PORT BLAIR: After the storm, the rainbow. From the debris and destruction of what has been one of India’s worst calamities has risen a story that touches the very depths of the heart. The tsunami has led an aboriginal Great Andamanese girl to marry outside her fold, perhaps for the first time. And all because the boy who she married looked after her ailing father during the tumultuous days that followed the tragedy.
Rangee, who belongs to a tribe that has only 49 people left, agreed to marry Sukumar Saha, a Bengali, on Dashami day last October after seeing her beloved’s dedicated service to her father Jerake, the Great Andamanese ‘king’. Sukumar worked as a medical attendant at Port Blair’s GB Pant Hospital, the place where Jerake was admitted for treatment last year.
It was in trying circumstances that the two, from different cultures and almost different civilisations, fell in love. Back in January this year, Jerake had been brought to the hospital for some treatment. The tsunami shock and the separation from his “subjects” was fast worsening his condition. It was here that the two lovebirds first spoke to each other and decided to get married. recounting the meeting. “Though born in Strait Island, she had come to Port Blair nine years ago. She wanted to study and got herself enrolled in a school. She studied till class VIII and got a job in the museum.”
Though Jerake could never recover, he blessed the couple before his death in April. —Dawn/Times of India News Service
