by Amitav Ghosh
“Is it a — ?” Kanai began, and then, seeing her flinch, cut himself short. “I shouldn’t say the word, should I?”
“No,” she said. “It’s not to be spoken aloud.”
“Where do you think it’s coming from?”
“It could be from anywhere,” she said. “I was just sitting in my room waiting, but then I heard it and I couldn’t sit still anymore.”
“So Fokir isn’t back yet?”
“No.”
Kanai understood now that the animal’s roar had a direct connection with her anxiety. “You shouldn’t worry,” he said, trying to reassure her. “I’m sure Fokir will take all the right precautions. He knows what to do.”
“Him?” Anger seethed in her voice as she said this. “If you knew him you wouldn’t say that. Whatever other people do, he does just the opposite. The other fishermen — my father, my brothers, everyone — when they’re out there at night, they tie their boats together in midstream so they won’t be defenseless if they’re attacked. But Fokir won’t do that; he’ll be off on his own somewhere without another human being in sight.”
“Why?”
“That’s just how he is, Kanai-babu,” she said. “He can’t help himself. He’s like a child.”
The moonlight caught the three points of gold on her face, and once again Kanai was reminded of stars lined up in a constellation. Even though her ãchol was drawn carefully over her head, there was a restlessness in the tilt of her face that was at odds with the demure draping of her sari.
“Moyna, tell me,” said Kanai in a half-jocular, teasing tone, “was Fokir a stranger to you before you married him? Didn’t you know what he was like?”
“Yes,” said Moyna, “I did know him, Kanai-babu. After his mother died, he was brought up by Horen Naskor. Our village was not far from theirs.”
“You’re a bright girl, Moyna,” Kanai said. “If you knew what he was like, why did you marry him?”
She smiled, as if to herself. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.
He was nettled by the certainty in her voice. “I wouldn’t understand?” he said sharply. “I know five languages. I’ve traveled all over the world. Why wouldn’t I understand?”
She let her ãchol drop from her head and gave him a sweet smile. “It doesn’t matter how many languages you know,” she said. “You’re not a woman and you don’t know him. You won’t understand.”
Leaving him standing, she whirled around and left.
LISTENING
THE DOLPHINS’ QUIET, regular breathing had lulled Piya into a doze from which she was woken by a sound that seemed to come booming out of a dream. By the time she opened her eyes and sat up, the forest was quiet again and the echoes had already faded. The river was lapping gently at the boat’s hull and the stars above had become faint pinpricks of light, their glow dimmed by the brightness of the moon.
Then the boat began to rock and she knew that Fokir was awake too. Raising her head, she saw that he had seated himself in the center of the boat with his blanket draped shawl-like around his shoulders. Now she roused herself and made her way like a crab along the boat, seating herself beside him. “What was it?” She mimed the question with raised eyebrows and a turn of her hand. He gave her a smile but made no direct answer, only pointing vaguely across the water. Then, resting his chin on his knees, he fixed his eyes on the island they had visited earlier, visible now as a faint silver filigree across the water.
For a while they sat listening companionably to the Orcaella as they circled around the boat. Then she heard him humming a tune, deep in his throat, so she laughed and said, “Sing. Louder. Sing.” She had to exhort him a few more times and then he did sing out loud, but keeping his voice low. The melody was very different from that of the day before, alternately lively and pensive, but it mirrored her mood and she felt a sense of perfect contentment as she sat there listening to his voice against the percussive counterpoint of the dolphins’ breathing. What greater happiness could there be than this: to be on the water with someone you trusted at this magical hour, listening to the serene sound of these animals?
They sat a while in silence and presently she sensed that despite the direction of his gaze, he was not really watching the far shore. Was he perhaps half asleep, she wondered, as people sometimes are even when they seem to be awake? Or was he just lost in thought, with his mind racing to retrieve some almost forgotten shard of recollection from his past?
What did he see when he looked back? She pictured a hut like those she had seen on the fringes of Canning, with mud walls and straw thatch and shutters of plaited bamboo. His father was a fisherman like him, with long stringy limbs and a face imprinted by the sun and wind, and his mother was a sturdy but tired woman, worn to the bone by the daily labor of carrying baskets full of fish and crabs to the market. There were many children, many playmates for little Fokir, and although they were poor their lives did not lack for warmth or companionship: it was a family like those she had heard her father talk about, in which want and deprivation made people pull together all the more tightly.
Had he seen his wife’s face before the wedding? Her own parents, she remembered, had actually been allowed to meet and talk to each other, although there had been many relatives present — but of course they were city people, middle class and educated. A meeting between the unwed would surely not be allowed in the village Fokir lived in. The couple would have first set eyes on each other when they were seated at the sacred fire and even then the girl would not have looked up: she would have kept her eyes downcast until it was night and they were lying beside each other in the mud-walled room of their hut. Only then would she allow herself to look at this boy who was her man and thank her fate for giving her a husband who was young, with fine, clean limbs and wide, deep eyes, someone who could almost have been the dark god of her prayers and dreams.
She decided to get up and go back to the bed she had made for herself in the bow of the boat. She flipped over and lay on her stomach, turning her attention back to the dolphins. They were still in the pool, even though the tide was now in full flood: evidently this meant they preferred not to hunt by night. It remained to be seen whether they would leave the pool when the tide rose again the next day.
She imagined the animals circling drowsily, listening to echoes pinging through the water, painting pictures in three dimensions — images that only they could decode. The thought of experiencing your surroundings in that way never failed to fascinate her: the idea that to “see” was also to “speak” to others of your kind, where simply to exist was to communicate.
In contrast, there was the immeasurable distance that separated her from Fokir. What was he thinking about as he stared at the moonlit river? The forest, the crabs? Whatever it was, she would never know: not just because they had no language in common but because that was how it was with human beings, who came equipped, as a species, with the means of shutting each other out. The two of them, Fokir and she, could have been boulders or trees for all they knew of each other, and wasn’t it better in a way, more honest, that they could not speak? For if you compared it to the ways in which dolphins’ echoes mirrored the world, speech was only a bag of tricks that fooled you into believing that you could see through the eyes of another being.
BLOWN ASHORE
And so to Kumirmari. That day, I heard for the first time of the events unfolding at Morichjhãpi. The islands were close by, and in the school I was visiting there were many teachers who had witnessed the progress of the exodus: they had seen tens of thousands of settlers making their way to the island in boats, dinghies and bhotbhotis. Many of their own people had gone off to join the movement, drawn by the prospect of free land. But even as they marveled at the refugees’ boldness, there were those who predicted trouble: the island belonged to the Forest Department and the government would not allow the squatters to remain.
I thought no more of it; it was no business of mine.
At midday there was a mea
l and shortly afterward Horen and I set off to return to Lusibari. We were on the river, heading home, when the wind suddenly started up. Within moments it was on us — it attacked with that peculiar, willful malevolence that causes people to think of these storms as something other than wholly natural. The river had been calm minutes before, but now we found ourselves picked up and shaken by huge waves. Before, Horen had been sweating to make the boat move — now we were being swept along against our will.
“Are we going to be finished off this time?” I said.
“No, Saar,” he said. “I’ve lived through much worse than this.”
“When?”
“In 1970, Saar, during the Agunmukha cyclone. If you had seen that, this would not seem like a storm at all. But that’s too long a story to tell to you now. What’s important for us at this minute is to go ashore.” He pointed to his right.
“Morichjhãpi, Saar. We can take shelter there until the storm subsides.”
There was nothing more to be said. With the wind behind us we were driven quickly to the shore. I helped Horen push his boat up the bank, and after he had secured it, he said, “Saar, we have to take shelter under a roof.”
“But where can we go, Horen?”
“Over there, Saar. I see a dwelling.”
Without another question I set off after him, running through the pounding rain. With water streaming down my glasses, it was all I could do to keep my eyes on Horen’s back.
Soon we were at the door of a small shack — of the usual kind, made with bamboo and palm-leaf thatch. At the door, Horen shouted, “Eijé — ké achhish? Anybody home?”
The door sprang open and I stepped in. I was standing there blinking, wiping the rain from my glasses, when I heard someone say, “Saar? Is that you?”
I looked down and saw a young woman kneeling in front of me, touching my feet. That I could not identify her was no more a surprise than that she should know me: if you have been in one place long enough as a schoolteacher, then this happens with almost everyone you meet. Your pupils grow up and your memory fails to grow with them. Their new faces do not match the old.
“Saar,” she said, “it’s Kusum.”
Of all the people I might have expected to meet in that place, she was surely the last. “Impossible.”
Now that my glasses were dry I noticed there was a small child hiding behind her. “And who is that?” I said.
“That’s my son, Fokir.”
I reached out to pat his head but he darted away.
“He’s very shy,” said Kusum with a laugh.
I noticed now that Horen had not entered the dwelling and I realized that this was probably as a show of respect to me. I was both pleased and annoyed. Who, after all, is so egalitarian as not to value the respect of another human being? Yet it seemed strange that he did not know of my aversion to servility.
I put my head around the door and saw him outside, waiting patiently in the pouring rain. “What’s the matter with you, Horen?” I said. “Come inside. This is no time to be standing on ceremony.”
So Horen came in and there ensued a silence of the kind that often descends when people meet after a long time. “You?” said Kusum at last, and Horen answered with one of his customary mumbles. Then she pushed the boy forward and said, “Here is Fokir, my son.” Horen ran his hand through the boy’s hair and said, “Besh! Good.”
“And what about your family?” she said. “Your children must be quite grown now.”
“My youngest is five,” said Horen, “and the oldest is fourteen.”
She smiled, as if to tease him: “Almost of an age to be married, then?”
“No,” said Horen with sudden vehemence. “I would not do to him what was done to me.”
I recount this only as an example of the way in which, even in extraordinary circumstances, people will often speak of the most inconsequential things.
“Look at you,” I said. “It’s Kusum who’s been away for all these years — and here we are talking about Horen and his children.”
There was a mat on the floor and I sat down. I asked where she had been and how she had ended up in Morichjhãpi.
“What can I tell you, Saar?” she said. “It would take too long to tell.”
The wind was howling outside and the rain was still pouring down. “There’s nothing else to do now anyway,” I said. “So I’m ready to hear whatever you have to say.”
She laughed. “All right, Saar. How can I say no to you? I’ll tell you how it happened.”
I remember that her voice changed as she was recounting her story; it assumed new rhythms and distinctive cadences. Is it merely a trick of memory? It doesn’t matter: her words have come flooding back to me in a torrent. My pen will have to race to keep up: she is the muse and I am just a scribe.
“Where was my mother? I only knew what I’d heard — from Lusibari I went as if to the dark: she had been taken, they said, to a town called Dhanbad. I asked a few questions and found out where to go; switching from this train to that, I made my way there.
“At the station it struck me: what would I do now? It was a mining town, the air was filled with smoke; the people were strangers, I’d never known their like; their words were like iron, they rang when they spoke; when their gaze turned on you, their eyes smoldered like coal. I was on my own, a girl dressed in a torn frock; I’d had no fear till then — now my courage ran dry.
“But I was fortunate, although I didn’t know, a blessed power was watching: she showed me where to go. There was a man at the station selling ghugni. I spoke to him and found he was from the tide country! His house was in Basonti, his name was Rajen; his people were poor and he had left home as a boy. He had been lamed in Calcutta by a speeding bus; he’d started selling food in stations and on trains. Chance had brought him to Dhanbad, where he’d found a shack; it was in a bosti right beside the rail track. When he heard why I was there, he said he would help, but in the meanwhile what would I do with myself? ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘You will be fine in my shack. Like you, I’m on my own. There’ll be room for us both.’ I followed him there, along the graveled rail track. I was fearful when I entered: would I be safe? All night I lay awake and listened to the trains.
“Many days passed and he gave me no cause for shame; he was a good, kind man: how many such are there? It’s true that some said, ‘Look who’s with Rajen the lame’ — I let them say what they wanted. What did I care?
“It was Rajen who brought me word of my mother; she was working in a place where truck drivers came, to sleep on charpais and buy women for the night. I went there with Rajen and in secret we met: I fell upon Ma, but couldn’t bring myself to speak. For so long I’d been waiting, but now my heart broke: her body was wasted, her face thin and drawn. ‘Don’t look, Kusum,’ she said. ‘Don’t touch me with your eyes; think of me as I was before your father died. I blame that Dilip; he’s more demon than man. He said he’d find me work, and look where he brought me: to eat leaves at home would have been a better fate. He sold me, that danob, to others of his kind. This is no place for you, Kusum. You must go back. But stay a few days; come and see me once more.’
“We went home that night and came back a week later. Then Rajen said something that stopped our very breath: ‘Let Kusum marry me; let her be my wife. She’ll be with me forever; I’ll give her my life.’ At last I saw Ma smile: what better news could there be? ‘Fortunate Kusum, you’ve been blessed by Bon Bibi.’ ‘You’ll come too,’ said Rajen. ‘Ma, we’ll steal you away. This is no place for you; you’ll die if you stay.’ We went back together to Rajen’s little shack; in Ma’s presence we were married, Rajen and I. Who could have known then that this would be Ma’s bidai? To see me was her release; three months later she died. That was her fate — nothing could be done; if she had lived but two years, she would have seen Fokir, our son.
“Many months passed and we spoke of coming back here: that place was not home; there was nothing for us there. Walking on iron, we l
onged for the touch of mud; encircled by rails, we dreamed of the Raimangal in flood. We dreamed of storm-tossed islands, straining at their anchors, and of the rivers that bound them in golden fetters. We thought of high tide and the mohonas mounting, of islands submerged like underwater clouds. By night we remembered, we talked and we dreamed — by day coal and metal were the stuff of our lives.
“Four years went by and then that life came to an end: a train began to move, with Rajen still unpaid. As the engine picked up speed he ran to keep up, then his bad leg crumpled and he made a misstep: he was pulled from the platform, thrown before the wheels. What can I say? He was taken before his time. He kept his word to me: he gave me his whole life. Never had I thought he would leave me like that, but at least I had Fokir, my son was his gift. Once again I thought of making my way back home; but now, with a child, I hadn’t the courage on my own. Whom would I go to there? Whom would I ask for help? What if I couldn’t make do and it came to the worst? What if I had to fall begging at Dilip’s feet?
“Maybe Bon Bibi was keeping watch over me, for one night I heard tell of a great march to the east. They passed us next day — like ghosts, covered in dust, strung out in a line, shuffling beside the rail tracks. They had children on their shoulders, bundles on their backs. Where were they heading? From what city had they come? They were not from those parts; they were strangers to us. I saw someone stumble, a woman as old as Ma. I took her back home with the help of some others. I gave them food and water; I saw they needed rest. ‘Stay, sit, raho behtho,’ I said. ‘Get back your strength.’ Did you notice the words? See: I’d spoken in Hindi, but it was in Bangla they spoke back to me. I was amazed: the very same words, the same tongue! ‘Who are you?’ I said. ‘Tell me, where are you headed?’ ‘Listen, sister, we’ll tell you. This is the story.
“‘Once we lived in Bangladesh, in Khulna jila: we’re tide country people, from the Sundarbans’ edge. When the war broke out, our village was burned to ash; we crossed the border, there was nowhere else to go. We were met by the police and taken away; in buses they drove us to a settlement camp. We’d never seen such a place, such a dry emptiness; the earth was so red it seemed to be stained with blood. For those who lived there, that dust was as good as gold; they loved it just as we love our tide country mud. But no matter how we tried, we couldn’t settle there: rivers ran in our heads, the tides were in our blood. Our fathers had once answered Hamilton’s call: they had wrested the estate from the sway of the tides. What they’d done for another, couldn’t we do for ourselves? There are many such islands in the bhatir desh. We sent some people ahead, and they found the right place; it’s a large empty island called Morichjhãpi. For months we prepared, we sold everything we owned. But the police fell on us the moment we moved. They swarmed on the trains, they put blocks on the road — but we still would not go back; we began to walk.’
