Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide

“And there, Saar? What happened there?”

“That one began simply enough, with an exceptionally high tide, a kotal gon, that came spilling over the top. The contract for the repairs was given to a man who was the brother-in-law of the head of the Panchayat. He swore he would fix it so that never again would a drop of water leak through. But they found later that the contractor had put in only half the materials he had been paid for. The profits had been shared by many different brothers-in-law.”

“And over there, Saar?”

Even storytellers know that discretion is sometimes a wiser course than valor. “As for that one, comrade, I had better not tell you too much. Do you see the people who live there, in those dwellings that run beside the embankment? It happened once that the people of that “ para ” had voted for the wrong party. So when the other party came to power, they decided to settle scores. Their way of doing it was to make a hole in the bãdh. Of such things, my friend, are politicians made, but let’s not dwell on this too much — it may not be good for our health. Look there instead; follow my finger.”

I pointed him in a direction where half a mile of the embankment had been beaten down, in the 1930s, by a storm.

“Imagine, Fokir,” I said. “Imagine the lives of your ancestors. They were new to this island, freshly arrived in the tide country. After years of struggle they had managed to create the foundations of the bãdh; they had even managed to grow a few handfuls of rice and vegetables. After years of living on stilt-raised platforms, they had finally been able to descend to earth and make a few shacks and shanties on level ground. All this by virtue of the bãdh. And imagine that fateful night when the storm struck, at exactly the time that a kotal gon was setting in; imagine how they cowered in their roofless huts and watched the waters rising, rising, gnawing at the mud and the sand they had laid down to hold the river off. Imagine what went through their heads as they watched this devouring tide eating its way through the earthworks, stalking them wherever they were. There was not one among them, I will guarantee you, my young friend, who would not rather have stood before a tiger than have looked into the maws of that tide.”

“Were there other storms, Saar?”

“Yes, many. Look there.” I pointed to an indentation in the island’s shore, a place that looked as if some giant had bitten off a part of Lusibari’s coast. “Look. That was done by the storm of 1970. It was a bhangon, a breaking: the river tore off a four-acre piece of land and carried it away. In an instant it was gone — its huts, fields, trees were all devoured.”

“Was that the worst storm of all, Saar?”

“No, comrade, no. The worst storm of all, they say, was long before my time. Long before the settlers first came to this island.”

“When, Saar?”

“It was in 1737. The Emperor Aurangzeb had died some thirty years before and the country was in turmoil. Calcutta was a new place then — the English had seized their opportunity and made it the main port of the east.”

“Go on, Saar.”

“It happened in October — that’s always when the worst of them strike, October and November. Before the storm had even made landfall the tide country was hit by a huge wave, a wall of water forty feet in height. Can you imagine how high that is, my friend? It would have drowned everything on your island and on ours too. Even we on this roof would have been underwater.”

“No!”

“Yes, comrade, yes. There were people in Calcutta, Englishmen, who took measurements and recorded all the details. The waters rose so high that they killed thousands of animals and carried them upriver and inland. The corpses of tigers and rhinoceroses were found miles from the river, in rice fields and in village ponds. There were fields covered with the feathers of dead birds. And as this monstrous wave was traveling through the tide country, racing toward Calcutta, something else happened — something unimaginable.”

“What, Saar, what?”

“The city was hit by an earthquake.”

“No!”

“Yes, my friend. Yes. That’s one of the reasons why this storm became so famous. There are people, scientists, who believe there is a mysterious connection between earthquakes and storms. But this was the first known instance of these two catastrophes happening together.”

“So what happened, Saar?”

“In Kolkata tens of thousands of dwellings fell instantly to the ground — Englishmen’s palaces as well as houses and huts. The steeple of the English church toppled over and came crashing down. They say there was not a building in the city left with four walls intact. Bridges were blown away, wharves were carried off by the surging waters, godowns were emptied of their rice, and gunpowder in the armories was scattered by the wind. On the river were many ships at anchor, large and small, from many nations. Among them there were two English ships of five hundred tons each. The wind picked them up and carried them over the tops of trees and houses; it threw them down a quarter of a mile from the river. People saw huge barges fluttering in the air like paper kites. They say that over twenty thousand vessels were lost that day, including boats, barges, dinghies and the like. And even among those that remained, many strange things happened.”

“What, Saar? What?”

“A French ship was driven on shore with some of its cargo intact. The day after the storm, the remaining members of the crew went out into the fields to try to salvage what they could from the wreckage. A crewman was sent down into one of the holds to see what had been spared. After he had been gone a while, his mates shouted to ask him what was taking him so long. There was no answer, so they sent another man. He too fell quickly silent, as did the man who followed him. Now panic set in and no one else would agree to go until a fire had been lit to see what was going on. When the flame was kindled they saw that the hold was filled with water, and swimming in this tank was an enormous crocodile — it had killed those three men.

“And this, my friend and comrade, is a true story, recorded in documents stored in the British Museum, the very place where Marx wrote Das Kapital. ”

“But Saar, it couldn’t happen again, Saar, could it?”

I could see Fokir was trying to gauge the appetite of our rivers and I would have liked to put his young mind at rest. But I knew also that it would have been wrong to deceive him. “My friend, not only could it happen again — it will happen again. A storm will come, the waters will rise, and the bãdh will succumb, in part or in whole. It is only a matter of time.”

“How do you know, Saar?” he said quietly.

“Look at it, my friend, look at the bãdh. See how frail it is, how fragile. Look at the waters that flow past it and how limitless they are, how patient, how quietly they bide their time. Just to look at it is to know why the waters must prevail, later if not sooner. But if you’re not convinced by the evidence of your eyes, then perhaps you will have to use your ears.”

“My ears?”

“Yes. Come with me.”

I led him down the stairs and across the fields. People must have stared to see us, me in my flapping white dhoti with my umbrella unfurled against the sun, and Fokir in his ragged shorts racing along at my heels. I went right up to the embankment and put my left ear against the clay. “Now put your head on the bãdh and listen carefully. Tell me what you hear and let’s see if you can guess what it is.”