If you are in Car Nicobar I suggest you listen to the sea at night. May be count the waves as you lay waiting for sleep. Each wave defined by a distinct roar. It was a nice thing to do when back in school I would spend most of my summer vacations in Car Nicobar's Lapathy area. Quite a nice place actually given the things you could do. Play pirate atop a discarded rusting Second World War Japanese canon....or just laze around counting the bright posteriors of lonesome Nicobaris (as the natives are known there) typically draped in bright boxer shorts.... as they made way to the sea. The sea was reassuring. Nicobaris are expert swimmers....and their slim canoes (called Hodis)... with extended bamboo beams.... did the fine balancing act. The Hodis do not sink and a Nicobari doesn't drown.... we heard.

It changed two years ago. The Sea came up to Nicobari homes. We from the Andaman Islands couldn't care less for some thing as alien as 'Tsunami'. They died in thousands and the fear lives on. Back home in Port Blair my folks and many thought that it was the end. The water lines had snapped.... Phones weren't working....and aftershocks of the quakes going strong...... the buzz was that the whole chain of Islands will go down under....become one huge stretch of the mighty Indian ocean.

That didn't happen. People go about their daily chores. They don't go to the sea much. A minor tremor brings back the memories. And also the fear. Rehab work is in full swing. Permanent shelters of concrete and steel are coming up for the Nicobaris. We hear that Nicobaris do not like them much... they prefer their good old Bamboo huts....balanced finely on bamboo poles... and a cute little ladder to reach up. But planners in Delhi know better. Nicobaris have no choice.

Last August when I was in Port Blair... it was great to see Tsunami funds reshaping lives for the natives. Not much of agriculturalists... the Nicobaris now have power tillers. Planners in Delhi think they should take up agriculture. Nicobaris think the power tillers are a great transport. Many of them gaily ride these tillers as you and I would ride....umm...a... Bajaj Chetak....or a TVS Moped...One unlucky fellow lost his limb last year... Poor chap took the same liberties with his tiller... as he did with his bicycle before the tsunami.

Life has changed indeed in lot of ways. Fishing by the sea is fine...but government doles are great. Did the planners confuse between rehabilitation and reconstruction (social fabric... life style...culture?)

I asked them once. "But we need to utilize the funds" they said. "And frankly it's none of your business" they insisted. Indeed. But I miss counting those bright posteriors lazing by the sea.