Message in a Bottle - Amrita Baviskar

Message in a Bottle is an essay by Amita Baviskar; an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. Her research focuses on the cultural politics of environment and development. Her first book In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley (Oxford University Press) discussed the struggle for survival by adivasis (Adivasi is an umbrella term for a heterogeneous set of ethnic and tribal groups considered the aboriginal population of India.) in central India against a large dam. Her subsequent work further explores the themes of resource rights, subaltern resistance and cultural identity. Such themes are present throughout the course of this short story.

                
            The story is set on a remote island on the Great Nicobar Island. Throughout the course of the story, the author speaks on the countless bounties provided by nature (demonstrated by the abundant lobsters, coconuts, and fish on the island) and simultaneously, the bounties from the sea swept up onto the shores of the island. Ravi, the protagonist’s guide, gives several examples of such in the following extract:

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He [Ravi] pointed to a large clothes basket. That came from the beach too. Ravi asked, would you like to have a bath? Rustam said why not. Ravi brought a bottle of shampoo, a foreign brand. And said that came from the beach. Then some aftershave. Also from the beach.

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The explanation for the above phenomenon, as provided by the story, is the frequency of travel occurring on the Great Nicobar Sea. Unbelievable amounts, as expertly shown in the story, of objects are swept overboard from freight ships, eventually deposited on the shores of the island by the unchanging tide.

The rest of the essay proceeds to give more and more examples of floating ‘junk’ deposited on the island’s shores. The blurred contrast between the poignantly described beauty of the island and the impact of humanity on it serves to provide a permeatin­g theme of environmental awareness and the need for such.

The final paragraph of the essay emphasizes the magnitude of humanity’s impact on nature by pollution and general apathy. The author speaks on how for hundreds of years, the members of tribes, indigenous to the island, have thrived on materials deposited by the sea, washed overboard from trade vessels. While on the surface this may seem like a positive occurrence, when we dig deeper, the severity of the situation occurs to us by means of the amount of time for which this ‘pollution’ has been occurring.