community needs a visionary leader who can reunite us and give us direction. We are waiting for such a leader to emerge.”
The present situation of the Nicobarese, especially the elderly, in Vikas Nagar and elsewhere is reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot , in which Vladimir and Estragon anxiously await Godot on a barren road by a leafless tree. The protagonists are not sure if they have ever met Godot, if they are waiting in the right place or if Godot will ever come. But they keep waiting. Likewise, utterly disenchanted with their present circumstances, the Nicobarese elderly anxiously wait for a leader, a ‘Godot’ to revive the ‘good-old Trinket’ or the pre-tsunami Nicobar that exists only in their memory. The elderly are not certain if it will happen in their lifetime but they are hopeful and waiting.
Shiva in Little Nicobar with his favourite possession a battery powered radio
While leaving Nicobar, I looked at the islanders who had come to see me off at the Kamorta jetty and wondered who could catalyse social change within the community at this time of their existential crisis. Would it be existing leaders like Portifer, Rashid, Frazer, Ayesha, Cecilia, Nazir, and Barnabas? Would it be pro-people administrators like Casper? Or would it be ordinary but young and proud Nicobarese like Shiva, an eight-year-old boy, whom I met on a remote island in Little Nicobar, and who claimed that one day he would hunt down all the menacing crocodiles of Makachua village with the lean dogs he has been taming for years?
Trinket does not have any modern amenities and infrastructure—medical facilities, electricity, clean water, roads, schools, transportation, communication and so on. However, four families have already returned to the island and have started a normal life.
From the deck of the moving ship, I stared at Trinket until it disappeared from the horizon. Casper’s statement resonated in my ears—“people will save Trinket and in return Trinket will save them.”
The writer is an Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
