Reuters Posted online: Saturday, January 15, 2005 at 1122 hours IST
Car Nicobar, January 15: The earth hasn't stopped shaking in the tsunami-battered Andaman and Nicobar islands because a giant boar-like animal that slept below has been turning on its sides.
Or so believe a group of Nicobarese people, living in a relief shelter in Car Nicobar island that was flattened by the giant waves.
Nearly three weeks after the tsunami slammed into India's eastern shores and killed over 15,000 people, thousands are still struggling to come to terms with an unsettled sea and earth.
"Some people are saying these are the last days of the world," said Zepha Edwin, as he gathered his family in a tarpaulin camp set among banana trees.
Deeply traumatised by the disaster, many islanders, including Stone Age tribes, who have been living on the far-off tropical paradise for thousands of years, are turning to age-old superstitions and religious rites to deal with the crisis.
Devout Hindu settlers from mainland India offer flowers and pour fresh water from brass containers into the sea, praying to the gods to protect the pristine cluster of islands deep in the Bay of Bengal from the angry sea.
The archipelago, which is 1,200 km from mainland India, has been hit by 130 tremors of more than 5.0 magnitude since the biggest earthquake in 40 years on December 26 triggered the tsunami.
In the beginning, every tremor sent people rushing out of homes and hospitals. Some, haunted by memories of the tsunami, even climbed trees in relief camps.
INVOKING GODS
But nerves are jangling less now.
Edwin said the elders in his devastated seaside village of Malacca believe the tremors will stop only after the giant animal living below the earth goes back to sleep.
In older times, the Nicobarese, who are the biggest tribe in the island chain of some 300,000 people, would stamp a broom on the ground to pacify the animal within.
"People are going through tremendous trauma. It affects everyone, whether they are in the Stone Age or Metal age or in the high-tech age," said Anstice Justin, the island's chief anthropologist.
Justin said the primitive people on the islands, who are totally dependent on nature, also invoke a variety of gods for protection against the sea.
The hunter-gatherer Onge, who number less than 100, believe there are gods in the sea, beneath the earth and in the sky.
The Onge, who all survived the tsunami waves on their island of Little Andaman, are known to appease the gods by offering intestines of wild boar -- which they hunt -- wrapped in a leaf and placed on a tree.
Others smear their faces with white mud, which they believe will drive away evil spirits.
The elders of the Great Andamanese tribe, who have been evacuated to a special government-run guesthouse in Port Blair, are also known to invoke a goddess named Bligu who they believe used to descend from the sky on a giant ladder in the past.
The Great Andamanese are less than 50 in number.
"The elders among them will doubtless be praying to propitiate the goddess," said Austin.
