SOMETHING's amiss on this cloudy morning in Shantanu, a tropical rainforest village nestling alongside a circuitous 250-km-long trunk road in the heart of Middle Andaman island. Curious villagers crowd around a bus stop, gaping at a group of ebony-skinned people asking for food. The women are bedecked in leafy neck and arm sashes, shell and fruit necklaces; the menfolk sport tree bark waist girdles. A group of their children squat inside a tea shack, absorbing cable fare on a small black-and-white TV. "When they first came a month back, we were running scared," says shack owner Nagaswami. "Now we feed them because they seem hungry, and they don't harm us." So he and fellow villagers feed their guests bananas, coconuts, biscuits and rice.