by Neil Grant
‘I’ll get by.’
‘You must not go.’
‘Yes, I must, Raj. I’m not turning back now.’
Rudra gives Raj some money. ‘This is your pay for today – for accommodation and food and a little extra too. The next three days upfront.’
Raj looks at the money. ‘It is too much,’ he says, his voice thick with emotion.
‘Mum insisted.’
‘Oh, Mummy.’ Raj wipes at his eyes with his free hand.
Rudra smiles. He takes the backpack containing the tiger skull from Raj and, slipping Didima’s ashes in with it, he wades out to the boat.
‘You must not drown,’ calls Raj. ‘Or get eaten by a tiger. Mummy, she would not forgive me.’
Rudra clambers on board and settles himself. They pull away. Slowly Raj’s small figure becomes a twig in the mud – one arm raised, immobile. Then, he is obscured by a bend in the river. Rudra looks down at the skull nestled between his legs, at his grandmother’s ashes in their cheap plastic container. He feels an immense sense of the purpose of this journey – to set things right, to put everything back in its place. To remove a curse.
He looks over the boat. It’s not so bad. Strong enough, he reckons. And the fisherman, Malo, seems like he knows what he is doing.
A shape moves in the shade of the shelter. The shape gathers itself into the sunlight and Rudra sees that it is the girl from the river – the prawn seed collector. She is wearing lime-green shalwar pants, touched at the bottom by river mud, and a kameez shirt with cuffs of spidery silver brocade. There is a bright gold hoop in her nose. Rudra is struck dumb.
Malo speaks to the girl and she nods happily. ‘I am Gitanjali,’ she says to Rudra. ‘You can call me Gita if it is simpler for you.’
‘You speak English?’
‘You’re surprised that a lowly meendhara speaks anything but Bangla?’
‘I didn’t—’
‘Of course not.’ She smiles at him. ‘I am only having some fun with you. What is your name?’
‘Rudra.’
‘Rudra is a good name. Have you come to see the tigers?’
Rudra takes the container with Didima’s ashes from his bag. ‘I’m bringing my grandmother home.’ Before Gita can ask any questions about grandmother-in-a-box, he continues, ‘Are you coming with us?’
‘I’m here to help my father.’ She nods towards Malo. ‘It is just we two now since my mother died.’ Her shoulders rise to a shrug. ‘Would you like some cha?’
Malo’s gaze follows them into the shelter where Gita pumps a little kerosene stove, lights it and places an aluminium pot of water on to boil.
Rudra feels an awkward need to fill the silence. ‘So, you’re a prawn seed collector?’
‘And what of it?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with … Really. I didn’t mean … My father is a fisherman. I am too … sort of.’ The words come tumbling out, blanched of meaning.
‘Catching prawn seeds is not my life job,’ says Gita. ‘I’m just earning enough to get to college in Kolkata. Then I’ll wave this place goodbye.’
‘Will you come back?’
‘There is too much caste rubbish here. High caste, low caste. Marriage things. It is hard being at the bottom of the pile. Hard to be a woman or girl. All this up-and-down-island rubbish too. It will be good to leave.’
‘Do you like pulling the prawn nets?’
‘I do not like it and I do not hate it. It is good for money. Many, many woman do this job now. And it is making them stronger for the first time. Giving them some way with their life.’ She spills loose tea into the pot, stirs in milk and a good handful of sugar. ‘But I do not want to wade in the mud forever.’
‘Will you show me sometime?’
‘What?’
‘How to pull the nets?’
‘It is woman’s work. The village boys will laugh.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘Then I will show you, Rudra. You can be the first boy meendhara.’ The cha comes to a rolling boil and Gita stirs it before turning the stove off. She pours it into three little clay cups and hands one to Rudra. ‘My father needs cha; it is a strong thing wrestling the river.’
Gita leaves the shelter and hands Malo his cha. He nestles the oar between the crook of his arm and his shoulder, and drinks while occasionally pulling or pushing the oar to maintain his course. The ebb tide does most of the work for him, pushing them towards the sea. Soon they exit the main flow of the river and enter the channel that separates Gosaba and Bally Island.
‘Can you ask your father if I can steer?’ asks Rudra.
Malo reluctantly hands over the steering of his boat. Immediately, Rudra feels the power of the river in his muscles. He pumps the oar to increase their speed and bathing children sing out to him from along the shoreline. Sunlight snicks through the villages, combs the bunds and stands of mangroves.
When they clear the island, the river broadens and Malo takes over. There, finally, on the left bank is the wild Sundarbans he has read about – the Sajnekhali Wildlife Sanctuary – the dense forest where tigers hunt. Where honeymen and woodcutters and poachers risk their lives.
Malo points to a low branch where a shirt has been tied like a flag. ‘Bagh,’ he says – tiger.
Gita says, ‘The flags warn other forest workers of a tiger attack. Mostly it is these workers that get eaten. Sometimes when a tiger is most hungry, it will go to a village and steal a goat or sometimes a child. It is not often.’
Rudra scours the forest with his gaze, imagining yellow eyes with pupils black as night. Watching him. Blood curdled by salt water. Whisker twitch. Mosquito itch along the barred flanks.
The forest goes on forever. Soon it is on both sides, bending down to sip the water, roots plunged in. The tangled breadth of it makes Rudra gasp for air. An hour passes and then two – still the forest.
Then Malo calls out, ‘Baghchara!’ jerking the tiller and pivoting the boat into the current. Gita rushes to the bow and throws a gnarled rock tied to a jute rope into the water. The boat lurches backwards for a moment before the anchor takes. Then they are static, with the river pouring by them.
‘I don’t see anything,’ says Rudra. ‘Where is Baghchara?’
‘We must wait for the tide to drop,’ says Gita. ‘It is below.’
She cooks a pot of dhal, lacing it with small green chillies. They eat it with Bansari’s eggs and roti and wash it down with sweet cha. Malo rolls out a straw mat and is almost instantly asleep.
Rudra brings the skull from his bag and hands it to Gita. ‘This is the tiger my great-grandfather shot,’ he says.
She holds it reverentially in her hands, nose to nose with the beast. ‘This is a big tiger.’
‘It could be the biggest.’
‘Was it a long time since?’
‘A very long time ago. But I must bring it back.’ He takes the skull back. ‘This skull could belong to Dokkhin Rai.’
‘The god?’ Gita smirks.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘You sound like a villager. My father too believes such things. Dokkhin Rai, the tiger god, and Bonbibi the protector. But they are losing power here in the Sundarbans. Kali is the new goddess. She is giving power to the lowly people. The meendharas and the forest workers.’
‘You believe in Kali but not in Dokkhin Rai?’
‘Bonbibi and Dokkhin Rai is an old story. This is a new time for which we are needing new things. Even gods and goddesses must change.’
‘Maybe,’ says Rudra.
‘Your great-grandfather shot this tiger?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he took it from its place?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everything wants to go back to where it belongs.’
Rudra looks out across the water. ‘I have a friend back home,’ he says. ‘He works on my dad’s fishing boat. He told me about prawns and how they long for a place they have never seen – the river where their parents lived before
they spawned them out at sea. How they crawl and swim back when they are ready.’
‘What is this meaning of long?’ asks Gita. ‘Doesn’t this mean … ’ She stretches out her arms.
‘Longing is wishing for something,’ says Rudra. ‘It’s like a strong wish.’
‘Desire?’
‘Yes – desire. The prawns desire a home which they have never seen.’
‘Prawns are stupid,’ says Gita. ‘They have no beauty. They cannot speak or sing or paint a picture. They are food.’
‘Maybe,’ Rudra says. He is unable to say exactly what he means, spiralling into the idea like Cord’s boat tracking prawns. ‘My father told me about a bird called the muttonbird—’
‘This is a funny name,’ says Gita. ‘Mutton is goat, na? A bird that is also a goat.’
‘—how they travel from Australia to Russia and return. Every year, many die. In spring our beaches are thick with their bodies.’
‘They should just stay in Russia,’ says Gita. ‘Or not leave Australia. They are stupid too.’
‘There is something that drives them. Something that makes them leave and something that makes them come home. Like a boomerang, Gita. Do you know this thing?’
‘No.’
‘It is a curved flat stick. You throw it and it comes around in a big curve and lands back at your feet.’
‘That is also a stupid thing. Once a stick leaves it should stay left.’
Hours pass. The sun drops lower in the sky. Finally Malo wakes up, yawns and lights a beedi. He looks lazily across the river and then points to something in the middle distance. Rudra follows his finger to a spot on the water. Yes, he sees it, something black, breaking the surface.
In another fifteen minutes the tide goes slack. As if this is the signal he has been waiting for, Malo shouts to Gita to pull up the anchor. Then, taking the oar, he rows furiously for the black shape. As they approach, Rudra can see it is the top of a building.
‘Mandir,’ says Malo.
‘It is one temple,’ says Gita.
‘Is it Baghchara?’
Malo nods as he steers towards the mandir’s steeple. It is made of carved stone and the water bends slowly around it. On the far side Gita throw the anchor again. It snags on something, holding the boat fast.
‘There is a whole village below,’ says Gita and Rudra imagines the birthplace of his grandmother slowly giving itself to the river, grain by grain, and washing to the Bay of Bengal. He imagines the walls and the paths and the wells and temples, the shrines and the ghats – all dissolving as if in a dream.
Pulling the plastic tub from his bag, he removes its lid and looks at his didima’s ashes. So grey, some lumps that could be bone or teeth. A strangled sob escapes him. Gita comes to his side, her hand light on his elbow, guiding him to the boat’s gunnel.
There, facing the spire of the mandir, he raises the tub high. The birds on the riverbank fall silent. There is only the sound of the river straining against their hull. He tips the tub, setting the contents free.
At that moment an unfortunate breeze lifts from the riverbank and carries the ashes back across the boat. Without warning, Didima is in his eyes, in his hair, in the curved passages of his ears. She is spread over the rough deck planks.
He looks at Gita and she is fighting a smile. He knows it can’t be funny, that he should never laugh at these moments. He brushes Didima from his hair. Shakes her from his clothes. It is not funny. He concentrates on the dust that is Didima. Gita fetches a broom and sweeps most of Didima into a small pile. Together they carry her to the edge and give her finally to the river – the place of her birth.
The bubbles that could be laughter subside and the grey ash floats on the water. It swirls slowly around the mandir’s spire, then it becomes nothing. A great emptiness opens inside Rudra. Her ash now mixed with river clay and mandir stone and the great waters of huge rivers bleeding from the subcontinent. His grandmother, his didima.
Gone.
The birds begin first, nervously chattering into the silence. A monkey shrieks. The world continues.
‘I am sorry, but my father says we must turn for home on this tide,’ says Gita.
Rudra removes the photo from his book. He hands it to Gita. ‘The tiger skull has to go back to this place.’
She studies it. ‘This place is Netidhopani?’
‘It’s where the tiger was killed.’
‘There is no time. We left too late in the day.’
‘But I have to return the skull.’
‘It will be dark soon, Rudra,’ says Gita. ‘My father says when it’s dark, the Tiger God will come. For this he has not made puja. We must go home.’
‘What do you think?’
‘There are tigers in that forest. We cannot see them but they can see us. If we stay here at night on this open boat we will be in very much danger.’
‘We have to return the skull. I have come so far.’
‘Rudra, you must listen. My father knows this forest. This is not joking. Tomorrow we can go back here.’
‘That’ll be too late, Gita. Tell him we’ll pay double.’ Rudra pulls a pile of rupee notes from his pocket and shows it to Malo.
‘It is always about the money with you gora.’
‘I’m not a gora,’ says Rudra. ‘My mother is from here.’
‘Even so, you cannot just buy everything.’
‘I know that. But I have to return the skull.’
‘Tomorrow is safer.’
‘I need to get home, Gita. Back to Australia.’
‘So soon?’ asks Gita. Rudra can’t be sure if it is disappointment in her voice.
‘I just have to.’ Rudra cannot explain about Cord. About the water in his lungs and the dying light of the Solace fishing empire.
Rudra tries to hand the money to Malo but the man shakes his head, speaking to Gita in Bangla.
‘My father says it is not worth this money. That we might all die.’
Rudra knows it is wrong to put them all in danger like this, to go against Malo’s advice. But he must return the skull, then return himself. He could miss his flight if he wastes another day on the river. And what if Cord dies? What then? Nayna’s words echo inside Rudra: You’ll finish this thing? She is a force of nature, like the tide – strong and determined. And half of her is him.
He pulls more money from his backpack. ‘This is everything I’ve got on me.’
Malo takes the money from Rudra’s hand, muttering something to Gita.
‘He will do it,’ says Gita, turning her head away in disgust. ‘I hope there is the time before it goes dark.’
23
‘THIS IS THE PLACE OF THE SNAKE GODDESS – Manasa Devi,’ says Gita.
They are rounding the head of an island, slipping into a small, slow tributary of the Bidyadhari River. Malo pumps the oars and they wend their way up the narrow waterway.
Gita hugs her arms to her body. ‘It is not a good place.’ They break through clouds of black flies. Mangroves weep into the water. Tree roots stick up from the mud like rows of shark teeth. ‘Only tourists come here looking for tiger. There are too many.’
‘Tourists or tigers?’ Rudra asks.
‘It is not funny,’ says Gita. ‘Also, we cannot stop at this place – it is forbidden. My father’s boat could be taken.’
Rudra stays silent. He feels like a fool. A fool with money who has bought his way here against local advice. There are so many rules that he does not know; things he doesn’t understand.
You’ll finish this thing?
Before long they pull up at the jetty at Netidhopani. There is a heavy cyclone wire fence and a gate with a lock on it. Gita ties the boat and Rudra steps off.
‘This is a very bad idea.’ Gita steps onto the jetty behind him. ‘Stop walking away,’ she calls. ‘Why are you climbing? Do not climb the fence. Throw that skull from here. Inside are tigers. Tigers!’
Rudra moves down the path, past the watchtower where eager tourists search
for tigers, protected by officials with guns. It is approaching evening now and he knows it is a battle with the dying sun.
‘You will get us both killed.’
He turns to see Gita. She has climbed the fence and is walking the path towards him.
‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he says.
‘You are a stupid boy.’ Her words are like bee stings. ‘What do you know of this place? Do you think you can just walk here like you own it?’
‘I—’
‘Don’t,’ says Gita. ‘Let’s finish with this before the tigers wake from their afternoon sleep.’ She looks at the skull in his hands. ‘Where will you leave it?’
He doesn’t know. The dreams that came after they dredged the skull from the bay have eased. Some of them were so terrifying he was sure they emanated from this object. It’s just a skull. Those dreams seem eerily familiar now he is standing here, like this is the place that conjured it all. You little weirdo. This jungle path, the light. He knows what his mum would say. Rudra, you heard the stories. You saw the photo. Your mind did the rest. But those dreams were so real.
‘Rudra, we need to hurry,’ says Gita. ‘Where will you put the skull?’
‘The temple. It should go back to the temple. I saw it in a photo. Dokkhin Rai.’ He shakes his head. ‘The tiger.’ That’s better. ‘It was killed there.’
‘The temple is further up the path.’
‘How do you know?’
‘My family has lived here a long time. Before this jungle was turned back to the tigers. It’s this way.’
Rudra follows Gita further up the path. They take a fork and after a short while they arrive at a clearing. There are the ruins of the Netidhopani Temple – its bricks blood orange in the fleeing sun.
‘This is an old place,’ says Gita. ‘Four hundred years.’
Rudra approaches slowly, the skull warm in his hands. He crosses the hearth of the ancient temple, down a path worn smooth. And to the altar, nothing more than a pile of bricks made weary by the rain and wind. Onto this, Rudra lays the skull; he feels it leave his hands, his fingertips sticky. He turns and hears the day crack open. Where there were no clouds, suddenly they are crowding – pushing in from the wings of a great stage. Chunks of sky, now made furious, and rain dotting the backs of his hands, on his neck and ears.
