A modern-day Garden of Eden

The modern-day Garden of Eden exists in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, beyond the southern-most tip of India, in the Bay of Bengal. What’s more, the Garden also has modern-day Adams and Eves living in it.

A tribe of people—the Jarawas—living on these islands have not had contact with the outside world for more than 15,000 years. They live without the boundaries of any social norms of the world beyond their islands, and are complete in themselves. The tribals don’t come out of the forest because they are content with their world.

They live as a community, and there are no family units there. Every child that is born belongs to everybody. People don’t fall sick because of the fabulous quality of life that they live. When their time is up, them simply pass on.

These tribals are unaware of the concept of possessiveness. If somebody catches a fish, they take a portion of it and leave the rest for the others. They are happy, carefree, and to describe them in one word, ‘pure’. Greed is an alien concept to them.

They wear the skulls of their ancestors around their waists. They do this because it makes them feel that their ancestors are with them, watching over them. To the outside world, however, this means that the tribals are cannibals, and it keeps people away from them. They are so childlike that they don’t know what clothes are. It is like a second layer of skin to them; they look at clothes and start pulling at them, and laughing like babies.

They run and climb trees in a manner that would put the fittest person amongst us to shame. They survive on leaves, berries and roots, and raw fish straight from the sea. They live a fantastic life. After all, they have created their own paradise, and their very own Garden of Eden!

To put it simply, the Jarawas know how to Just Be! Wouldn’t it be lovely if we all created our respective Gardens of Eden with no possessions, no religion, no gossip, and no envy?