Noah slurps down the last sip of tea, wipes his mouth with his left arm, and looks away. He, like the average Nicobarese, is not much of a talker. But there is something peculiar about his silence; it seems to wait for someone who cares to listen.
After long minutes, Noah opens up slowly. “I once had a dream, but I lost it. Now I fear my second dream will also be lost,” he says.
Noah is an inhabitant of Teressa, a remote island in the Nicobar archipelago. The Nicobar, except for a few pockets, is entirely a tribal reserve. Here, the historically isolated indigenous community of the Nicobarese has lived independently with sporadic cross-cultural contacts.
The tiny Teressa is hard to locate on the globe. But it is Noah’s entire world. Here, he spent a careless childhood befriending lambs, chasing pigs, hunting crabs, stealing papayas, and devouring raw fish. Like other Nicobarese, Noah’s parents also lived off the land. He began to help them with household chores from an early age. But he liked nothing more than naps, and these would punctuate his daily routine.
Since childhood, Noah had only one ambition — to own a pucca house one day. He grew up. And so did his dream. After some years, the cherished dream began slowly turning into reality. The sight of his half-built pucca house would make Noah swell with pride; the idea of a new life would enthral him.
With a new house, Noah wanted to make two statements — he was not a ‘fruitless’ son, and that the 17-year-old was now ready to raise a family independently. But little did he know life was to take an unexpected turn.
Rolling like a fish
Memories of the day after Christmas of 2004 are vividly engraved on Noah’s somewhat forgetful mind. That morning, when his mother came to wake him up, Noah threw a tantrum. The next thing he remembers is “rolling like a fish” in his hut. “I wondered momentarily why mother was so angry over something so petty,” he recalls. But the next moment, Noah realised something was wrong. He jumped out of the hut. The earth beneath his feet and the coconut tree above his head were shaking. It was a terrible earthquake.
Soon, the islanders witnessed something unimaginable. “The sea turned into a giant naagin and rushed towards us,” remembers Noah. The islanders ran uphill just before a series of towering waves hit Teressa one after another. A few hours later, when they descended to return to their huts, there was nothing left to return to; the entire idyllic village had been washed away.
There was no sign of Noah’s dream house that had once stood tall by the shore. His 2,200 coconut trees, 50 fowls, 30 tin sheets, 25 bags of cement, 15 pigs, four lambs, and several hodis (handmade canoes) were all gone. With a heavy heart, Noah picked up whatever had been left behind by the waves. Something in him died that morning; it was the end of a childhood dream.
Today, Noah is 30 and married. His world has changed dramatically. After losing everything to the catastrophe, Noah lives in a ‘tsunami shelter’ that the government allotted to the homeless Nicobarese. He has 70 coconut trees, 25 fowls and five pigs. Noah can feed his family, but he struggles to make money.
In 2014, when Noah queued up at a ration shop one hot afternoon, he got an idea. He immediately went to his closest friend, a government employee. “I want to bring rice, sugar, tea, and cold drinks to the island,” said Noah, and asked for a loan of ₹50,000.
After the tsunami, the Nicobarese have acquired a consumerist lifestyle. A few shops in Teressa, run by non-Nicobarese people, sell merchandise to the islanders at very high profits. Noah sees a business opportunity here, but he has no capital to set up shop.
Dreaming of a shop
Noah’s friend refused to help, arguing that it was too big a dream for a Nicobarese. An emotional Noah went off to seek the help of other friends and relatives, even offering them a partnership in his dream shop. No one was convinced. Noah tried finding wage labour. “But the government prefers a man from Ranchi over a Nicobarese,” he says.
Noah began to sell toddy. Then, copra (smoke-dried coconut), the Nicobarese’s main source of income, which earned him around ₹4,000 in one season. He also tried selling fish.
When nothing worked, Noah approached the island’s cooperative bank, but came away disappointed.
Despite all this, Noah has managed to save ₹7,000 in the last four years. But at this pace, he argues, it will take him a lifetime to set up shop. Noah is angry with everyone for not believing in his dream. “I don’t smoke bidi, drink tari (toddy) or chew paan. Still, no one is ready to lend me money. Even the church has refused to help.”
But who Noah is angry with most is himself. He did not study beyond Class VII, and nobody wants to risk their money on someone not educated enough to handle business. “Everyone thinks an uneducated tribal person is stupid,” he says.
Of late, Noah has begun to worry about his three children. He has heard that the schools in Nicobar are no good, and wants to send them to Port Blair for an education. He needs money for this, and his vision of a shop looms ever larger. He wants his children to study so that they don’t ache like him with unfulfilled dreams.
The pucca house would have made his father proud, but now... “now that my abba is gone, I have to live with the pain of being a fruitless son for the rest of my life.”
“But I don’t want to be remembered as a fruitless father,” he says, and hopes to give his children at least the gift of education. “Who knows, someday my children might make it big — as school teachers, clerks, peons.” His wife lies awake at night, he says, wondering where he will find the money.
I suggest that Noah ask his friends again for a loan. But he doesn’t like the idea. “It’s not my habit to ask twice,” he says. I tell him that instead of asking for ₹50,000 from one friend, he should try to borrow ₹5,000 each from 10 friends. Noah thinks for a while, then brightens up. “This is a good idea, sir. I think my friends will agree to it. Once I set up the shop and start earning, I will dream more. Who knows, one day I might become a seth ,” he laughs.
It’s late now, and Noah has a long way to go. He leans forward and shakes my hand. “Good night, sir. Good morning in advance. Nice meeting you. Same to you,” he says in broken English with a broad smile and the twinkle back in his dreamy eyes.
The author is a social science nomad who travels to remote places to dig out stories.
