Humane face of Language Documentation: A Great Andamanese Experience

Human history is replete with stories of survival and birth of many old and new cultures across the globe. Human migration across the world combined with the emergence of agriculture, the rise of industrialization and colonialism, and later globalization has not only produced the homogenization of cultures across the world but has also resulted in complete or partial endangerment of many lesser known cultures. One of the notable fallouts of this upheaval is the loss of linguistic equilibrium in the world leading to language endangerment and language death (Romaine 2007: 116-117). Death of a language does not only mean that some linguistic resources have ceased to exist but it is the loss of centuries of human knowledge and understanding of the world around us.

In recent times greater public awareness about language endangerment and the urgency to preserve the vanishing voices, has given rise to new and upcoming field of Language Documentation. Himmelman (2006: 1) in simple words defines language documentation as a lasting, multipurpose record of a language. Unlike language description, language documentation not only serves the scientific community but also essentially serves the interests of the speech community. Following on this new approach towards documentation and revitalization of endangered languages, We aimed to document the Great Andamanese language which is spoken by the Great Andamanese people living at Strait Island, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. To read more click below (PDF)

language-documentation-in-andamans

Andamans Blues

Andaman Sea

Do you remember I wrote you this song ‘All these things that I’ve done’ by ‘The Killers’ from Andamans? Some portions again, not the full song……

When there is no else to run,

Is there one more room son,

If you can! Hold on!

Yeah! yeah! You gottaa help me out

I got soul but I’m not a soldier.

This may sound like insanely and psychotically emotional to many of us but it happens to all of us when we want the other person to hold on. I don’t know what shit I’m writing and whether you care reading it. But this song is not a joke to me and of course it doesn’t mean shit to me. Sometimes I miss Andamans a lot especially when I am tired and sick of this boring and monotonous life. Andamans with its seas enveloping you like two big arms around you makes you feel safe and secure. I know I might sound stupid but seas are like mothers who cover you from all sides. People living on Andaman Islands might not like the idea, but I tell you that if ever allowed to settle down I would certainly prefer Andamans where everyday you can feel the sound of the sea touching your ears softly. Andamans is place where everybody speaks in 2^nd languages i.e. Hindi/English. Where you can rejoice Bengal’s Macher Jhol [fish cooked in hot gravy of mustard sauce] with the same eloquence as that of the sumptuous spread of South Indian delicacies on Banana leaf with crisp helpings of appam [a papad like fried entity made from rice]. Where the rains break your button operated fragile lovely looking umbrellas into pieces and you come to know of the importance of the age old Dadajee type big umbrellas which can protect you even if it’s raining cats like tigers and dogs like St. Bernards……Unfinished bussiness

Photo Courtsy:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/andamans/pool/

Walking on a thin layer of Ice: In the Midst of a Boat Ride

If we consider life as a journey, then it is better that we travel alone. Actually not alone in the way we conceive aloneness, but in a rather different way. This solitude is accompanied by longing, melody and the desire to be together again. All set to bring communion of the pain of separation and the joys of being together. And I must say this is a greater pleasure than any of the two. One should not travel alone to be alone in the end but to break the solitude which in turn will be rejuvenated on its own.

Now we come back to my farewell days in JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) before I took that mesmerizing ride to Kadamtala in Andaman Islands. We say memories fade, but I would say they take a backseat looking at you from behind. Watching you all your life. You cannot see them but they are always looking at you from your back. If you want to see them, you will have to face them.

And when I look back I see myself sitting on a concrete slab smoking cigarette with tea which is neither tea nor hot water or both, and talking some nonsense to an equally endowed lady in wee hours. Smoking is best done in company of a close friend (preferably woman) who ideally should be a smoker. Then you don’t give a damn what others are doing around you, and you think only about three objects- the burning cigarette in your hand, the woman beside you and the all the rational-irrational nonsense in air. I must admit that women are the best listeners. Compared to men they have more patience for listening and only after listening to your view, they would bring forward their own. You can blame it on their subversion by men but I am well aware that they are equally ferocious if they are fooled around much.

And I think of how every morning after getting up I used to go straight to the balcony at the back of my hostel Room and stare at the green tress and the vast sky outside. I used to feel so good by beholding nature. There are some numbers which remain stuck in our memory forever. For me they are 4, 219, 102 and 230. Now I’m not going to write about them here as they have their own stories stringed to them.

Have you ever enjoyed the rains in the open by walking on the lonely roads? This is a pleasure you can seek only when you are free from the worldly woes that cling to us all the time. Have you ever thought that you can become an alarm clock for somebody? I believe this is called humanness. Doing things without thinking of any gains is purely human and we do it often.

There is something in JNU which makes it a real utopian territory. A place where you live away from the harsh realities of the world, enjoying the sweet nectar of life and thinking in a very bookish sense of life. But I also know it makes a very different individual inside you: a brick meant for making a house which stands only in dreams. An individual with above average sensibilities and concern for the preciousness of human life is born in almost every one who is touched by the life in JNU. This is place where a student can talk to all the big shots without bowing in front of them. This is also a place where young Indians jostle together whether they come from Bihar, Tamilnadu, Nagaland or Maharashtra. Life is a celebration for many us who have lived there because here you celebrate its dark side too. The unreality of the reality.

When I remember the winters, I wonder why the jackets turn into branches surrounded by the fog. You have to come back from a long walk in the wee hours after graveyard shifts to see this happening when you can walk only by holding hands. Winter is not always the time when nature goes into hibernation but it is also the time when tears are frozen and every thought just fogs. When you want to cry but you cannot. Winters have also been the beginning of new life for me. A time for unfolding of a new story. That is why I have started enjoying winters more now.

Coming back to the boat ride to Kadamatala. It was a usual hot and sunny day of February 2006 in Andamans when one of my university senior who came to Strait Island on an engine propelled dinghy boat to see us. When I was offered the ride to kadamtala, I could not resist it. We were going to visit the abode of Jarawas (one of the last survivors of Pre-Neolithic people on earth) at Kadamtala area in Middle Andamans. I had met Jarawas but only at District Hospital in Port Blair and not in their natural habitation. Our boat was small enough to accommodate just 5-6 people and thus could not brave the open sea. So we stick to the passage by sea shore inundated by mangroves. Sometimes we crossed between two mangroves separated like lost brothers. I was trying to touch the sea water when the boatman told me to stop doing it as the waters were infested by crocodiles.

After a 3 hours boat ride we finally reached Uttara jetty where I first saw some Jarawas standing at the embankment. We proceeded to Kadamtala village (a village of Bengali settlers) where I was introduced to a lean and thin Bengali guy who will take me to a very different world later. Next morning I was riding a Jeep which left us in the outskirts of the village. At the roadside we waited for another guy who was going to bring some medicine for the Jarawas. After waiting an hour or so, he finally arrived and after getting the medicines from him we embarked on a very special journey. We took a dust beaten path going inside the forest. The trees were becoming thicker and bolder as we were walking inside the forest. We came across two makeshift bridges made of fallen tree trunks spread over big ditches on which only an expert gymnast can walk. I managed somehow. I also noticed some human voices shouting nearby together with some small clear grounds on which some big leaves were spread. I was told that Jarawas use these clear areas to relax while hunting. After taking many turns and curves, I started feeling that we are reaching the habitation as I could see the sky more clearly now through the foliage.

But the destination was not that near. Finally after walking another half an hour we reached the Jarawa village. I could see some children and some women sitting under huts. My companion told me that most of them have gone for gathering (it was a honey season) and they will be coming back shortly. I was standing mesmerized by looking at the unique world looking back at me. One of the children asked about me from my guide. My Bengali friend told them that I have come from a very far place riding an airplane which they still see in awe. I was feeling thirsty so I took out the bottle of water from my bag. I took a sip. Soon all the women and children wanted sips from the bottle as if it is an elixir. Later more people returning from hunting and gathering expedition joined us. I was introduced to a man with marvelous physique. I was told that he was above 60 years in age. Here I and my Bengali friend were the only wearing clothes and representing the new civilization. I was living the past which our forefathers must have lived once. The charm of the grand old world was putting me in a transcendental world.

I told them in my half cooked Andamani Hindi and gestures that I met the Jarawa mother at Port Blair hospital whose 6 months old baby was injured by a bamboo stick at Port Blair hospital. They quickly recognized her and informed me that she belonged to a different Jarawa village. One child was touching my body to confirm my gender as he could not see what I could see clearly. He was new to our civilization. Though I was living with another group of indigenous and older group of Andamanese people (Great Andamanese), but I have seen them in a government sponsored model village (Strait Village) where there were concrete houses, electricity and indigenous people who depended on government doles for their day to day survival. On the contrary here I was standing in the midst of the last remains of Andamanese culture and society.

My Bengali friend gave some of them the medicines he brought along. They liked the way he applied some antiseptic lotion to their injuries and bandaged them. Medicine brought two warring civilization together. Jarawas who were hostile to all intruders in their territory till 1992, made peace only when the magic wand of modern medicine touched their lives. Time was running fast and we had to return to kadamtala village also. So we bid goodbye to the Jarawas and started the return trail. While coming back I was thinking as if I was sitting in a time-machine set to throw me back to the world I belonged.

To be continued.

Walking on a thin layer of ice

Our life is made up of stories only we remember. We forget some of them and we keep some in our hearts forever. Why we forgot some of them, is a puzzling question? I guess our engaging life and work makes them go in oblivion. But can we just afford to lose them and let them die alone? I think they are like the kitchen gas (but without any odor) you have forgotten to put off, lurking around you. You just need to light a match to show it upon you. Then as you have seen them alive again, you want them to stay. You enjoy the pain and joys they give to you. You want to become its pet again. Suffering but still cherishing it. Sadness and loneliness give you the chance to think of brighter days ahead. It’s a necessary evil which you need to walk on and on. Changing your mindset never helps. Because you can change it all but you cannot change the ‘YOU’ in you. Someone said ‘writing is like shitting, you take out whatever you have inside’. So I’m writing but this is no shit.

When I ponder about my farewell days at JNU and at Andaman Islands in the year spanning 2005-2006, I miss those blue and lonely times. It is not that I’m overflowing with people here. But my sensibilities have changed a lot living and working here. That white dreamy smoke coming out of the cigarette in my fingers seems like a long forgotten past. The way I thought about Nao Junior, the uncrowned king of the last of the Great Andamanese at Strait Island. I used to feel sad about whether I would be able to see again that dark face with eyes like a cat peering in the dark. The day he came fully drunk looking for me at my rented house at Premnagar, Portblair and said that he is my elder brother in his charming Andamani Hindi (hum tumko bhai cota manta hai). I felt the same for him and shared a cigarette with him (though he detested it). I hated it when my neighbors called him ‘Jungli’ next morning while referring to him. Who is going to tell all the settlers living on the Andaman Islands that the land on which they all are living is Great Andamanese soil and they should show some respect for its real owners?

How I used to worry about Chachi (Boa senior, the last genuinely Great Andamanese woman) and whether I would ever help her in cooking food at her small hut and then share ‘Sukhaa paan’ (flavored tobacco leaves and lime) together. Sometimes I used to see her looking up in the sky and staring in the blank. Like a child, I wanted to know what she is thinking. Her eyes looked dreamy and lost in the past. When I showed her a photograph of her younger days, she quickly recognized every one in it. I felt good for showing her a slice of her lost and foregone past. I can never forget the way Chachi offered me her little provision of rice and dal, when I told her that I’m going back to Portblair from Strait Island to bring some provisions. She smilingly offered the little she had. I was lying as I was not going to the town to bring ration but to call my love at the other end of India. I felt guilty.

Andaman was lonesome for me as I was in love with loneliness and a woman. The solitary ride of the Andaman state transport bus, I took to Vandoor area in the evening to capture glimpses of Jarawas, cannot be forgotten too. Though by the time I reached Vandoor police outpost, It was already dark, I thoroughly enjoyed the sight from the bus all along the road. The driver of the bus also got off the wheel to share some tea at that ramshackle tea shop run by a Telugu speaking lady. I told him that I’m doing some journalistic writing on Andamans,Jarawas, Tsunami etc , so he let open all he knew about Andamans. He was a Pugga (turban) less Sardar born in Andamans. So despite his demeanors his lingo smacked of Andamani Hindi. He told me that to see Jarawas I’ll have go to the jungle outpost of Vandoor police station. Some policemen sitting at the tea shop informed me that Jarawas also watch TV at the police outpost inside the forest and they are very fussy especially about tobacco and liquor. We started back for the city soon afterwards. Andaman looks very dark in night so could not help looking at my watch all along the road. I was lonely again. Christopher McCandless : you were absolutely right.

To be continued.

The Saga of Place Names of Andamans

Place names have always caught our fascination to the extent that there are people and communities who traditionally attach place names with their personal names. Andaman Islands also throw up a rich variety of place names ranging from the indigenous native names to the names kept by colonizers and settlers.
In fact place names tell us a lot about the culture and priorities of the people residing there.
Starting with native names kept by the indigenous people of these islands, which are now a minority in their own land. Place names like ‘Putatang’, ‘Jirkatang’, ‘karmatang’ and ‘phultang’ are all indigenous names, which have stood the test of times. Notice that, all these names end in ‘tang’ which is actually a modified version of a Great Andamanese word ‘tong’ meaning ‘tree’.

Great Andamanese who inhabited this whole mass of islands were people who were close to nature and their life was symbiotically connected with the surrounding ecosystem. The usual custom of naming places by these islanders primarily consisted, naming the place after the abundant natural resources of that particular area.
Therefore we come across names such as ‘maro phong’ (literally honey-hole) where honey was found in abundance. Similarly names ending in ’tong’ indicated that the place is abundant in that particular flora.
Moreover place names also indicated the unique topographical feature of the camping area of the indigenous community. Therefore we have ‘raetphor’ (literally big-bamboo-small bamboo), an area near today’s Mayabander. Likewise an obsolete name like ‘bol phong’ was used by the Great Andamanese to indicate the region of present Long Island.
It is not to say that all the indigenous groups shared common place names. The reality is that each hunter-gatherer community maintained a repertoire of place names according to their relationship to the region and area inhabited by them.In fact we can still find a variety of names kept by Jarawa people for the region they inhabit.

In E.H. Man’s dictionary of ‘Bea’ language (a southern Great andamanese language), we come across various place names across the length and breadth of Andaman islands. An important thing to note down here is that ‘Bea’ people who inhabited the southern Andamans had provided place names even for the regions going beyond the northern limits of Andaman Islands. But that does not mean that they had already coined all place names. The truth is that, when they accompanied the British colonizers in their Island expeditions, they were asked to tell the place name, and the clever ‘Bea’ men instantly gratified them by keeping a new place name by looking at the visual and topographical landscape.

The native islanders usually kept themselves confined to their respective territory. When the British colonizers coaxed them to come out of their abode and took them for various island expeditions, it also gave rise to strengthening of mythology and folktales in the communities. For example when ‘Bea’ people were shown the ‘Saddle point’ the second highest hill in Andamans, they were convinced that it is none other than ‘pulugachang’ (the abode of the first man).

The traditional place naming tradition of ‘Jero’, another Great Andamanese group is equally interesting. ‘Jero’ who were primarily seacoast dwellers usually kept place names after the seascape. For example we find place names like ‘toro-taec’(literally leaf of turtles) for a place near Mayabander implying that turtles were in abundance there.
‘Jero’ who were so fond of turtle meat to the extent that they would even risk their own life for hunting turtles, found it wi
ttingly suitable to keep this name for the same area.
Also their name for Port Blair, the administrative capital of colonizers, ‘lao-ter-nyo’ (literally ‘house of evils’) sounds equally appropriate cause it reminds us of the misery Great Andamanese were brought to by their sojourn in Port Blair.

This saga of naming places by different people did not stop just with the extinction of the Great Andamanese, but people of all hues and cries gave all colorful names to places in Andamans. Be it Burmese Borang and Bajota of Mayabander area, Webi of Karen settlers, Baul Dera and Haridas Katai of Bengali settlers, Padnabhpuram and Tirur of Tamils, and Birsanagar and Hanspuri of Ranchi settlers.
Amazingly the new settlers of the islands are also adopting the practice of naming places after natural ecosystems. We now see place names such as Sagwan Nallah (literally creek of Sagwan trees), and Khatta Khadi (literally sour mangroves).

But the major place name givers were non-other British colonizers. They coined most of the English place names, be it Port Blair after the Archibald Port Blair or Atlanta point after the sailing vessel.
This list and explanations are short, but which I hope serves to illustrate some of the facets of place names and the many associations they bring about. The Historical aspect of place names comes about when one try’s to find out why and who were the people or events that led to the genesis of those names.