Dying to save souls

A NOVEL EXAMINATION OF THE DEBATE ABOUT DEVELOPMENT

- Lamat R Hasan

Award-winning novelist Sujit Saraf's newest, Island, with its lyrical prose and the pace of a thriller, is a winner in every way.

At the heart of the story are Nirmal Chandra Mattoo, an expert on the tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, who lives in Port Blair, and Steven Li, an American missionary, who wants to take Christianity to North Sentinel Island, home to one of the last uncontacted peoples on the planet.

Saraf's Li is roughly modelled on John Chau, the American who was killed on the island in the Andamans in 2018.

Mattoo's warnings that any contact with the North Sentinelese is illegal and that two fishermen who accidentally drifted towards their island some years ago were chopped up with axes and their bodies hung up in display, doesn't dissuade Li.

Mattoo has spent a large part of his nearly 50 years studying the Jarawas, the Onge and the Sentinelese tribes. In Port Blair, he runs a souvenir shop, Mattoo Tribal Arts, which stocks largely fake, made-in-Midnapore bows and arrowheads, and some photos.

On a good day, he hopes to make a pitch to a rich American, praying that the stingy "LTC types" give his shop a miss.

The LTC types are those who have availed the Leave Travel Concession given by their government-owned firms to promote tourism in less-desirable locations. In this case to see the "junglees".