Forest Smells and Spider Webs: Ritualized Dream

Interpretation Among Andaman Islanders

Vishvajit Pandya
Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology

This article examines the significant role of dreams among the Andamanese and the
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changes in sleep and dreaming that have taken place as modern settlements replace
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traditional campsites. As Andamanese hunters and gatherers go to sleep at a camp-

site, they discuss what they did throughout the day and especially what they have seen
in dreams. In the morning, it is proscribed to wake a person up so that dreaming is
not disturbed. A shared consensus on the groups dreams guides the members wak-
ing actions. The sleeping arrangements in modern Andamanese settlements have
changed: Andamanese believe that these afford less dream recall or understanding
and attribute their declining hunting success to this diminished dreaming.
KEY WORDS: dreams; Andaman Islanders; smells; rituals; Radcliffe-Brown

From 1908 to 1910, the renowned British anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, one of

the founders of the structural functionalist school of thought, conducted ethnographic study
among the tribal groups of the Andaman Islands. These islands, a cluster in the Bay of
Bengal, were then under British colonial authority. Radcliffe-Browns (1922/1966) account,
The Andaman Islanders, presented a composite picture of a culture composed of 12 groups
each speaking a different dialect and occupying its own territory. According to 1911 census
estimates, this population of about 1,450 hunters and gatherers was already in decline.
Radcliffe-Browns (1922/1966) study described individual Andaman Islanders as totally
dependent on society for protection and continuity. This included even sleeping, a state that
was regarded as dangerous because it was thought that through dreams one could potentially
establish contact with powerful spirits (Radcliffe-Brown, 1922/1966, p. 302). For example,
individuals undergoing rituals of initiation were prohibited from falling asleep. The entire
community would keep vigil to prevent the initiate falling asleep and suffering potential
harm from spirits (Radcliffe-Brown, 1922/1966, p. 99).
Radcliffe-Brown (1922/1966) worked mostly at Port Blair, the administrative headquar-
ters, and he elicited ethnographic details from informants from different parts of the islands
while staying at the administration-managed Andaman Homes for the tribal population. The
informants, with little variation in language and cultural practices, led Radcliffe-Brown to
assert that slumber among the Andamanese was a period when the body double, some-
thing inside each individual, stepped out of the sleeping body physical and visited different

I am grateful to Charles Stewart and Alka Raghuvanshi for making helpful suggestions.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Vishvajit Pandya, Dhirubhai Am-
bani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Post Bag No. 4, Near Indroda Circle,
Gandhinagar-382009, India. E-mail: Vishvajit_pandya@da-iict.org

136
Dreaming Copyright 2004 by the Educational Publishing Foundation
2004, Vol. 14, No. 23, 136150 1053-0797/04/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1053-0797.14.23.136
 Special Issue: Forest Smells and Spider Webs 137

places. How and where the body internal wandered determined what the person acquired
after waking up. It could be sickness, knowledge of something that was about to happen, or
the location of resources (Radcliffe-Brown, 1922/1966, p. 167). [The] natives believe that
they can communicate in dreams with the spirits, Radcliffe-Brown (1922/1966, p. 167)
reported. Yet, he also wrote that

any attempt to study the dreams of such a people as the Andamanese, is made very
difficult by the fact that it is never possible to tell how far the original dream has been
arranged and altered by the waking imagination. So far as my observations went, the
majority of dreams are either visual or motor, or both. (Radcliffe-Brown, 1922/1966, p.
167)
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Perhaps Radcliffe-Brown (1922/1966) might have understood what was the original
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veridical dream and what was the altered interpretation of the dream among the Anda-
manese had he actually slept in a forest campsite and awakened the next morning with cold
sunlight filtering down through the dense tropical canopy. Radcliffe-Brown (1922/1966, p.
167) noted that the Andamanese are very reluctant to awaken someone who is asleep. Surely
it is important to understand how people go to sleep and wake-upa sequence of events that
frame the experience of dreaming in a culture. For instance, when I was a child nice stories
were read aloud at bedtime while I remained calm and quiet and said my prayers. My parents
ensured that I heard plots that were morally correct, resolved conflict, and had no bloody or
violent waras was the case in many an Indian mythological plot. The idea of how to fall
asleep is an important cultural construct because the emphasis is on waking up after a good
sleep with the memory of good dreams. However, sleep is always a problem if you know that
the next morning is your birthday or Christmas. Among many children, possible events of the
morning make sleep of the previous night a special memory.
This article is an examination of what sleeping and dreams are for the Ongees, one of
the groups that still continues to live on the island of Little Andaman. It is concerned with
how the peoples cultural context for interpreting dreams and with how, in postindependence
India, governmental development and welfare agencies have brought about change, modi-
fied life, and affected the hunters and gatherers at the level of dreams and their very
interpretability. This article studies how and why dreams are talked about and visualized
among the Ongees.
In 1983, as a graduate student, I started my fieldwork among the Ongees of Little
Andaman Island. Ongee society was in the midst of rapid change as a result of contact with
the outside world and thus my work was what anthropologists refer to as salvage ethnogra-
phyan attempt to rescue a picture of traditional Ongee life before it disappeared forever.
I was keen on sleeping and waking up with the Andamanese in the forest and not in an
administrative bungalow with verandahs (where I might interview informants as Radcliffe-
Brown had done). As a student of anthropology, I had the romantic vision of all that was
embodied in the notion of doing real participant observation with a group of hunters and
gatherers. Ongees were one of the remaining four groups from the colonial days of Radcliffe-
Brown, and they had remained relatively unaffected after the Andaman Islands became part
of India. Along with supplies and gifts, I carried with me some small soft stuffed toys in the
forms of pigs and turtles. They were intended as gifts for Ongee children. My assumption was
that Ongee children grow up seeing the pigs and turtles as animals that are hunted and
consumed, so the gifts would be easily accepted.
Within the small circular campsite made up of about nine sleeping platforms and a
thatched roof for each family, I settled down to start my fieldwork. A 10th sleeping platform
was added for me to occupy, and although reluctance was shown by some of the Ongee, I
 138 Pandya

became a day-and-night fixture in the community. I distributed all my gifts, particularly the
stuffed toy pigs and turtles among the children. The gifts were readily accepted, but not as
warm cuddly toys to sleep with at the campsite. They were tucked away as things under the
thatched roof. Ongee parents were astounded. They wanted to know why children of the
outside world would want to sleep with animals with exaggerated facial features. I had no
explanation to offer. Just as the stuffed toys intrigued the Ongees, I was immensely surprised
that going to sleep within the Ongee campsite was not at all a quiet moment. Before falling
asleep, the Ongees would talk aloud of all they did in the day and what they had dreamt of
during the previous night. After awhile, I realized that the Ongees were attempting to reach
a consensus that they had identical dreams and days experiences. This shared memory,
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derived and interpreted at bedtime, made the event of going to sleep a ritual, comparable to
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going to bed with a story or a stuffed animal.

FOREST CAMP SITES: THE PLACE FOR DREAMS AND TALKS

Among the various campsites on the island, most of the community would set up
sleeping platforms and lean-tos in the forest as it was the pig hunting season (May to
September; see Figures 1 and 2). During October to April, the season of hunting turtles, the
Ongees shifted out of the forest and set up camps in the coastal areas, but the layout of the
campsite and living structures, without any kind of walls, remained identical. As the night
within the forest campgrounds set in, the Ongees retired on the sleeping platforms under a
lean-to of each respective family, often facing the fire in the center of the campground,
talking to each other across the campgrounds. One by one, individuals emerged as trying to
convince others that they did see a particular dream. As the singsong declined in its intensity,
individuals would fall asleep one by one.
This session of discussions and singing, as camp mates go to sleep, is known as tonki ti

Figure 1. Ongee forest camp, Dugong Creek, Little Andamans, 1983.

 Special Issue: Forest Smells and Spider Webs 139
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Figure 2. Interior of an Ongee forest camp, Dugong Creek, Little Andamans, 1983.

megegatebeh (meanings for morning). The talking and singing continue late into the night. It
generally draws in individuals who in daytime maintain a fairly rigid line of demarcation for
interaction along the lines of age and gender. Dream discussions of tonki ti megegatebeh are
highly stylized with words being dramatically stretched out. Discussions often start with what
was done during the day, such as who went looking for betel nuts because they had dreamt
about it in a particular part of the forest and how little was found; who took whose dogs pig
hunting and was the pig fat enough, like the smell of cooked pig fat in the dream; which part
of the forest seems to have more and heavier honeycombs; or which part of the creek has no
crabs left in it and how wrong the dream was.1 These sessions are often the contexts in which
discourse is shared and deciphered among the Ongees about akwewekete-totaley (dream
work). It is not just stating aspirations, as those who are not Andamanese tribals would
express in phrases such as I have a dream, but also desires and wishes, what we would
regard as day dreams. Added to these narratives were vision dreams of Ongee spirit
mediums (torale),2 indicating what should be done or what is going to happen. Often torale
narrated and interpreted their own dreams as a response to a series of needs and wants
expressed by campmates as my dream. In 1983, Moroie, a torale, described his dreaming
capacity as follows:

I am maker of a dream, like a very large spiders web from which nothing escapes. It is a
web that is unlike other webs. It spreads across the horizon and thus the torale is able to
see, smell, move, and say more.

Two common themes emerge within Ongee dream discussions. First, locating things on the
island in relation to seasons. Second, was the dream of the previous night actualized the

1
See Pandya (1992) for how dream discussion within the campsite parallels the game of hide-and-
seek played between Ongee adults and children.
2
The torale, Ongee spirit communicator (Pandya, 1993, pp. 150163), is identical to Radcliffe-
Browns (1922/1966, pp. 177178) Oko-Jumu, an individual with power over others obtained by privi-
leged dreams in which spirits are in direct communication. In his dreams, he can inflict sickness as well
as cure (Man, 1833, pp. 2829).
 140 Pandya

following day? Generally this discussion or exchange of information about what activities
were undertaken in the day, successfully or unsuccessfully, develops into all the camp mates
discussing what they would like to do on the following days. Here is a typical example of
what I heard within a forest campsite of about nine shelters surrounding a campfire in the
center of a campground one late August evening in 1984:

Shelter 1 (man): I better find a small tree like the one I see in the dreams to cut down to
make a new canoe for my nephew.
Shelters 4, 5, and 6 (women): We have been dreaming rains and the thatch is leaking, we
need to get some new thatching made!
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Shelter 3: We are running low on the supply of warm red clay. We need to get some. I have
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smelt the rains in my dreams and felt shivering cold, but I have not seen where we are
going to get red clay!
Shelter 7 (belonging to a torale): I have had dreams of downpourwe must get the thatching
work doneand I have seen that close to the tree trunk for the canoe is a stock of red
clay!
Shelter 1 (man): Yes! Yes! There is lots of red clay near the tree we need to get for making
the canoe. The spirit communicator is right, and I hear all of you seeing rain and feeling
cold nights.
Shelters 2 and 8: We should go looking for the thatching material tomorrow and then start
cutting down the tree trunk and on the way back we can start bringing back red clay
lumps. We have been smelling rain on the hot ground, and we will need the thatching and
the warming red clay.

All dreams are heard and during the day the activities undertaken are based on the dream
discussed the previous night. This makes the practice in daytime and structure of night
dreams mutually reflexive in making meanings. Individuals recite what they have been
dreaming of or not, often indexed by olfactory references to places, events, and activities.
Sometimes what is seen and smelt in the dream, when collectively interpreted, coincides with
the intent of the days activities and is glossed as eneyemaga-tegebe (dream success). In case
of failure, the discussions of dreams (nakeboi-ke-tegebe) continue before going to sleep to
arrive at a consensus on what changes are being dreamt of and what changes are actually
experienced by the individuals in the forest (Carey, 1976, pp. 200201; Domhoff, 1985;
Dubois, 1961, pp. 45, 294340; Roseman, 1991, pp. 6768; Schebesta, 1926, p. 146).
The dream discussed among the Ongees often deploys olfactory indexes,3 smells that
vary in intensity and that can be traced but are not visible (Gell, 1977). The container, or
source, of smell is an issue to be interpreted, contested and negotiated, just as the image seen
in the individual dream must be collectively visualized by public interpretation within the
camp. For example, some individuals may report that they have been dreaming about the
smell of ripe jackfruit or the smell of roasted seeds of the fruit. Together they form Group

3
For the central principle of smell within Andamanese culture and how it indexes ideas about time,
see Radcliffe-Browns (1922/1966) discussion of names (pp. 118119) and how the seasons are actually
constituted as the calendar of smells (pp. 311312). Note how the names and seasons are both issues
dealing with change. The importance of smell and the value it has specifically within Ongee culture have
been analyzed as means to articulate safety and gain (see Pandya, 1993, ch. 4). Like the Andamanese,
other cultures also use olfactory cultural constructs as codes to translate into ritual and nonritual practice.
In the work of Classen, Howes, and Synnott (1994, pp. 123158), further analysis of the Andamanese
ethnography of smell in relation to other cultures and how images are connected has been developed.
They have, however, fallen short of establishing the relation of this cultural practice to their idea of
smellscapes.
 Special Issue: Forest Smells and Spider Webs 141

A, for example, whose members at daybreak will team up to go and look for the jackfruit in
the forest. Those who do not join Group A form Group B, whose members insist that they
did not dream of any wet forest floor smell or decaying jackfruits, indexing that in their
dream they have not experienced the change into the ripe jackfruit season. So, the dream is
a work of making smells that index places and coordinate activities of day-to-day life. Once
the majority of the camp mates can interpret the individual dreams as indicative of the
change to ripe jackfruit season, they collectively go seeking and gathering the jackfruit.
In their collectively discussed dream sessions, the camp mates often wait until the whole
group starts smelling the damp forest floor and decomposing, overripe jackfruits littered
under the tree. Ongee dream work and interpretation are about the construction of meanings
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through translation, one that involves alignment of images and smells calibrated through
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discussion for action. The group compiles the translating smell from dreams into the actual
act of looking for the smell image. This involves the groups interpretation and then matching
the sense of smell and vision within the space. The forest is thereby created as a space where
multiple sensory landscapes are made meaningful (Stoller, 1989, Introduction). One may
compare this process to the surrealists who utilized dreams as a mode of visualization
foundational for automatic writing, which generated literature and collage (Breton, 1978).
Individuals, whose dreams are different from others, go as individuals looking for what the
dream presents to them. If the individuals frequently succeed in gaining what they see and
smell in the dream, they become influential torale. A torale can interpret dream meanings
before others can.
As the Ongees fall asleep, they talk about what they did not find (actuality/reality/
negative) in the time experienced and what they would like to gain (ideal/approximation/
positive) in the time that has yet to be experienced. The process of searching for something
is an act that underlies the lifestyle of the traditional Ongee hunters and gatherers. Searching
entails both gains and losses. Individuals whose dreams do not fit in with the most common
interpretation of dreams either remain quiet or try to relate to others dreams. Alternatively,
they may decide to pursue alone an activity that they interpret out of their own dream. In
case the individual succeeds in his or her individual pursuit, the dream and act are shared
with others before going to sleep; the individuals try to report it on the following days. In
case others begin dreaming of similar images, they then cooperate in the activity that the
individual had started and further develop the original dreamers interpretation as they listen
to the dream.
This interpretation of the recounted dream by the collective is called gilemamamey
ibukibe (the end of forgetting). For Ongees, the impossibility of being forgotten is a way of
saying what should be remembered. Gilemamamey ibukibe is regarded as something im-
portant that has to be remembered. What is to be remembered is the outcome of a collec-
tive interpretation, because it conditions collective practice and existence. Among the On-
gees, the ideas of not to forget and not to remember form the basis for many day-to-day
practices as well as rituals. For instance, to hunt and gather in the forest require a knowledge
organized around what one must remember to do and taboolike ideas that must be remem-
bered for every specific context.
These principles are illustrated in the ritual of initiating boys. This process involves
inculcating the ideas of prescription and proscription that must be practiced by the initiated
hunter. In the course of the 15- to 20-day ritual sequence of hunting pigs, the ceremony for
the fasting initiate comes to a culmination in two nights and days when the initiate sits
silently without falling asleep while the initiators sing to the initiate all that should not be
forgotten. The end of the initiation ritual (tanageru) is marked by letting the novice sleep on
 142 Pandya

an isolated sleeping platform. Upon awakening, the camp mates recite all of the aspects that
the novice should remember. This collective recitation that marks the end of the initiation
ceremony is also called gilemamamey ibukibe (Pandya, 1993, pp. 239246, 261280).
As the groups return to the campsite before sunset, the Ongees comment on all that was
dreamt, deciphered, and accordingly accomplished. The discussion generates a general feel-
ing of how wonderfully productive the day was. Things procured throughout the day are
distributed within the campsite. On successful days, they often decide to hold gigabawe
(singing sessions; literally meaning to cause attraction and attachment). For the Ongees, this
sort of singing was not just a joint social activity (Radcliffe-Brown, 1922/1966, pp. 248252)
but also an assertion of the faith and ability to collectively interpret dreams and connect the
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success of the interpretation to the memory of previous successful events as an outcome of

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the collective dream interpretations. The subjects of the songs are often events of various
sorts from the past such as great hunts or historical encounters that are regarded as a
successful remembrance for all. Such events become reference points for the songs sung in
the night within the camp. Individuals sing a line, indicating the reference point to a specific
event. Other camp mates join in the chorus to repeat the line, and others then add another
line by singing in a pitch that is different from that of the chorus. So line by line, the
memories of events are added to the songs and the low-pitched repetition of the chorus line
keeps going on. The song ends if no one adds to the lines or if the chorus refuses to repeat
an individuals line. This is a way of saying, We do not remember that aspect of the event!
As the sun sets on a forest campsite, the Ongees interpret the interpreted dreams as
something to be remembered for the next daymuch like the events from the past are
remembered through singing. So the end of a good day is a construct of collective dream
interpretation of smell and place interconnected and the recollection of past events con-
nected within in the form of song lines. The Ongees do not, however, regard the dreams and
singing as different forms of discourse. For them it is all one idea that has to be remembered,
a single process of connecting dreams, smell, places, and past events of success. Many Ongees
regard this remembering and connecting as a complete spider web (dane korale),4 a term for
the dreams and images of individuals constructed at the forest campsite collectively through
the interpretation of smells, images, and past actions. It is an image that is built by narrating
dreams and singing. The spider web connects the dream for the next day with the memory
of the past. While in the midst of planning to move the camp location in the winter of 1983,
Teemai, an older man much respected for his skills, explained it thus:

To talk about the dreams and sing about the past makes a good spider web that connects
all the open space to catch its foodit is a weave with all the lines woven well to let the
spider know what is caught where. We, in remembering and dreaming, make a web for all
individuals to gain.

The interpretation of an interpreted dream by the collective for the Ongees accomplishes the
installation of memory. Often before campmates fall asleep, the closing consensus statement
on what will be done at daybreak is declared. This practice not only brings forth individual
dreams and personal interpretations, but also remembrance of the past. Dream work and
real work are interpreted; meanings are made profoundly meaningful.

4
In the course of my field work, in order to understand references to images like that of the spider
web, the Ongees while moving through the forest would frequently point out to me the webs and say,
See, this is a good dream, or point out to an imperfect web and state, No good! Nothing is connected,
things can escape from this web. Ongees are always eager to show the actual image and the idea it
represented. In fact, this is a way in which many Ongee children are socialized (see Pandya, 1992).
 Special Issue: Forest Smells and Spider Webs 143

THE ONGEE PROCESS OF FORMING THE DREAM

Ongees believe that each individual living body is made up of two distinct parts. The
first part, mateeah, is the external body that is visible and concrete, responding to the time
and surrounding conditions. The second part, enteeah, is the internal body, internal that is
invisible and abstract, directing the activities and feelings of the external body. As the
Ongees move around in real conscious life and see sources of smell, the individual human
body also leaves behind traces of body smell in different locations. Enteeah, the intrinsic
form of the body that is detachable, goes out of the mateeah when an individual is asleep and
collects all of the smells left behind by retracing actual bodily (mateeah) movement (Rad-
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cliffe-Brown, 1922/1966, p. 167). Dreaming is conceived to be a process of body-internal

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movement around the entire island to collect the smells scattered by the individual and to
smell things that Ongees evidently did not notice the first time around. This process of
collecting smell fragments or bits is known as dane korale, a spider making its web, also a
term for dreaming. Dreaming is regarded by the Ongees as a process. The body internal
gathers the images and smells transferred and scattered by the body by travelling all around
and consolidating them while the body external of an individual is asleep. In a way, while
awake, the body external leaves an olfactory track and this becomes the track for the body
internal to move on while the individual sleeps. While smell is collected, images of various
places, making up the cultures construct of space, are transferred as remembered images
and smells to the sleeping individual. Because all individuals share the forest campsite and
activities, it becomes possible to connect the smells and places from dreams and to construct
the interpretation of a dream. Each individuals dream is like a spider web, but in the process
of collective interpretation small webs get interconnected to form a large spider web (see
Figure 3).
This is an Ongee way of ensuring success and accumulating memory by upholding the
desire to make a large spider web. According to Radcliffe-Brown (1922/1966, pp. 232
235), the success of collective dream interpretation involved Andamanese society installing
in the individual a sense of dependence, a system of sentiments regulating the individual to
conform to the society.
The way Ongees relate to each others dreams and organize their daily practice as
hunters and gatherers accordingly fuses Ongee psychoanalysis with their own form of eth-

Figure 3. A large spider web composed of smaller webs and dreams.

 144 Pandya

nographic interpretation. The ethnopsychoanalysis and ethnoethnography of Ongee culture

are homologous to the very method proposed by Radcliffe-Brown (1922/1966, p. 235). Rad-
cliffe-Brown (1922/1966) stated that when an identical or similar custom is practiced on
different occasions, the meaning of a custom is discovered by ascertaining what that com-
mon element is (p. 235). This is precisely what the Ongees do by listening to each others
dream interpretation and by reaching a common understanding that affects the next days
activity. Consequently, Radcliffe-Brown regarded the Andamanese as capable of rational-
izing their behavior under ethnological interrogation. The islander seeks to rationalise his
behavior; being impelled to certain actions by mental dispositions of whose origin and real
nature he is unaware (Radcliffe-Brown, 1922/1966, p. 235).
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The importance of the dream shared and talked about, in fact, conditions the rule of not
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waking up the sleeping person (Radcliffe-Brown, 1922/1966, p. 167). Ongees always wait for
the individuals to finish umuka (sleep) so that the individuals body internal has completed
making the spider web.5 To let a person finish dreaming, or sleep in, ensures the return of
the body internal and facilitates the dream, or the spider web, to interconnect with the other
Ongees dreams and spider webs. Ongees say that, by not waking up somebody,

we make sure that the person remains with us as a living being, all his smell scattered
throughout the day must be put back to make the body strong like the web of spider. To
wake up a sleeping person would break the web! On waking up, this person will not know
what to do and what others are planning!

For the Ongees, power and emphasis are on dreams being interpreted to integrate the
individual into society. Perhaps we may understand Ongees dream practice as a form of
group therapy in which individuals congregate and acknowledge a problem collectively, as in
the case of violent individuals or substance abusers. The self is made up of a whole spectrum
of nuances and meaningsimplicit and explicit notions of powercorrelating Ongee ethos,
social structure, and institutions (Fogelson, 1977, p. 193). The issue of power as expressed
through dreams and memory is not simplistic causal relations but correlations between
(Fogelson, 1977, p. 193) culturally constituted explanations and mechanisms in response to
the belief about the process of sleep and dream and the effects or reflections of institutional
and social structural changes (Levi-Strauss, 1963, pp. 132163). The completeness of society
and the individuals within it involves not separating the world as it is smelled and seen while
sleeping, but unifying it with the world that can be smelled, seen, and acted upon while
awake.

SLEEPING AND DREAMS WITHIN A CHANGED CONTEXT

OF SETTLEMENT

In 1993, after a lapse of nearly 10 years, I revisited the Ongees at Dugong Creek. The
number of nontribal communities around the Ongee reserve forest had increased as had the
presence of welfare agency workers among the Ongees, despite the fact that the Ongee
population had declined to just 99. The Ongees now had a very different lifestyle. Life in
circular campgrounds within the forests had been replaced by living in private quarters,

5
The image of the spider web and actual variations as they can be seen in nature were often
pointed out to me and referred to as places that no one has passed through. I have used the images
that they indicated to me as a way to depict the metaphoric use of the Ongees and my own ethnographic
depiction. In a way, this is following what Lacan (1977) regarded as the metaphor of mirror for articu-
lating properties and function of the self.
 Special Issue: Forest Smells and Spider Webs 145
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Figure 4. Ongee settlement at Dugong Creek, Little Andamans, 1993.

arranged in rows. In the intervening period, the Ongees had steadily shifted from relying on
hunting and gathering to becoming workers in a coconut plantation residing in a designated
settlement area. The Ongeeswho used to shift between forests and coastal campswere
now settled in Island Administration, managed settlement areas of Dugong Creek and South
Bay on Little Andaman Island (see Figure 4).
Occasionally the Ongees do go out hunting, but they depend mostly on rations distrib-
uted through the Andaman Island Administration (Awaradi, 1990, pp. 195221). Much of
the payments in kind are made for the labor provided by the Ongees as they work on the
coconut plantation. In fact, having the Ongees living in the settlement makes it feasible to
organize the labor force to work at the coconut plantation on a day-to-day basis. The
establishment of settlements has also brought with it the following: posting of a social worker
in charge of managing all payments, implementation of a developmental policy, and pro-
viding rations along with health department personnel posted at the settlement, an electri-
cian to oversee the power generation, a plantation overseer, and a school teacher. The forest
cover is drastically reduced, and Ongees are allotted living quarters in the settlement and are
surrounded by an increasing number of outsiders. Much of the forest has been cleared in the
neighborhood of the Ongee reserve forest and small agricultural communities have been
established.
All of this presents the Ongees with a new set of ideas and institutions. They now
confront a market of things made outside of the community and, above all, the concept and
reality of money as a means of acquiring all that the outsiders have. Ongees have incor-
porated the outsiders political economy of manufactured commodities, the concepts of
work and wages, and the worldview that accompanies all of these developments. Ongees
find it perplexing that they are given limited wages for the plantation work at end of the
month, but if they give outsiders something collected from the forest they get much larger
sums of money. The appointed social worker among the Ongee also faces a problem as he
frequently has to open the ration store several times a day and supply food according to
individual demands. Ongees refuse to take and keep supplies for a week. Because of such
clashes of worldviews, accounting, and timekeeping sensibilities, the Ongees and the plan-
 146 Pandya

tation managers are constantly at loggerheads over issues of work and money. Nonetheless,
it has become more practical for the Ongees to live on the settlement and stay close to the
quarters of the authorities, the ration store, and the plantation.
Despite all of these changes, the basic Ongee notions of umuka (going to sleep) and
waking up/discussing dreams enay-te-gebey (meanings made) remained a concern. However,
what really had changed for the Ongees was the way of sleeping and dreaming.
Within the settlement, the rectangular space is organized in rows of individual family
sleeping quarters. Each structure is an enclosed wooden room with a tin roof standing on
five-foot stilts. Life in circular campgrounds, with sleeping platforms covered only on the top
and at the back, has been replaced by living in private quarters arranged in rows. Some
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families continue to live outside the settlement area or, for varying periods, move out and
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live in the traditional campgrounds within the forest, especially for ritual ceremonies or at
the insistence of the torale (spirit communicator). Most Ongees residing in the settlement
collect around the fire outside the house in small groups to hold sessions of discussions (tonki
ti megegatebeh) and then retire to their allocated quarters for sleeping. This practice of
holding discussions has continued from the days when most Ongees stayed outside of the
settlement area and rarely used the houses provided to them. What has transformed is that
Ongees now do not fall asleep while discussing dreams, rather, they must get up after the
discussion and go to sleep within their enclosed house.
Most Ongees, who have now become habituated and dependent on life within the
settlement, consider that individuals dreams are now seldom the same and that they are
subject to more diverse interpretations. The experience of sleeping and dreaming in the
settlement is now different because of the walls, which create an enclosed space illuminated
by electricity. With changing times and space, the dream or the spider web itself has changed
(see Figure 5). Factors responsible for these changes to the spider web are many: the
enclosed house restricts the movement of the body internal and one no longer talks across
the space from sleeping platforms as in the forest camps. However, the most important
explanation lies in the fact that the social worker and overseer who maintain the coconut
plantation are regarded as frequent breakers (gatuwey-negeey) of the spider web because
they go around at 7:00 a.m. trying to wake up the Ongees to report for work. The Ongees are
assured a minimum payment by the government, but when the plantation officials find

Figure 5. Gatuwey dane korale: Imperfect spider web. Image of improper, incomplete, and negative
dream.
 Special Issue: Forest Smells and Spider Webs 147

themselves unable to get the Ongees to work, they complain about having to deal with the
governments paid, lazy, good for nothing son-in-laws!
For the Ongees, their reality was now located within the altered context in which they
have to go to sleep and the dramatically different ways in which they have to get up in the
morning. It may be true that goods and money are available in the settlement, but life there
has restricted the movement of the body internal. As a young couple living outside of the
settlement with the husbands maternal uncle, who was known for being a spirit communi-
cator, they explained the following:

For us sleeping in the settlement generates only incomplete spiders webs as sleep is
broken by the babulee.6 We fail to see what the body internal wants to show us in the
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forest, so we continue to live in the settlement. Sometimes they [other couples] come to
sleep with us, especially on occasions when they want to remember what it is to be able to
make the web! Individuals who always stay in the settlement have lost the power to get up
on their own and make a large spider web based on what the different internal bodies see
in the forest. People in the settlement have no large spider web! We sleep outside the
settlement so that we can dream and continue to remember and make memories.

According to the uncle, who lives with his young nephew and his wife, the people residing
in the settlement do not gather as a whole group to really listen to the dream work. They
meet for a short duration before going to sleep and they fail to convey to each other any
meanings. The gatherings are small and multiple:

After talking they go to designated quarters for sleep. They can never weave together a
large web . . . and then they work only on the plantation and are woken up! So the body
smell is never really scattered over the parts of forest. Consequently the web is never
complete. It is not a complete web but small broken webs. The settlement Ongees thus
tend to keep forgetting. Even if they go to the forest they gain nothing because they smell
little in the dreams and that limits what could be talked about.

Ongees making their own ethnographic observations pointed out to me that the individuals
in the settlement were provided with latrines in a row and a store where they could collect
rations. This was a case of smells all mixed up because of the proximity of built structures
within the settlement area. This had implications for dreaming and the forming of webs.

Their [Ongees in settlement] smell fragments are so mixed up in a small area that the web
was not wide enough to locate things like pigs and crabs, fruits, and turtle. Like the broken
web, from the gaps in which food for spiders escapes, the people of the settlement were
really never able to remember and gained nothing from the forest.

It is precisely this aspect that makes Ongee dreams not only an exchange between body
internal and body external, smell seen and seeing the smell, but also about the power of
sensorial exchange. As a result, the spirit communicator (torale), or Oko Jumu (Radcliffe-
Brown, 1922/1966, pp. 177178), is regarded as having power and influence as they dream
because their body internal flies upward while other body internals just move in the forest.
This distinctive quality of a spirit communicators sleep provides him with a vision of the
entire possible spider webs that could be made. This view includes both forest and settle-
ment. A dream that may be an individuals daydream transforms into a vision dream for all.
In 1993 when I asked the Ongees living in the settlement, but known to me since the
days of forest camps, why they could not succeed in hunting anymore I was expecting to hear
an explanation in terms of loss of forest cover due to the growing number of outsiders.

6
A term derived from babu, Hindustani for an administrative authority who goes around waking
the late risers to report to work at coconut plantation.
 148 Pandya

However, the Ongees explained that the decline in the hunting practice was due to the lack
of a proper sleeping place,7 which would generate dreams about hunting space.

To do good forest work like hunt, we need to discuss dreams of the forest. We do not
dream forests anymore! We are forgetting to work in the forest because we are reminded
to get up and work in the plantation! We now dream only of the coconut plantation. We
do not have any tonki ti megegatebeh [a session of dream discussions and singing] just a few
small meeting-ey.8

Individuals gather at places near or below the quarters built on stilts, and then they go back
to their respective sleeping quarters. The settlement does not support the holding of tonki ti
megegatebeh as these used to occur in the camps outside of the settlement. For settlement
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Ongees, the talk about dreams before going to sleep is not powerful enough because having
to get up and go away to sleep in a room. It is not possible to fall asleep while talking.
Generally in the late evenings within the settlement area of Dugong Creek, either there are
no talks held before sleeping or two or three fires are set up in different locations and
individuals keep moving from one to the other sessionsmuch like the authorities and
outsiders having meeting-ey. In this process of terminating the talk and going away to sleep,
Ongees feel that they never remember anything and the web remains always small and
incomplete. Things could escape from the imperfect spider web, similar to the situation of
forgetting or not being successful at the hunt.

For us, sleeping and dreaming have changed. We dream differently since we live differ-
ently in different space. And experiences are different. Unlike the spirit communicator
and people outside the settlement, our bodies both internal and external do not see or
smell much and so we remember less and what is not seen or smelt cannot be said before
going to sleep.

CONCLUSION: SOME IMPLICATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS

For the Ongees, different dreams and interpretations exist because of degrees of change
in their political economy; that is, the change from hunting and gathering in the forest to
working in the plantation is both real and interconnected. This interconnectedness creates
continuity or a shift between different sleeping contexts and not a strong, clear division. In
fact, the change in situation prevents dreaming, which makes the dreams in the settlement
overcome the conflict or resolve the tension of what is remembered and that which is
forgotten. In other words, Ongees in the process of sleeping in the settlement design and
discuss dreams that are conducive and interpretable for continued existence in the settle-
ment. Therefore, oftentimes at the sessions held within the settlement, individuals would ask
the spirit communicator the following:

Have you been dreaming of the helicopter landing with government guests? When would
that be? We can smell all the new gifts they would bring for us! We will all dance for the

7
Dumonts (1972, ch. 5) account of the Panare Indians outlines the cultural importance of the space
constructed as a place to sleep in, with a range of meanings.
8
In fact, the irregular scattered gatherings held between the rows of Ongees quarters are referred
to by the term meeting-ey (derived from the English term meeting). This term was acquired as a result
of the increasing number of administrative staff in the settlement who visit each other at the home for
official business or just for a cup of tea and are heard saying, We are having a meeting! Interestingly
enough, in 1983, Ongees regarded my long interview sessions as talk and write work. In recent times,
however, they frequently use the same encounter as meeting-ey.
 Special Issue: Forest Smells and Spider Webs 149

visitors and be so tired that for a few days we will stay away from the smell and sweat of
the coconut plantation!

Because dreaming in the settlement is different, the past life of being in the forest is not a
potential dream image that individuals have to process as memory any more. Absence of the
perfect weblike dreams of the Ongees in the settlement in fact generates no memories to be
organized by discussions or singing, no smell fragments lost in forest have to be consolidated
by the body internal. Forgetting the ways of the forest and remembering the settlement only
have become the concern of dream interpretation sessions. In relatively recent field work
(January of 2000), for example, I was informed that spirit communicators now contact the
body internal of the different plantation foremen (babulees) and often can sense that a day
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of plantation work will not be undertaken if they have smelt a babulees sick body.
In recognition of the dreams in the settlement that are conditioned by the political
economy and power relations of production, the Ongees see a generation of no memory
emerging: inachekamey! (something forgotten). For Ongees, all of this is a process for
creating a productive plantation worker and dependent consumer of nonforest commodi-
ties. Therefore, young Ongee children now regard the morning wake-up call of the planta-
tion foreman as just a regular feature like the morning birdcall. When babulee [foreman]
comes to wake us up, we get to put on the clothes given by the babulee. It is time to go to
the social workers house and get work and food for the day. Sleeping and dreaming in the
settlement for the Ongees are not unsettling in relation to the context of the forest. Current
dreams simply mark the change from the ones experienced and generated in the forest. It is
not a matter of this meaning or that meaning, but an issue of making public and social the
mutually separate meanings of dreams that then coexist through the process of remembered
memory and forgotten memory. From the Ongee perspective, it is not a critique of change
in itself, but rather about the consequences of change; Ongees not only dream of change, but
also communicate about change. So the Ongees of Little Andaman always say that the dane
korale (spider web, dream) is constantly changing because the spider keeps weaving it again
and again.

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