I read the ‘Hungry Tide’ – by Amitav Ghosh when I was 20. In the second year of my BA. I knew – one day, even as the book laid on my bookshelf gathering dust, that I would be returning to it. The moment came, almost 10 years later. Either Life has come in a full circle, or my ideas about life and my dreams have obstinately remained where they were.
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I am finding it immensely difficult to write something about the ‘Hungry Tide’ that would do justice to the story along with the socio-political and environmental issues that it raised; the terrain is wholly unfamiliar to me.
I mean this both geographically and metaphorically. I have never set foot in Kolkata, let alone the mangroves of Sundarban where the book is based. As I start thinking that I could have some insight into the issues of displacement and the man versus nature debate (and how the Narmada Bachao Andolan is fascinating), I have to remind myself that to have an informed opinion would entail immense research, but more importantly, lived experience. I am no expert to comment on the issue of climate change in the obscure scientific terms the academic papers are made of, though each passing day of terrible heat waves and unexpected rains tells me it is happening.
I have seen the Bengal Tiger only on the National Geographic channel. That even rivers breed dolphins was something that the book told me.
And yet. I decided to write this with a compulsion that I do not fully understand; some part of me wants to express and let out, which would perhaps help me to understand my own mind and why I return to some things again and again.
It begins with Kanai Dutt, Delhi based translator and businessman, returning to the tiny island of Lusibari, years after he was grounded as a child. Kanai represents the complexities of Delhi, vested in the interplay of traditional and emerging power dynamics, especially when it comes to its young men, and yet he remains not entirely unlovable.
He is called to Lusibari by his Aunt Nilima – to read a diary left by his Uncle Nirmal. Nirmal is a communist, who had died in the aftermath of a political uprising. Nilima, charmed and head over heels in the young days which knew no practical considerations of marrying an idealist, had picked up the mantle and developed the island.
Kanai meets Piyali – a marine researcher who has come all the way to track a rare river dolphin. He also meets Fokir, a fisherman who is helping Piyali track down the dolphins.
On Relationships –
Despite the vast, almost chasm of difference between Fokit and Piya, they are drawn to each other with a feeling which is quite undefined. Illiterate Fokir who has never stepped out of the territory of Lusibari finds a rare companionship with educated, widely traveled Piya. Beyond the class, beyond language, a passion about the work they do, their unrestrained spirit and their almost childlike refusal to reside in the practical world binds them together.
Kanai finds Fokir’s wife (Moyna) equally fascinating; the grit she shows in climbing up the social ladder not just appeals to him but rather validates his own choices.
Piya and Kanai also bond in the way two individuals from the same background like each other’s company in an easy way, finding common topics to discuss and stories to tell.
Their paths cross, merge and unmerge seamlessly – just like the backwaters of the Sundarbans.
Amitav Ghosh writes as “there are no borders here to divide the fresh water from salt, river from sea. The tides reach as far as 300 km inland and everyday thousands of acres of forests disappear underwater to remerge hours later.
Kanai resents Fokir for Piya’s affinity with him, almost subconsciously, as even feeling dislike for Fokir acknowledges him as an equal. Fokir is proud and disregards any condescension Kanai directs at him. Words are not spoken to address or even acknowledge these dynamics, yet they exist, like ripples on the surface.
Amitav Ghosh breaks many stereotypes in the way his characters behave. Moyna casts aside the notion of a simple, content villager with no aspirations and no desires. The vulnerability of Kanai and Piyali, urban and educated with a foothold in the real world, is laid bare. The disdain certain castes and classes in India have for those who they consider lower is exposed.
Yet, the Hungry Tide – where these characters walk, knows no boundaries, no hierarchies. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is right or wrong. The waves level everything.
On Revolutions –
Amitav Ghosh writes, “There is no prettiness here to invite the stranger in; yet to the world at large, this archipelago is known as the Sundarban, which means the beautiful forest.”
And in this beautiful forest – a revolution brews. Crushed, forgotten and yet alive in the pages of Nirmal’s diary which Kanai reads, is the uprising that the dispossessed people begin, to reclaim their land. Kusum, Fokir’s mother who died in the uprising, comes to life.
The diary is based on the real-life Morichjhanpi massacre of 1978-79, when the Left government of West Bengal forcibly evicted thousands of Bengali Dalit refugees from the island. These people, originally displaced by the Partition, were sent to the harsh, arid lands of Dandakaranya in Central India. When they returned to reclaim their ancestral land and livelihood, now declared a “forest reserve,” they faced brutal resistance from the government.
There is something romantic about revolutions – but on paper. In real life, the enormity of the struggle to turn the tide against powerful adversaries can consume your life. In real life, revolutions are often violent and ugly and yield little beyond the innate satisfaction of not submitting. To truly be a part of it, mere sympathy to the cause is insufficient, either it should be a matter of survival or your dedication should be such that it belies the fear of death itself.
For Nirmal – it is Kusum who embodies this revolution. She is the jhor – the storm – as her daughter in law Moyna points out. She is the spirit which dares to defy fate ordained for people like her, she is the ecstatic tides of Sundarban; her feet are rooted in the ground that nourishes her strength, her eyes are looking beyond the horizon. She is all of this – and yet on the official government papers – if the deaths of the massacre was even recorded, she is but one ordinary refugee who occupied the land, one who was part of the uprising that was justly crushed.
In the eyes of Nirmal – Nilima, with the world she built for the people of Lusibari, could never compete with the fierceness of Kusum. For him, she is the ‘bourgeoisie social worker’, an enabler rather than an activist, who choses to negotiate rather than confront those in power. And yet the work that she did broke the ground for the people in Lusibari.
While her husband saw the revolution as the realization of his long-held dream, Nilima chose to distance herself from it, even after Kusum’s direct appeal. Her beliefs are indestructible, too.
She tells Kanai –
“Kanai, the dreamers have everyone to speak for them. But those who are patient, those who try to be strong, who try to build things – no one ever sees poetry in them, do they?”
On Man versus Animals
The people of the Sundarbans believe in the legends of Bon Bibi, the Forest Goddess, and the defeat of the demon Dokhin Rai. Dokhin Rai is our beloved Bengal tiger – designated and honored and endorsed in ‘Save Tigers’ for the rest of India. So when a tiger – the spirit of Dokhin Rai – gets unwittingly trapped in a warehouse – the villagers, even Fokir kill it with a savage ferocity. It stuns Piyali. For her – he is the majestic creature who hunts only for food. For her, the act is irrational, even crude.
But for the locals, with their constant survival by and against nature, hunting or getting hunted is the way of life. For them, ‘being one with nature’ is not going away on a vacation and meditating in the serenity of your second home, but navigating the unpredictable, the unseen forces of creation, shedding the human arrogance and submitting to it, and at the same time, fighting against it and giving back in equal measure.
When the police were cracking down on Morichjhanpi, surrounding the village and ordering the people to vacate the forest land reserved for animals, Kusum turns to Nirmal and says, –
“The worst part was not hunger or thirst. It was to sit here, helpless, and hear the police say that our lives, our existence, was worth less than dirt. This island has to be saved for trees, it has to be saved for animals, it is a part of a reserve forest, it belongs to a project to save tigers, which is paid for by the people all over the world. Everyday , sitting here, with hunger gnawing at our bellies, we would listen to these words over and over again. Who are these people, I wondered, who love animals so much that they are willing to kill us for them? Do they know what is being done in their names?”
The ‘Hungry Tide’ opens your mind to so many things. To wonder, actually. You marvel at the complications of human nature and relationships, at the forces of nature and the force of human spirit and of how love can be found in the most unexpected of places. Just as you wonder how the rainbow made by the moon will look – a spectacle only seen in the Sundarbans. Or can chanting Bonbibi’s name will make the Tiger go away. Or, as the locals firmly believe, are you really pure of heart that you can escape the watery labyrinth?