Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide

“Many days passed and he gave me no cause for shame; he was a good, kind man: how many such are there? It’s true that some said, ‘Look who’s with Rajen the lame’ — I let them say what they wanted. What did I care?

“It was Rajen who brought me word of my mother; she was working in a place where truck drivers came, to sleep on charpais and buy women for the night. I went there with Rajen and in secret we met: I fell upon Ma, but couldn’t bring myself to speak. For so long I’d been waiting, but now my heart broke: her body was wasted, her face thin and drawn. ‘Don’t look, Kusum,’ she said. ‘Don’t touch me with your eyes; think of me as I was before your father died. I blame that Dilip; he’s more demon than man. He said he’d find me work, and look where he brought me: to eat leaves at home would have been a better fate. He sold me, that danob, to others of his kind. This is no place for you, Kusum. You must go back. But stay a few days; come and see me once more.’

“We went home that night and came back a week later. Then Rajen said something that stopped our very breath: ‘Let Kusum marry me; let her be my wife. She’ll be with me forever; I’ll give her my life.’ At last I saw Ma smile: what better news could there be? ‘Fortunate Kusum, you’ve been blessed by Bon Bibi.’ ‘You’ll come too,’ said Rajen. ‘Ma, we’ll steal you away. This is no place for you; you’ll die if you stay.’ We went back together to Rajen’s little shack; in Ma’s presence we were married, Rajen and I. Who could have known then that this would be Ma’s bidai? To see me was her release; three months later she died. That was her fate — nothing could be done; if she had lived but two years, she would have seen Fokir, our son.

“Many months passed and we spoke of coming back here: that place was not home; there was nothing for us there. Walking on iron, we longed for the touch of mud; encircled by rails, we dreamed of the Raimangal in flood. We dreamed of storm-tossed islands, straining at their anchors, and of the rivers that bound them in golden fetters. We thought of high tide and the mohonas mounting, of islands submerged like underwater clouds. By night we remembered, we talked and we dreamed — by day coal and metal were the stuff of our lives.

“Four years went by and then that life came to an end: a train began to move, with Rajen still unpaid. As the engine picked up speed he ran to keep up, then his bad leg crumpled and he made a misstep: he was pulled from the platform, thrown before the wheels. What can I say? He was taken before his time. He kept his word to me: he gave me his whole life. Never had I thought he would leave me like that, but at least I had Fokir, my son was his gift. Once again I thought of making my way back home; but now, with a child, I hadn’t the courage on my own. Whom would I go to there? Whom would I ask for help? What if I couldn’t make do and it came to the worst? What if I had to fall begging at Dilip’s feet?

“Maybe Bon Bibi was keeping watch over me, for one night I heard tell of a great march to the east. They passed us next day — like ghosts, covered in dust, strung out in a line, shuffling beside the rail tracks. They had children on their shoulders, bundles on their backs. Where were they heading? From what city had they come? They were not from those parts; they were strangers to us. I saw someone stumble, a woman as old as Ma. I took her back home with the help of some others. I gave them food and water; I saw they needed rest. ‘Stay, sit, raho behtho, ’ I said. ‘Get back your strength.’ Did you notice the words? See: I’d spoken in Hindi, but it was in Bangla they spoke back to me. I was amazed: the very same words, the same tongue! ‘Who are you?’ I said. ‘Tell me, where are you headed?’ ‘Listen, sister, we’ll tell you. This is the story.

“‘Once we lived in Bangladesh, in Khulna jila: we’re tide country people, from the Sundarbans’ edge. When the war broke out, our village was burned to ash; we crossed the border, there was nowhere else to go. We were met by the police and taken away; in buses they drove us to a settlement camp. We’d never seen such a place, such a dry emptiness; the earth was so red it seemed to be stained with blood. For those who lived there, that dust was as good as gold; they loved it just as we love our tide country mud. But no matter how we tried, we couldn’t settle there: rivers ran in our heads, the tides were in our blood. Our fathers had once answered Hamilton’s call: they had wrested the estate from the sway of the tides. What they’d done for another, couldn’t we do for ourselves? There are many such islands in the bhatir desh. We sent some people ahead, and they found the right place; it’s a large empty island called Morichjhãpi. For months we prepared, we sold everything we owned. But the police fell on us the moment we moved. They swarmed on the trains, they put blocks on the road — but we still would not go back; we began to walk.’

“I listened to them talk, and hope blossomed in my heart; these were my people, how could I stand apart? We shared the same tongue, we were joined in our bones; the dreams they had dreamt were no different from my own. They too had hankered for our tide country mud; they too had longed to watch the tide rise to full flood. If we stayed on in Dhanbad, what would our future be? A lifetime of toil in a city of rust? I gathered our things, put clothes on Fokir’s back; with Rajen in our hearts, we stepped away from the shack.

“And there you have it, Saar. I have told you the story. That’s how Fokir and I came to Morichjhãpi.”

And so we fell silent, each of us alone with our thoughts, Kusum and Fokir, Horen and I. In my mind’s eye I saw them walking, these thousands of people who wanted nothing more than to plunge their hands once again in our soft, yielding tide country mud. I saw them coming, young and old, quick and halt, with their lives bundled on their heads, and knew it was of them the Poet had spoken when he said:

Each slow turn of the world carries such disinherited

ones to whom neither the past nor the future belongs.

IN THE MORNING Fokir still showed no great eagerness to be gone, and Piya, for her part, saw no reason to hurry him: she was glad to be able to spend more time with the dolphins.

The animals remained in the pool till midmorning, when the waters began to rise. Then again, over a period of about half an hour, they vanished. It happened exactly as it had the day before, except for the difference in the timing of the tide.

What remained to be seen now was where they went when they left the pool: Fokir might know the answer to this. Through a combination of gestures she managed to convey to him that she wanted to follow the dolphins — would it be possible to track them in the boat? He nodded eagerly and quickly pulled in the anchor.

They left the pool while the tide was still coming in and the current added a little to their pace. Leaving Garjontola behind, they entered a mohona. Keeping watch in the bow, Piya saw that with the tide in flood the surrounding islands were sliding gradually beneath the water.

Looking ahead with her binoculars, she spotted a pair of fins far out in front. By the time they had crossed the mohona, the fins were nowhere in sight. But Fokir seemed sure of the way, for he turned unhesitatingly into a wide channel and then veered off into another that was narrower. Shortly afterward he downed his oars and pointed to the shore. Veering around with her binoculars, Piya spotted three crocodiles — she had missed them because her attention had been focused on the water. She guessed that Fokir had seen them before, in this very stretch of water. They were lying exposed to view but their mud-caked bodies blended so well into the surroundings that it was hard to judge their size. One had its jaws open and it seemed to Piya that the gap was wide enough to take the measure of a human being — certainly one of her own size.