The Hungry Tide

by Amitav Ghosh

  “Yes, I do,” he said, flustered. “But going to Lusibari? It’s so far after all — from New Delhi it’ll take two days to get there. I mean, of course, I’d like to but —”

  “I’d be very grateful if you could, Kanai.”

  This was said in the quiet but firm tone of voice Nilima used when she was determined to get her way. Kanai knew now that she was in earnest and would not be put off easily. In their family, Nilima was legendary for her persistence — her doggedness and tenacity had built the Badabon Trust into what it was, an organization widely cited as a model for NGOs working in rural India.

  Kanai made one last attempt to give her the slip. “Couldn’t you just send this packet by post?”

  “I wouldn’t trust a thing like this to the post,” she said in a shocked voice. “Who knows what might happen to it?”

  “It’s just that this is a very busy time,” said Kanai. “I have so much to do.”

  “But Kanai,” she said, “with you it’s always a busy time.”

  “That’s true enough.” Kanai was the founder and chief executive of a small but thriving business. He ran an agency of translators and interpreters that specialized in serving the expatriate communities of New Delhi: foreign diplomats, aid workers, charitable organizations, multinationals and the like. Being the only such company in the city, its services were hugely in demand. This meant its employees were all overworked — none more so than Kanai himself.

  “So will you come, then?” she said. “Every year you say you’ll visit but you never come. And I’m not getting any younger.”

  He caught the pleading note in her voice and decided to check his impulse to fob her off. He had always been fond of Nilima and his affection had deepened after the death of his mother, whom she closely resembled, in appearance if not in temperament. His admiration for her was genuine too: in founding his own business he had gained a fresh appreciation of what it took to build and maintain an organization like hers — especially considering that, unlike his own agency, the Trust was not run for profit. He remembered from his first visit the dire poverty of the tide country, and he thought it both inexplicable and remarkable that she had chosen to dedicate her life to working for the betterment of the people who lived there. Not that her work had gone unrecognized — the year before, the president had actually decorated her with one of the nation’s highest honors. But still, it amazed him that someone from a background like hers had lasted in Lusibari as long as she had — he knew from his mother’s accounts that they belonged to a family that was notable for its attachment to creature comforts. And in Lusibari, as he knew from experience, there was little to be had by way of comforts and amenities.

  Kanai had always extolled Nilima to his friends as someone who had made great sacrifices in the public interest, as a figure who was a throwback to an earlier era when people of means and education were less narrow, less selfish than now. All this made it somehow impossible to turn down Nilima’s simple request.

  “If you want me to come,” he said reluctantly, “then there’s nothing more to it. I’ll try to come for maybe ten days. Do you want me to leave immediately?”

  “No, no,” Nilima said quickly. “You don’t have to come right away.”

  “That makes it a lot easier for me,” said Kanai, in relief. His stormy but absorbing involvement with the Odissi dancer was then still heading in an interesting direction. To interrupt the natural trajectory of that relationship would have been a considerable sacrifice and he was glad he was not going to be put to that test. “I’ll be there in a month or two. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve made the arrangements.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  And now there she was, Nilima, sitting on a bench in the shaded section of the platform, sipping tea while a couple of dozen people milled around her, some vying for attention and some being held at bay by her entourage. Kanai made his way quietly to the outer edge of the circle and stood listening. A few among the crowd were supplicants who wanted jobs and some were would-be politicians hoping to enlist her support. But for the most part the people there were just well-wishers who wanted nothing more than to look at Nilima and to be warmed by her gaze.

  At the age of seventy-six, Nilima Bose was almost circular in shape and her face had the dimpled roundness of a waxing moon. Her voice was soft and had the splintered quality of a note sounded on a length of cracked bamboo. She was small in height and her wispy hair, which she wore in a knot at the back of her head, was still more dark than gray. It was her practice to dress in saris woven and crafted in the workshops of the Badabon Trust, garments almost always of cotton with spidery borders executed in batik. It was in one such, a plain white widow’s sari, thinly bordered in black, that she had come to the station to receive Kanai.

  Nilima’s customary manner was one of abstracted indulgence. Yet when the occasion demanded she was also capable of commanding prompt and unquestioning obedience — few would willingly cross her, for it was well known that Mashima, like many another figure of maternal nurture, could be just as inventive in visiting retribution as she was in dispensing her benedictions. Now, on catching sight of Kanai, it took her no more than a snap of her fingers to silence the people around her. The crowd parted almost instantly to let Kanai through.

  “Kanai!” Nilima cried. “Where were you?” She ran a hand over his head as he bent down to touch her feet. “I was beginning to think you’d missed the train.”

  “I’m here now.” She looked much more frail than Kanai remembered, and he slipped an arm around her to help her to her feet. While members of her entourage took charge of his luggage, Kanai grasped her elbow and led her toward the station’s exit.

  “You shouldn’t have taken the trouble to come to the station,” said Kanai. “I could have found my way to Lusibari.” This was a polite lie for Kanai would have been at a loss to know how to proceed to Lusibari on his own. What was more, he would have been extremely annoyed if he had been left to fend for himself in Canning.

  But Nilima took his words at face value. “I wanted to come,” she said. “It’s nice to get away from Lusibari sometimes. But tell me, how was your ride on the train? I hope you weren’t bored.”

  “No,” said Kanai, “I wasn’t. Actually I met an interesting young woman. An American.”

  “Oh?” said Nilima. “What was she doing here?”

  “She’s doing research on dolphins and suchlike,” Kanai said. “I asked her to visit us in Lusibari.”

  “Good. I hope she comes.”

  “Yes,” said Kanai. “I hope so too.”

  Suddenly Nilima came to a halt and snatched at Kanai’s elbow. “I sent you some pages that Nirmal had written,” she said anxiously. “Did you get them?”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “In fact, I was reading them on the train. Were they from the packet he left for me?”

  “No, no,” said Nilima. “That was just something he wrote long ago. There was a time, you know, when he was so depressed I thought he needed something to keep him going. I asked him to write a little thing about the Sundarbans. I was hoping to be able to use it in one of our brochures, but it wasn’t really appropriate. Still, I thought it might interest you.”

  “O,” said Kanai. “I somehow assumed it was a part of whatever he’d left for me.”

  “No,” said Nilima. “I don’t know what’s in the packet: it’s sealed and I haven’t opened it. I know Nirmal wanted you to see it first. He told me that, just before his death.”

  Kanai frowned. “Weren’t you curious, though?”

  Nilima shook her head. “When you get to my age, Kanai,” she said, “you’ll see it’s not easy to deal with reminders of loved ones who’ve moved on and left you behind. That’s why I wanted you to come.”

  They stepped out of the station into a dusty street where paan shops and snack stands jostled for space with rows of tiny shops.

  “Kanai, I’m very glad you’re here at last,” said Nilima. “But there’s one thin
g I don’t understand.”

  “What?”

  “Why did you insist on coming through Canning? It would have been so much easier if you had come through Basonti. No one comes this way nowadays.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Because of the river,” she said. “It’s changed.”

  “How?”

  She glanced up at him. “Wait. You’ll see soon enough.”

  “ON THE BANKS of every great river you’ll find a monument to excess.”

  Kanai recalled the list of examples Nirmal had provided to prove this: the opera house of Manaus, the temple of Karnak, the ten thousand pagodas of Pagan. In the years since, he had visited many of those places, and it made him laugh to think his uncle had insisted that Canning too had a place on that list: “The mighty Matla’s monument is Port Canning.”

  The bazaars of Canning were much as he remembered, a jumble of narrow lanes, cramped shops and mildewed houses. There were a great many stalls selling patent medicines for neuralgia and dyspepsia — concoctions with names like Hajmozyne and Dardocytin. The only buildings of any note were the movie theaters; immense in their ungainly solidity, they sat upon the town like sandbags, as though to prevent it from being washed away.

  The bazaars ended in a causeway that led away from the town toward the Matla River. Although the causeway was a long one, it fell well short of the river: on reaching its end Kanai saw what Nilima had meant when she said the river had changed. He remembered the Matla as a vast waterway, one of the most formidable rivers he had ever seen. But it was low tide now and the river in the distance was no wider than a narrow ditch, flowing along the center of a halfmile-wide bed. The freshly laid silt that bordered the water glistened in the sun like dunes of melted chocolate. From time to time, bubbles of air rose from the depths and burst through to the top, leaving rings on the burnished surface. The sounds they made seemed almost to form articulate patterns, as if to suggest they were giving voice to the depths of the earth itself.

  “Look over there,” said Nilima, pointing downstream to a boat that had come sputtering along the remains of the river. Although the vessel could not have been more than thirty feet in length, it was carrying at least a hundred passengers: it was so heavily loaded that the water was within half a foot of its gunwales. It came to a halt and the crew proceeded to extrude a long gangplank that led directly into the mudbank.

  Kanai froze in disbelief. What would happen now? How would the boat’s passengers make their way across that vast expanse of billowing mud?

  On the boat, preparations for the crossing were already in train. The women had hitched up their saris and the men were rolling up their lungis and trousers. On stepping off the plank, there was a long, drawn-out moment when each passenger sank slowly into the mud, like a spoon disappearing into a bowl of very thick dal; only when they were in up to their hips did their descent end and their forward movement begin. With their legs hidden from sight, all that was visible of their struggles was the twisting of their upper bodies.

  Nilima frowned as she watched the men and women who were floundering through the mud. “Even to look at that hurts my knees,” she said. “I could do it once, but I can’t anymore — it’s too much for my legs. That’s the problem, you see: there isn’t as much water in the river nowadays and at low tide it gets very shallow. We brought the Trust’s launch to take you to Lusibari, but it’ll be at least two hours before it can make its way here to pick us up.” She directed an accusatory glance at Kanai. “It really would have been so much easier if you had come through Basonti.”

  “I didn’t know,” said Kanai ruefully. “I wish you’d told me. The only reason I wanted to come through Canning was that this was the route we took when you brought me to Lusibari in 1970.”

  As he looked around, taking in the sights, Kanai had a vivid recollection of Nirmal’s silhouette, outlined against the sky. Nirmal had put him in mind of a long-legged waterbird — maybe a heron or a stork. The impression was heightened by his clothes and umbrella: his loose white drapes had flapped in the wind like a mantle of feathers, while the shape of his chhata was not unlike that of a long, pointed bill.

  “I still remember him standing here while we were waiting for a boat.”

  “Nirmal?”

  “Yes. He was dressed in his usual white dhuti-panjabi and he had his umbrella in his hands.”

  Suddenly Nilima seized his elbow. “Stop, Kanai. Don’t talk about it. I can’t bear it.”

  Kanai cut himself short. “Is it still upsetting for you? After all these years?”

  Nilima shivered. “It’s just this place — this is where he was found, you know. Right here on the embankment in Canning. He only lived another couple of months after that. He must have been out in the rain, because he caught pneumonia.”

  “I didn’t know about that,” Kanai said. “What brought him to Canning?”

  “I still don’t know for sure,” Nilima said. “His behavior had become very erratic, as it tended to when he was under stress. He had retired as headmaster some months before and was never the same again. He would disappear without leaving any word. It was around the time of the Morichjhãpi incident, so I was beside myself with worry.”

  “Oh?” said Kanai. “What was that? I don’t recall it exactly.”

  “Some refugees had occupied one of the islands in the forest,” Nilima said. “There was a confrontation with the authorities that resulted in a lot of violence. The government wanted to force the refugees to return to their resettlement camp in central India. They were being put into trucks and buses and taken away. In the meanwhile the whole district was filled with rumors. I was terrified of what might happen to Nirmal if he was found wandering around on his own: for all I knew he’d just been forced onto a bus and sent off.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “That’s my suspicion,” said Nilima. “But someone must have recognized him and let him off somewhere. He managed to make his way back to Canning — and this was where he was found, right here on this embankment.”

  “Didn’t you ask him where he’d been?” Kanai said.

  “Of course I did, Kanai,” Nilima said. “But by that time he was incapable of answering rationally; it was impossible to get any sense out of him. His only moment of clarity after that was when he mentioned this packet of writings he’d left for you. At the time I thought his mind was wandering again, but it turns out it wasn’t.”

  Kanai put an arm around her shoulders. “It must have been very hard for you.”

  Nilima raised a hand to wipe her eyes. “I still remember coming here to get him,” she said. “He was standing here shouting, ‘The Matla will rise! The Matla will rise!’ His clothes were all soiled and there was mud on his face. I’ll never get that image out of my head.”

  A long-buried memory stirred in Kanai’s mind. “‘The Matla will rise.’ Is that what he was saying? He must have been thinking of that story he used to tell.”

  “What story?” Nilima said sharply.

  “Don’t you remember? About the viceroy who built this port, and Mr. Piddington, the man who invented the word ‘cyclone,’ and how he predicted that the Matla would rise to drown Canning?”

  “Stop!” Nilima clapped her hands over her ears. “Please don’t talk about it, Kanai. I can’t bear to remember all that. That’s why I wanted you to deal with this packet of his. I just don’t have the strength to revisit all of that.”

  “Of course,” said Kanai remorsefully. “I know it’s hard for you. I won’t mention it.”

  Then too, Kanai remembered, there had been a long wait on the embankment. Not because of the tides or the mud, but because of a simple lack of boats heading in the right direction. He had sat with Nilima in a tea stall while Nirmal was sent to stand atop the embankment to watch for boats.

  Nirmal, Kanai remembered, had not been very effective at keeping watch. On his most recent visit to a bookshop, in Calcutta, he had bought a copy of a Bangla translation of
Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies — the translator, Buddhadeva Basu, was a poet he had once known. All the while he was meant to be watching for a boat, Nirmal’s attention had kept returning to his recent acquisition. For fear of Nilima he hadn’t dared to open the book. Instead, he had held it aslant across his chest, and stolen glances whenever he could.

  Fortunately for them, they had not had to depend on Nirmal to find a boat. Someone had come to their rescue of his own accord. “Aré Mashima! You here?” Before they could look around, a young man had come running up the embankment to touch Nilima’s feet.

  “Is it Horen?” Nilima had said, squinting closely at his face. “Horen Naskor? Is it you?”

  “Yes, Mashima, it’s me.” He was squat of build and heavily muscled, his face broad and flat, with eyes permanently narrowed against the sun. He was dressed in a threadbare lungi and a mud-stained vest.

  “And what are you doing in Canning, Horen?” Nilima said.

  “Jongol korté geslam, I went to ‘do jungle’ yesterday, Mashima,” Horen replied, “and Bon Bibi granted me enough honey to fill two bottles. I came here to sell them.”

  At this point Kanai had whispered into Nilima’s ear, “Who is Bon Bibi?”

  “The goddess of the forest,” Nilima had whispered back. “In these parts, people believe she rules over all the animals of the jungle.”

  “O?” Kanai had been astonished to think that a grown-up, a big strong man at that, could entertain such an idea. He had been unable to suppress the snort of laughter that rose to his lips.

  “Kanai!” Nilima had been quick to scold. “Don’t act like you know everything. You’re not in Calcutta now.”

  Kanai’s laugh had caught Horen’s attention too, and he had stooped to bring their faces level. “And who is this, Mashima?”