Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide

“‘I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know about this place. Back when I was very little, long before I had seen these islands and these rivers, I had heard about Garjontola from my mother. She would sing to me and tell me tales about this island. This was a place, my mother said, where no one who was good at heart would ever have cause for fear.

“‘As for the big shush, the dolphins who live in these waters, I knew about them too, even before I came here. These animals were also in my mother’s stories: they were Bon Bibi’s messengers, she used to say, and they brought her news of the rivers and khals. They came here during the bhata, my mother said, so they could tell Bon Bibi about everything they had seen. During the jowar they scattered to the ends of the forest and became Bon Bibi’s eyes and ears. This secret her own father had told her, and he had told her also that if you could learn to follow the shush, then you would always be able to find fish.

“‘I had heard these stories long before I came to the tide country, and ever since I was little I had always wanted to come and see this place. When we came to live in Morichjhãpi I would say to my mother, “When will we go? When will we go to Garjontola?” There was never time — there was too much to do. The first time she brought me was just a few weeks before her death. Maybe this was why, after her death, whenever I thought of her I thought also of Garjontola. I came here time and again, and it happened that the shush became like my friends. I followed them where they went.

“‘That day when you came in that launch with the forest guard, and stopped my boat: this was where I was coming, with my son. The night before, my mother had come to me in a dream and she had said, “I want to see your son; why do you never bring him to Garjontola? It will soon be time for you and me to be reunited — after that, who knows when I will see him again? Bring him to me as soon as you can.”

“‘I could not tell my wife this, because I knew she would be upset and she would not believe me. So the next day, instead of taking Tutul to school, I took him to my boat and we set off to come here: on the way we stopped to catch some fish and that was when you came upon us in your launch.’”

“And what came of it?” Piya said. “Do you think she saw him, your mother?”

“‘Yes. The last night we were here, in my boat, I dreamed of my mother again. She was smiling and happy and she said, “I’m glad I’ve seen your son. Now take him home and come back, so that you and I can be together again.”’”

Up to this point Piya had been listening as if she were under a spell: Kanai seemed almost to have vanished, creating the illusion that she was speaking directly with Fokir. But now the spell broke and she stirred as if she had been jolted awake from her sleep.

“What does he mean by that, Kanai?” she said. “Ask him: what does he mean?”

“He says it was just a dream.”

Kanai turned away from her to say a few words to Fokir, and suddenly, to Piya’s surprise, Fokir began to sing, or rather to chant, in a quick rhythm.

“What’s he saying?” Piya said to Kanai. “Can you translate?”

“I’m sorry, Piya,” Kanai said. “But this is beyond my power. He’s chanting a part of the Bon Bibi legend and the meter is too complicated. I can’t do it.”

THE TIDE TURNED with the waning of the day and as the level of the water crept up, the dolphins began to drift away from the pool. When the last animal had left, Fokir turned the boat toward the Megha and began to row.

On board, in the meantime, Horen and his grandson had strung up a couple of tarpaulin sheets to create an enclosed bathing area in the bhotbhoti’s stern. After a long day under the sun, the prospect of cleaning up was all too welcome, and Piya lost no time fetching her towel and toiletries. She found two buckets in the enclosure, of which only one was full. The other had a rope attached to its handle to draw water from the river. Piya threw it overboard, hauled it in and emptied it over herself, reveling in the bracing chill. The other bucket was filled with fresh water and she dipped into it sparingly with an enamel mug to wash off the soap. When she was done, it was still half full.

On the way back to her cabin, she passed Kanai. He was waiting in the gangway with a towel slung over his shoulder.

“I’ve left plenty of fresh water for you.”

“I’ll make good use of it.”

In the distance, she heard someone else splashing and knew it was probably Fokir, bathing in the stern of his own boat.

Later, after she had changed into fresh clothes, she went out on deck. The tide was now nearing full flood and the currents were drawing patterns on the river’s surface as they whirled around the anchored vessel. Some of the distant islands had shrunk to narrow spars of land, and where there had been forest before, there were now only branches visible, bending like reeds to the sway of the tide.

Piya was pulling a chair up to the rails when Kanai appeared beside her with a cup of steaming tea in each hand. “Horen asked me to bring these up,” he said, handing one to Piya.

He pulled up a chair too, and for a while they were both absorbed in watching the slow submersion of the landscape. Piya braced herself, expecting a joke or a satirical remark, but somewhat to her surprise he seemed content to sit quietly. There was something companionable about the silence, and in the end it was she who spoke first.

“I could watch it forever,” she said. “This play of tides.”

“That’s interesting,” he said. “I once knew a woman who used to say that — about the sea.”

“A girlfriend?” said Piya.

“Yes.”

“Have you had many?”

He nodded, and then, as if to change the subject, said, “And what about you? Do cetologists have private lives?”

“Now that you ask,” said Piya, “I have to say that there aren’t many who do, especially not among us women. Relationships aren’t easy, you know, given the kinds of lives we lead.”

“Why not?”

“We travel so much,” Piya said. “We never stay long in one place. It doesn’t make things easy.”

Kanai raised his eyebrows. “But you don’t mean to say, do you, that you’ve never had a relationship — not even a college romance?”

“Oh, I’ve had my share of those,” Piya allowed. “But none of them ever led anywhere.”

“Never?”

“Well, once,” Piya said. “There was this one time when I thought it was leading somewhere.”

“And?”

Piya laughed. “It ended in disaster. What could you expect? It was in Kratie.”

“Kratie?” he said. “Where’s that?”

“In eastern Cambodia,” she said, “about a hundred miles from Phnom Penh. I lived there once.”

Kratie stood on a bluff above the Mekong, and a few miles north of the town was a riverbed pool that served as a dry-season home for a pod of some six Orcaella. This was where Piya had begun her research. As the town was both convenient and pleasant, she had rented the top floor of a wooden house with the intention of making it her base for the next two or three years. One of the advantages of Kratie was that it housed an office of the Fisheries Department, a branch of government with which she had to have many dealings.

One of the local representatives of the department was a young official who was reasonably proficient in English. His name was Rath and he was from Phnom Penh. Without friends or family in Kratie, he was often at loose ends, especially in the evenings. Kratie was very small, no larger than a couple of city blocks, and inevitably Piya found her path crossing Rath’s quite frequently. It turned out that he often ate in the same waterfront café where she usually went for her evening meal of noodles and Ovaltine. They took to sitting at the same table and their everyday small talk evolved slowly into real conversations.