Meet the nurse with a Padma Shri who lived, worked with a remote Andaman tribe

It was a culture wholly new to her, even though she grew up in the Middle Andamans. Where her late parents, homemaker Augustina Kujur and forest department driver Marcus Lakra, wanted their six children to learn to brush their teeth and put on their shoes, essential early skills among the Onge included climbing trees and cracking open coconuts.

In her years as a nurse and midwife there, Lakra would survive a tsunami, live out of a bare tent, send her year-old baby away to keep him safe, and help save a premature baby that weighed 900 gm.

For her incredible service, she was shortlisted for the prestigious Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award in May. Years ago, in 2011, she received the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours. A year before that, she won a National Florence Nightingale Award.

“I couldn’t have done it alone. My family, including my husband, elder sister and in-laws, are my pillars of strength,” says Lakra, 51.

Her husband, Shaji Varghese, 59, a real-estate broker in Port Blair, would visit her on site, as often as he could. Her in-laws cared for her son, Ashley, now 20, when she couldn’t. “He is so loved by his grandparents and they take care of him always,” she says.

Her sister, Scholastica Tirkey, 61, is also a nurse and is the reason Lakra chose the profession. “I would see the relief that she brought to people in our village, Rangat, and the way they talked about her. That was the role I wanted to have in the world.”

Lakra studied in Port Blair and qualified as an auxiliary nursing midwife at 28. She secured a position with the local government and her first posting came two years later, at the Public Health Centre at Dugong Creek, land of the Onge tribe.

This is one of India’s PVTG (Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups). Their way of life is so remote that special laws prevent images of them from being posted on social media, in order to protect it.

They describe themselves as En-iregale (Perfect Person, in Ongan). They have dark black skin, wear metal and wood jewellery around the neck, hips and head. In place of clothing, they apply a clay mixture for protection from the sun and from insects. They live by fishing, hunting and foraging.

Lakra realised soon enough that they were not going to trek 1 km from their settlement to reach out to an allopathic nurse at a government outpost. So she left the outpost and began to spend time with them in their homes.

The Onge population at the time was 78, partly as a result of a low birth rate. So Lakra decided to make healthy pregnancies a priority. That would be harder than she realised.

The tribe does not use a modern calendar system, so women often couldn’t pinpoint where they were in their menstrual cycle or confirm if they were pregnant. They also believed that admitting to a pregnancy before it became visible was inviting bad luck.

Lakra got around these factors by spending hours in each household, talking to women about the dos and don’ts of early pregnancy. They began to turn to her for basic salves, first-aid and other medication.

The tribe was warm and grew to trust her, but it was hard to adjust to the loneliness, she says.

She would read the Bible and recite poems to herself. “All these years later, I realise that I am not always able to communicate fluently in either Hindi or English. I sometimes run out of appropriate words.”

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In 2004, all the other challenges would recede, as one of the worst tsunamis in history flattened Aceh in Indonesia, struck Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu; reached heights of 15 m in the southern Nicobar Islands, and hit the tiny settlement of the Onge.

None of the Onge were killed, but across the union territory, the toll crossed 1,300, with over 5,500 others missing.

Phone lines were down; she knew her family would be despairing. “I called them as soon as I could, but I could not leave,” Lakra says. “If I had left then, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep peacefully again in my life. But also, I had developed an affection for them. I simply didn’t want to leave.”

As malaria, dysentery and diarrhoea became rampant, she lived alongside the tribe, closer than she ever had before, all of them in makeshift tents.

Amid the chaos and terror, one woman went into labour prematurely, and delivered a baby weighing 900 gm. “We used kangaroo or skin-to-skin care for a few days, until a helicopter could take the mother and child to GB Pant Hospital at Port Blair. I was so scared that the baby wouldn’t survive. But six months later, they both came back healthy.” It was the first good news the tribe had in a long time, Lakra says.

Some Onge, grieving and bereft, moved deeper into the woods. Lakra would walk miles, periodically, to check on them. Amid it all, she could see that her son Ashley, then a year old, was at risk. “I couldn’t even feed him proper food,” she says. Battling waves of grief, she watched her husband take him home to Port Blair.

She would stay on for two years, until the health centre was fully restored and a new nurse arrived. Her husband visited as often as he could. He knew the toll it was taking on her, the care of the tribe and the distance from her son.

“He still calls my mother-in-law ‘Mumma’, but I am happy that my son is happy,” Lakra says. “I tell him about the tribal communities but he has not expressed a desire to visit them.”

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Since 2006, Lakra has been posted at the GB Pant Hospital in Port Blair. She serves as an auxiliary nurse and midwife, and coordinates with doctors particularly for the treatment of the islands’ four remote tribes: the Jarawa, Sentinelese, Shompen and Andamanese.

She organises campaigns and leads teams of junior staff into remote tribal settlements too.

She returns to the Onge, from time to time. They welcome her warmly and are always happy to see her. (The child that weighed 900 gm is now 19 years old.)

The year 2020, of course, brought a new threat. As the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world, Lakra and her team prayed for a vaccine to arrive soon. “The tribe have a very low immunity and we were very frightened to think of what would happen if one person got infected with the virus,” she says.

As soon as the vaccines became available, they rushed to the settlements with them. This was sometimes a perilous task. “I spent six to seven hours at a stretch in a small dinghy in choppy waters. But to my surprise the people were extremely cooperative, and none of them contracted the virus.”

Then life settled back into its new pace. Until May, when Lakra received the call from Aster Guardians, a wing of the Dubai-based Aster DM Healthcare. They invited her to London for the global nursing awards ceremony. “I was in London for a few days and I truly enjoyed myself. I didn’t win, but during my interaction with the fellow nominees I realised that how much love I have been receiving not just nationally but on an international level as well. Their kind words will stay with me for the rest of my life,” Lakra says.

Words have been her reward. The kind ones from the government of India in the Padma Shri citation, the warmth of those at the awards ceremony. Among the kindest words offered to her are Lakra Yumma (Mother Lakra), the name given to her by the Onge, whose population now stands at 105.