Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide

“That’s easily remedied,” he said. “I live in New Delhi. I’m fortytwo and I’m single most of the time.”

“Oh?” Piya was quick to turn the conversation in a less personal direction. “And you’re a translator, right? That’s one thing you did tell me.”

“That’s right,” said Kanai. “I’m an interpreter and translator by profession — although right now I’m more of a businessman than anything else. I started a company some years ago when I discovered a shortage of language professionals in New Delhi. Now I provide translators for all kinds of organizations: businesses, embassies, the media, aid organizations — in short, anyone who can pay.”

“And is there much of a demand?”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded vigorously. “New Delhi’s become one of the world’s leading conference cities and media centers; there’s always something happening. I can barely keep up. The business just seems to keep growing and growing. Recently we started a speechtraining operation, to do accent modification for people who work in call centers. It’s become the fastest-growing part of the business.”

The idea that the currency of language could be used to build a business came as a surprise to Piya. “So I guess you know many languages yourself, right?”

“Six,” he said immediately, with a grin. “Hindi, Urdu and Bengali are my mainstays nowadays. And then there’s English, of course. But I have two others I fall back on from time to time: French and Arabic.”

She was intrigued by the odd combination: “French and Arabic! How did you come by those?”

“Scholarships,” he said with a smile. “I always had a head for languages, and as a student I used to frequent the Alliance Française in Calcutta. One thing led to another and I won a bourse. While I was in Paris an opportunity turned up to learn Arabic in Tunisia. I seized it and have never looked back.”

Raising a hand, Piya pinched the silver stud in her right ear, in a gesture that was childlike in its unselfconsciousness yet adult in its grace. “Did you know then that translation would be your profession?”

“Oh no,” he said. “Not at all. When I was your age I was like any other Calcutta college student — my mind was full of poetry. At the start of my career I wanted to translate Jibanananda into Arabic, and Adonis into Bangla.”

“And what happened?”

He breathed a theatrical sigh. “To put it briefly,” he said, “I quickly discovered that while both Bengali and Arabic possess riches beyond accounting, in neither is it possible to earn a living by translating literature alone. Rich Arabs have no interest in Bengali poetry, and as for rich Bengalis, it doesn’t matter what they want — there aren’t enough of them to make a difference anyway. So at a certain point I reconciled myself to my fate and turned my hand to commerce. And I have to say I was lucky to get into it when I did: there’s a lot going on in India right now and it’s exciting to be a part of it.”

Piya recalled the stories her father had told her about the country he had left: it was a place where there were only two makes of car and where middle-class life was ruled by a hankering for all things foreign. She could tell that the world Kanai inhabited was as distant from the India of her father’s memories as it was from Lusibari and the tide country.

“Do you ever feel you might want to translate literature again?” she said.

“Sometimes,” he replied. “But not often. On the whole, I have to admit I like running an office. I like knowing I’m giving people work, paying salaries, employing students with otherwise useless degrees. And let’s face it, I like the money and the comfort. New Delhi is a good place for a single man with some money. I get to meet lots of interesting women.”

This took Piya by surprise and for a moment she was not sure how to respond. She was standing at the basin, stacking the dishes she had just washed. She put away the last plate and yawned, raising a hand to cover her mouth.

“Sorry.”

He was immediately solicitous. “You must be tired after everything you’ve been through.”

“I’m exhausted. I think I have to go to bed.”

“Already?” He forced a smile, although it was clear he was disappointed. “Of course. You’ve had a long day. Did I tell you that the electricity would be switched off in an hour or so? Be sure to keep a candle with you.”

“I’ll be asleep long before that.”

“Good. I hope you get a good night’s rest. And if you need anything, just come up and knock: I’ll be up on the roof, in my uncle’s study.”

I would have gone back to Morichjhãpi the very next week but was prevented by the usual procedures and ceremonies that accompany a schoolmaster’s retirement. At the end, however, it was all over and I was officially reckoned a man who had reached the completion of his working life.

A few days later Horen knocked on my study door. “Saar!

“I’ve just come from the market at Kumirmari,” he said. “I met Kusum there and she insisted I bring her here.”

“Here!” I said with a start. “To Lusibari? But why?”

“To meet with Mashima. The Morichjhãpi people want to ask Mashima for help.”

I understood at once: this too was a part of the settlers’ efforts to enlist support. Yet I could have told them that in this instance it was unlikely to bear fruit.

“Horen, you should have stopped Kusum from coming,” I said. “It’ll serve no purpose for her to meet with Nilima.”

“I did tell her, Saar. But she insisted.”

“So where is she now?”

“She’s downstairs, Saar, waiting to see Mashima. But look who I’ve brought upstairs.” He stepped aside and I saw now that Fokir had been lurking behind him all this while. “I’ve got to go to the market, Saar, so I’ll just leave him here with you.” With that he went bounding down the stairs, leaving me alone with the five-year-old.

As a schoolteacher I was accustomed to dealing with children in the plural. Never having had a child of my own, I was unused to coping with them in the singular. Now, subjected to the scrutiny of a lone pair of wide-open, five-year-old eyes, I forgot everything I had planned to say. In a near panic I led the boy across the roof and pointed to the Raimangal’s mohona.

“Look, comrade,” I said. “Look. Follow your eyes and tell me. What do you see?”

I suppose he was asking himself what I wanted. After looking this way and that, he said at last, “I see the bãdh, Saar.”

“The bãdh? Yes, of course, the bãdh.”

This was not the answer I had expected, but I fell upon it with inexpressible relief. For the bãdh is not just the guarantor of human life on our island; it is also our abacus and archive, our library of stories. So long as I had the bãdh in sight, I knew I would not lack for something to say.

“Go on, comrade. Look again; look carefully. Let’s see if you can pick out the spots where the embankment has been repaired. For each such repair I’ll give you a story.”

Fokir lifted a hand to point. “What happened there, Saar?”

“Ah, there. That breach happened twenty years ago, and it was neither storm nor flood that caused it. It was made by a man who wanted to settle a score with the family who lived next door to his. In the depths of the night he made a hole in the dyke, thinking to drown his neighbor’s fields. It never entered his mind to think that he was doing just as much harm to himself as to his enemy. That’s why neither family lives here anymore — for ten years afterward nothing grew in their fields.”