The Last Wave - An Island Novel
Illustrious Book reading
1.5 hrs
July 19, 2014 5:30 pm Saturday
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Black Swan Journeys presents a unique book reading session while you get to time-travel around the Andaman islands with Pankaj Sekhsaria, the author of the novel "The Last Wave". "Ever the aimless drifter, Harish finds the anchor his life needs in a chance encounter with members of the ancient and threatened - Jarawa community-the 'original people' of the Andaman Islands and its tropical rain forests. As he observes the slow but sure destruction of everything the Jarawa require for their survival, Harish is moved by a need to understand, to do something. His unlikely friend and partner on this quest is uncle Pame, a seventy-year-old Karen boatman whose father was brought to the islands from Burma by the British in the 1920s.

The islands also bring him to Seema, a 'local born'-a descendant of the convicts who were lodged in the infamous cellular jail of port Blair. Seema has seen the world, but unlike most educated islanders of her generation, she has decided to return home. Harishs earnestness, his fascination and growing love for the islands, their shared attempt to understand the Jarawa and the loss of her own first love, all draw Seema closer to Harish.

As many things seem to fall in place and parallel journeys converge, an unknown contender appears-the giant tsunami of December 2004. The last wave is a story of lost loves, but also of a culture, a community, an ecology poised on the sharp edge of time and history"

Organizer
Black Swan Journeys Pvt Ltd
Black Swan Journeys Pvt Ltd is a community based travel company. Community travel is about not just visiting a place and getting brief ideas about its monuments. It is about meeting and interacting with the local people, getting to know about their culture and their beliefs, participating in their festivals, getting a feel of their farms and shops, and discovering little- known locations that haven’t yet become ‘locales’. Community travel encourages a local touch, and provides motivation to travelling groups to constantly interact and learn, and ultimately find a way of giving back to the places they experience. We had organized documentary viewing - Children of the Forests and ABCD.