Friday, January 14, 2005
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January 14, 2005OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Identities Lost at SeaBy AMITAV GHOSH Calcutta — ON Jan. 1, six days after the Indian Ocean earthquake, I visited several emergency camps in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This chain of 572 islets, less than 200 miles north of Sumatra, is a territory of India and was badly hit by the tsunami. One of the camps I visited was run by the Roman Catholic Church. It was housed in the Nirmala School and was presided over by a mild-mannered young priest, Father Johnson.On the morning of my visit, Father Johnson was at the center of an altercation. It was not over deprivation or hardship - there was more than enough food and water and clothes for all who had taken shelter. The problem was that the refugees, most of whom had lost not only their homes but every last possession as well, had spent the previous three days waiting anxiously, and no one had asked them where they wanted to go or when; none of them had any idea of what was to become of them and the sense of being adrift had brought them to the end of their tether. In the absence of any other figure of authority they had laid siege to Father Johnson: when would they be allowed to move on? Where would they be going? And, most important, how could they rebuild their lives?Their anxieties were founded not just in their experience of the tsunami but also in their separation from their safety net of identity and support. Despite the hundreds of miles of ocean that separate the islands from the Indian mainland, many of the relief camps in Port Blair have the appearance of miniaturized portraits of the nation. The people in the camps are for the most part, settlers from different parts of the mainland: Bengal, Orissa, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Only a small percentage of the refugees are indigenous to the islands and they are mainly from the Nicobar chain.The settlers in the camps are almost unanimous in describing themselves as having come to the islands in search of land and opportunity. Listening to their stories, I found it easy to believe that most of them found what they were looking for: tens of thousands were able to make their way out of poverty and overcrowding and into the ranks of the expanding middle class. But on the morning of Dec. 26, this hard-won betterment became a potent source of vulnerability. For to be middle class in India, or anywhere else, is to be kept afloat on a life raft of paper: identity cards, drivers licenses, ration cards, school certificates, checkbooks, certificates of life insurance and records of deposits. An earthquake would have left remnants to rummage through; floods and hurricanes would have allowed time for survivors to pack up their essential documents. The tsunami, in the suddenness of its onslaught, allowed for no preparations: not only did it destroy the survivors' homes and families; it also robbed them of all the evidentiary traces of their place in the world. And this, more than anything, was the cause of the panic that morning at the Nirmala School. Of course, Father Johnson could give them no answers - he was just as helpless as they were. The officials in charge of the relief effort had told him nothing about their plans. His school was supposed to reopen two days later. He had no idea how he was going to manage his students with more than 1,600 refugees camping on the grounds. Realizing eventually that Father Johnson knew no more than they did, the refugees reduced their demands to a single, modest query: could they have some paper and a few pens? No sooner had this request been met than another uproar broke out: those who'd been given pens and paper now became the center of the siege. People began to push and jostle, clamoring to have their names written down. It seemed to occur to them simultaneously that identity was now no more than a matter of assertion, and nothing seemed to matter more than to create a trail of paper. Somehow they had come to believe that on this, the random scribbling of a name on a sheet of paper in a refugee camp, depended the eventual reclamation of a life.At the center of the crowd was a middle-aged Sikh, Paramjeet Kaur. She was a woman of determined aspect, dressed in a dun salwaar kameez. Noticing my notebook, she said: "Are you taking names too? Here, write mine down." She told me she had come to the islands some 30 years before, by dint of marriage. Her husband was a Sikh from Campbell Bay, a settlement on the southernmost tip of the Nicobar chain. Like many others in the settlement, her husband belonged to a family that had been given a grant of land in recognition of army service. At that time, Paramjeet Kaur's husband and in-laws were granted a small amount of farmland and a plot on which to build a residence. The settlement that grew up around them was as varied as the regiments of the Indian Army: there were Marathis, Malayalis, Jharkhandis and people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. "There was nothing there but jungle then," said Paramjeet Kaur. "We cleared it with our own hands and we laid out orchards of areca and coconut. With God's blessing we prospered, and built a cement house with three rooms and a veranda."The strip of land that was zoned for houses lay right on the seafront, providing fine views. It was no mere accident, then, that placed Paramjeet Kaur's house in the path of the tsunami: its location was determined by an outlook that owed more to Europe than to its immediate surroundings. After all, the sea poses little danger to the corniches of the French Riviera or the coastline of Italy. The Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, on the other hand, are the breeding grounds of cyclones, the hurricanes of East. This is why a certain wariness of the sea can be seen in the ancient harbor cities of southern Asia: they are often situated upriver, at a cautious distance from open water.As European tastes took hold, however, the pattern seems to have been reversed, so that it could almost be stated as a rule that the more modern and prosperous a settlement, the more likely it is to hug the water. On the island of Car Nicobar, for example, the Indian Air Force base was built a few dozen yards from the water's edge and it was so laid out that the more senior the servicemen, the closer they were to the sea. Although no one could have anticipated the tsunami, the choice of location for settlements is still shocking. Cyclones can cause surges of water to heights of 30 feet, and their effect would have been similar to what happened last month. But, of course, it is all too easy to be wise after the event: given the choice between a beach view and a plot in the mosquito-infested interior, what would anyone have chosen before Dec. 26? So for Paramjeet Kaur, some 30 years of labor were washed away in an instant. "When we were young we had the energy to cut the jungle and reclaim the land," she told me. "We laid out fields and orchards and we did well. But at my age, how can I start again? Where will I begin?""What will you do then?" I asked. "We will go back to Punjab, where we have family. The government must give us land there; that is our demand." Some other immigrants - office workers from Uttar Pradesh, fishermen from Andhra Pradesh, construction laborers from Bengal - seconded her idea. They had all built good lives for themselves in the islands, but now, having lost their homes, their relatives and even their identities, they were intent on returning to the mainland, no matter what. "If nothing else," one said to me, "we will live in slums beside the rail tracks. But never again by the sea." Amitav Ghosh is the author of the forthcoming novel "The Hungry Tide
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January 14, 2005OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Identities Lost at SeaBy AMITAV GHOSH Calcutta — ON Jan. 1, six days after the Indian Ocean earthquake, I visited several emergency camps in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This chain of 572 islets, less than 200 miles north of Sumatra, is a territory of India and was badly hit by the tsunami. One of the camps I visited was run by the Roman Catholic Church. It was housed in the Nirmala School and was presided over by a mild-mannered young priest, Father Johnson.On the morning of my visit, Father Johnson was at the center of an altercation. It was not over deprivation or hardship - there was more than enough food and water and clothes for all who had taken shelter. The problem was that the refugees, most of whom had lost not only their homes but every last possession as well, had spent the previous three days waiting anxiously, and no one had asked them where they wanted to go or when; none of them had any idea of what was to become of them and the sense of being adrift had brought them to the end of their tether. In the absence of any other figure of authority they had laid siege to Father Johnson: when would they be allowed to move on? Where would they be going? And, most important, how could they rebuild their lives?Their anxieties were founded not just in their experience of the tsunami but also in their separation from their safety net of identity and support. Despite the hundreds of miles of ocean that separate the islands from the Indian mainland, many of the relief camps in Port Blair have the appearance of miniaturized portraits of the nation. The people in the camps are for the most part, settlers from different parts of the mainland: Bengal, Orissa, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Only a small percentage of the refugees are indigenous to the islands and they are mainly from the Nicobar chain.The settlers in the camps are almost unanimous in describing themselves as having come to the islands in search of land and opportunity. Listening to their stories, I found it easy to believe that most of them found what they were looking for: tens of thousands were able to make their way out of poverty and overcrowding and into the ranks of the expanding middle class. But on the morning of Dec. 26, this hard-won betterment became a potent source of vulnerability. For to be middle class in India, or anywhere else, is to be kept afloat on a life raft of paper: identity cards, drivers licenses, ration cards, school certificates, checkbooks, certificates of life insurance and records of deposits. An earthquake would have left remnants to rummage through; floods and hurricanes would have allowed time for survivors to pack up their essential documents. The tsunami, in the suddenness of its onslaught, allowed for no preparations: not only did it destroy the survivors' homes and families; it also robbed them of all the evidentiary traces of their place in the world. And this, more than anything, was the cause of the panic that morning at the Nirmala School. Of course, Father Johnson could give them no answers - he was just as helpless as they were. The officials in charge of the relief effort had told him nothing about their plans. His school was supposed to reopen two days later. He had no idea how he was going to manage his students with more than 1,600 refugees camping on the grounds. Realizing eventually that Father Johnson knew no more than they did, the refugees reduced their demands to a single, modest query: could they have some paper and a few pens? No sooner had this request been met than another uproar broke out: those who'd been given pens and paper now became the center of the siege. People began to push and jostle, clamoring to have their names written down. It seemed to occur to them simultaneously that identity was now no more than a matter of assertion, and nothing seemed to matter more than to create a trail of paper. Somehow they had come to believe that on this, the random scribbling of a name on a sheet of paper in a refugee camp, depended the eventual reclamation of a life.At the center of the crowd was a middle-aged Sikh, Paramjeet Kaur. She was a woman of determined aspect, dressed in a dun salwaar kameez. Noticing my notebook, she said: "Are you taking names too? Here, write mine down." She told me she had come to the islands some 30 years before, by dint of marriage. Her husband was a Sikh from Campbell Bay, a settlement on the southernmost tip of the Nicobar chain. Like many others in the settlement, her husband belonged to a family that had been given a grant of land in recognition of army service. At that time, Paramjeet Kaur's husband and in-laws were granted a small amount of farmland and a plot on which to build a residence. The settlement that grew up around them was as varied as the regiments of the Indian Army: there were Marathis, Malayalis, Jharkhandis and people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. "There was nothing there but jungle then," said Paramjeet Kaur. "We cleared it with our own hands and we laid out orchards of areca and coconut. With God's blessing we prospered, and built a cement house with three rooms and a veranda."The strip of land that was zoned for houses lay right on the seafront, providing fine views. It was no mere accident, then, that placed Paramjeet Kaur's house in the path of the tsunami: its location was determined by an outlook that owed more to Europe than to its immediate surroundings. After all, the sea poses little danger to the corniches of the French Riviera or the coastline of Italy. The Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, on the other hand, are the breeding grounds of cyclones, the hurricanes of East. This is why a certain wariness of the sea can be seen in the ancient harbor cities of southern Asia: they are often situated upriver, at a cautious distance from open water.As European tastes took hold, however, the pattern seems to have been reversed, so that it could almost be stated as a rule that the more modern and prosperous a settlement, the more likely it is to hug the water. On the island of Car Nicobar, for example, the Indian Air Force base was built a few dozen yards from the water's edge and it was so laid out that the more senior the servicemen, the closer they were to the sea. Although no one could have anticipated the tsunami, the choice of location for settlements is still shocking. Cyclones can cause surges of water to heights of 30 feet, and their effect would have been similar to what happened last month. But, of course, it is all too easy to be wise after the event: given the choice between a beach view and a plot in the mosquito-infested interior, what would anyone have chosen before Dec. 26? So for Paramjeet Kaur, some 30 years of labor were washed away in an instant. "When we were young we had the energy to cut the jungle and reclaim the land," she told me. "We laid out fields and orchards and we did well. But at my age, how can I start again? Where will I begin?""What will you do then?" I asked. "We will go back to Punjab, where we have family. The government must give us land there; that is our demand." Some other immigrants - office workers from Uttar Pradesh, fishermen from Andhra Pradesh, construction laborers from Bengal - seconded her idea. They had all built good lives for themselves in the islands, but now, having lost their homes, their relatives and even their identities, they were intent on returning to the mainland, no matter what. "If nothing else," one said to me, "we will live in slums beside the rail tracks. But never again by the sea." Amitav Ghosh is the author of the forthcoming novel "The Hungry Tide
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