Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide

In great excitement, I went back to Kusum’s door.

“What’s the matter, Saar?” she said in alarm. “Why are your clothes muddy, your face red? Where have you left your umbrella?”

“Never mind all that,” I said impatiently. “Tell me, who is in charge? Is there a committee? Are there leaders?”

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“I want to meet with them.”

“Why, Saar?”

“Because I want to have some part in what is happening here. I want to be of help.”

“Saar, if that’s what you want, who am I to say no?”

The island, she said, had been divided into wards. People in charge of each of these wards made decisions and helped organize every essential activity.

“Take me to the head of your ward,” I said, and she led me to a door a short distance away.

The leader of the ward was a sharp, energetic man, no dreamer, and not someone to put up with trespasses on his time: in his demeanor I glimpsed the euphoric reticence of someone who knows that success is within reach. Of course he was busy, but when he heard I was a headmaster — although soon to be retired — he took the time to show me around. We walked along the newly cleared paths and he pointed out all that had been done in the weeks since they had first arrived. I was amazed, not just by what they had built but the care they had invested in creating organizations, institutions. They had set up their own government and taken a census — there were some thirty thousand people on the island already and there was space for many more. The island had been divided into five zones and each family of settlers had been given five acres of land. Yet they had also recognized, shrewdly enough, that their enterprise could not succeed if they didn’t have the support of their neighbors on the surrounding islands. With this in mind they had reserved one quarter of the island for people from other parts of the tide country. Hundreds of families had come flocking in.

At the end of the brief tour, I clasped my guide’s hand: “Destiny is on your side, comrade.”

He smiled and said, “But still, we cannot succeed without help.”

It was clear at once that he was thinking of all the ways in which I might be of use to him. This impressed me. It was a good sign, I thought, that he was applying his mind in this practical way.

“I want to be of help,” I said. “Tell me what I can do.”

“That depends,” he said. “What’s most important to us at this time is to mobilize public opinion, to bring pressure on the government, to get them to leave us alone. They’re putting it out that we’re destroying this place; they want people to think we’re gangsters who’ve occupied this place by force. We need to let people know what we’re doing and why we’re here. We have to tell the world about all we’ve done and all we’ve achieved. Can you help us with this? Do you have contacts with the press in Calcutta?”

I didn’t begrudge him his attitude; it seemed to me he was right to take this approach. “There was a time once,” I said regretfully, “when I knew people in the press. But no more.”

“Then do you know anyone with power? Policemen? Forest rangers? Politicians?”

“No,” I said. “No one.”

“Then what can you do for us?” he said, growing peevish. “Of what use could you be?”

What use indeed, was I? There are people in this world who are truly useful, who lead useful lives: Nilima for instance. But a schoolteacher such as me?

“There’s only one thing I know to do,” I said. “And that is to teach.”

“Teach?” I could see he was struggling to suppress a smile. “What could you teach here?”

“I could teach your children about this place that you’ve come to, the tide country. I have time — I am soon to retire.”

He lost interest in me. “Our children here have no time to waste,” he said. “Most of them have to help their families find food to eat.” Then, after a little more thought, he added, “However, if you can find pupils who’re willing, then why should I prevent you? It’s up to you: teach all you want.”

I went back to Kusum triumphantly and told her what had transpired. In evident alarm, she said, “But whom will you teach, Saar?”

“Why?” I said. “There’s your son, Fokir. There must be others like him. Mustn’t there?” A look of reluctance had come into her face, so I added, almost pleading, “It wouldn’t be every day. Maybe just for a little while each week. I’ll come over from Lusibari.”

“But Saar,” she said, “Fokir can’t write or read, and that’s true of many of these children. What will you teach them?”

I hadn’t given this matter any thought, but the answer came to me at once. I said, “Kusum, I’ll teach them to dream.”

WHILE THE DOLPHIN and its calf foraged in the creek, Fokir was fighting hard to hold his boat steady in the adjoining channel. The water was flowing fast here and he was turning the boat around in circles so that Piya could keep the dolphins in view. Even though there was no wind, the water’s surface was so densely marked with ripples and eddies that it seemed almost to be simmering as it flowed.

Having filled in six data sheets, Piya decided to measure the water’s depth. She was in the bow, as usual, while Fokir was in the midsection, turning rapidly from left to right as he dipped his oars alternately on either side of the boat. He happened to look up just as Piya was lowering her depth sounder into the water. His eyes flared and he uttered a shout that made her freeze, with her wrist still submerged beneath the surface. Pulling his oars into the boat, Fokir threw himself at Piya, diving forward, snatching wildly at her wrist. Piya fell over backward and her arm snapped out of the water, catapulting the depth sounder over the boat.

Suddenly the water boiled over and a pair of huge jaws came shooting out of the river, breaking the surface exactly where Piya’s wrist had been a moment before. From the corner of one eye, Piya saw two sets of interlocking teeth make a snatching, twisting movement as they lunged at her still extended arm: they passed so close that the hard tip of the snout grazed her elbow and the spray from the nostrils wetted her forearm. A second later the boat shook under the impact of a massive underwater blow. The shock was powerful enough to send bilge water shooting up out of the innards of the craft; there was a creaking sound and the boat tipped to such an angle that it seemed almost inevitable it would roll over. Piya’s clipboard, which was lying at her feet, slipped into the water, and many of the plywood slats that covered the deck tumbled out like falling dominoes.

Tutul, who’d been sitting in the shade of the hood, curled himself into a ball and rolled forward to correct his balance. The boat righted itself with a thump that threw up a curtain of water. A moment later there was another massive blow to its underside, somewhere near the stern. With the boat rolling wildly, Fokir rose to a kneeling position and took hold of one of his oars. Raising it above his head, he turned it so that its head became a blade and brought it crashing down into the water. The oar hammered into the head of the crocodile just as it was surfacing to make another lunge, and the force of the impact snapped shut the gaping jaws. The oar splintered and the blade broke from the handle and went cartwheeling across the water. The river bubbled again as the reptile sank out of sight: for a moment after its submersion a ghostly outline of its shape remained imprinted on the surface and Piya saw that it was almost as large as the boat.