Brian on the Brahmaputra

by David Fletcher

  Brian reacted to all these approaches with politeness. One could not do otherwise; they were all such exercises in politeness themselves. And Brian even had the impression that all his suitors knew their task was futile in the first place and that they were merely going through the motions of a “retail enticement” for form’s sake. It was all a charade – but a civilised charade. And that’s how Brian would conduct proceedings himself – with a smile and a polite and almost apologetic rejection of their kind supplications. This always worked. But, of course, it then left the ground free for the next entreaty and the next rejection, and so on and so on. Which is why Brian cut short his promenade and simply made a circuit of the hotel. This made a city-block all on its own, and it was quite enough in the heat and noise of this Indian ant-hill to satisfy Brian’s need for “fresh air” – in the metaphorical sense of the term – and he was soon back inside the real fresh air of the hotel. His head was still not very good.

  It was just as well that he and Sandra had notified Sujan the previous day that they would not be participating in the very last excursion of the holiday. This was a visit to a flower market, to another temple and to the famous Victoria Memorial. There was no way that either of them had wished to expose themselves to the delights of a flower market or another temple, although they had wavered a little on the Victoria Memorial option. It was, after all, the most obvious and most popular tourist attraction in the city. But they hadn’t wavered long. It was soon decided that the Victoria Memorial would have to join that long list of other famous must-sees around the world which they’d been very close to but for which they’d had too little interest to visit. It would join such eminently un-missable attractions as St George’s Cathedral in Georgetown, the world’s tallest wooden building, a Maori cultural evening in Rotarua, Victoria Falls, the Eiffel Tower and Raffles, all wonderful things to see, Brian was sure, but just not quite worth the effort. Especially if one had a headache.

  So when the Nature-seekers went off for one last time, Brian and Sandra were able to remain in the hotel, and Brian was able to cosset his head by laying it on one of those beautifully soft towels on one of those beautifully comfortable loungers by the pool. This helped his head a little. But in the end it demanded an early siesta back in a real bed, and ultimately it began to behave itself only just in time for their departure from the Oberoi and the start of their journey home.

  This cheered Brian up immensely. He had no appetite for travelling whilst in pain, and especially when the travelling kicked off in the middle of Kolkata. For then it meant one last engagement with the traffic of Kolkata – which was quite enough pain on its own.

  For some unknown reason, the trip to the airport was to be made, not in a coach, but in two cars and a small minibus. Brian and Sandra shared one of the cars with Lynn and Alan. The other six Nature-seekers were stowed into the minibus. And the second car was packed with Sujan and all the luggage. When everybody and everything was in, the little convoy then set off, with Sujan’s vehicle in the rear to ensure that nobody got lost. Unfortunately this arrangement didn’t ensure that Sujan didn’t get lost…

  It had started out as just the normal gamble played out on the edge of eternity, where one’s life might easily slip into the void of non-existence by the arrival of some sudden unforeseen event. Not, of course, an event such as a careless turn of a lorry’s steering wheel or a failure on the part of your driver to see an oncoming bus – but by a special event. By nothing less than a lapse in that Indian magic. By a hole in that unique Indian dimension that allows two or more vehicles to occupy the very same space at the very same time and thereby keep their occupants unharmed. It was possible. Brian knew it. He had seen the evidence of collisions everywhere. And this had to mean that sometimes the magic failed. So it was a gamble, and on this last trip out of Kolkata it felt more like a gamble than ever. After all, it was the very last throw of the dice. But when the journey was approaching its conclusion and they were virtually in sight of the airport, the nature of the gamble changed. Because Brian and his companions were now not in the middle of a tangle of threatening traffic but on a virtually clear dual carriageway on the outskirts of Kolkata, where a respectable speed was achievable – and was being achieved by the drivers of other vehicles – whilst the driver of their own vehicle was managing just two miles per hour.

  This chap didn’t speak English. It was therefore very difficult for a quartet of non-Bengali-speaking Britons to communicate with him and to establish what he was up to and whether he appreciated the dangers of being at a virtual standstill on a road that was carrying fast-moving traffic. Ultimately, however, an explanation was forthcoming. Thanks to the invention of the mobile phone and Alan’s use of the driver’s to talk to Sujan, it was discovered that this driver and the driver of the minibus had adopted their extreme-crawl practice to allow Sujan’s car to catch up. It had been delayed. When it did catch up it was then discovered why it had been delayed. It appeared that a policeman had stopped Sujan’s car because he thought he wasn’t wearing his seat-belt! In fact he was, but Sujan’s offended and possibly abrasive reaction had caused the policeman to introduce some of his colleagues into the proceedings and then to demand all sorts of “papers”. There was then the prospect of the Nature-seekers’ luggage making it to the airport at about the same time that its owners were landing at another airport somewhere near the M4. So Sujan offered to pay a “fine” (of one hundred rupees) and the policemen’s interest in his papers evaporated as suddenly as it had crystallised. Almost sublimely, one might say – if one remembered one’s O-level chemistry. Anyway, this chemistry had worked: add ten grams of paper currency to a heated gathering of insistent constabulary, and one gets an instant reaction and then the required ideal solution – in this case the ability to reunite some luggage with its owners before they leave the country.

  So Brian had survived his last road excursion in India; he had made it to the airport – with his wife and his luggage in tow. And now all that remained was to bid a fond farewell to Sujan and to say his goodbyes to his Nature-seeker companions. They were all taking various routes back to England and this would probably be the last time they’d all be together. So there were lots of hugs and handshakes, lots of thanks and best wishes, and after that there were two long flights back to Britain. They were, of course, nothing to do with the Brahmaputra or the Sundarbans and will not be reported on here – other than in terms of what they allowed Brian to think about his holiday. What he would take home with him as his principal thoughts and conclusions about what he’d seen in Assam and in the Sundarbans delta, and what these same thoughts and conclusions might say to him about India.

  Number one in his list of impressions about the place had to be its wildlife. He had been fortunate enough to see many birds and many animals in many parts of the world, and what he had seen in the two areas of India he had visited was up there with the best. There had been dozens of new birds. He hadn’t put together a count yet; that would be Sandra’s job. But between them they had seen far more new species than they’d dared to hope for – many of them thanks to Tika and Sujan. And amongst this bird haul had been some really fabulous ones; the Bengal florican, the pied harrier and the wryneck being the most fabulous of them all. Then there were the animals: the one-horned rhinos, scores of them, the Indian elephants, the spotted deer, the salt water crocodiles and the water monitors. Then there’d been the Gangetic dolphins and the Irrawaddy dolphins, and some of those smaller critters, the pygmy hogs, the langurs and the gibbons. It had been an outstanding wildlife expedition, and one experienced in astonishing landscapes: first that of the mighty Brahmaputra and its surrounding lands and then that of the stunning and unique islands of the Sundarbans. Both settings had been amazing in their own way – and frightening. Both were jaw-droppingly beautiful but both were also stomach-churningly fragile, places where all life was constantly on the edge.

  Then number two: the Nature-seekers’ temporary homes: the Sukapha, the Obero
i and the camp in the Sundarbans. The boat had been a delight; clean, comfortable, well-organised and staffed with some of the most agreeable and most efficient people Brian had ever met. It had been a joy. As had the Oberoi Grand, albeit in a different way; wonderful surroundings, wonderful people and a wonderful insulation from the reality outside. The camp in the Sundarbans had clearly not been in the same league, but like its floating and city-centre counterparts, it had provided the Nature-seekers with a memorable stay, not least through its excellent (and supplemented) food, its fantastic entertainment and the friendliness of its people.

  And it was the people of India whose turn it was to have a place on his list in their own right. For all those he’d met and with whom he’d had any sort of relationship, whether it was an extended one as with Sujan, or a transient one as with the guy at the Oberoi who had enlightened him on the intricacies of its dress code, they were all charming and genuinely amicable. Even those professional accosters in the streets outside the Oberoi had been sociable and civil – and entirely unthreatening. Nowhere had he ever felt in the slightest way intimidated or even resented. And for a white ex-colonial in a now liberated non-white nation, that was more than remarkable and something that all Indians should take pride in – even if it had never occurred to them to do so. Whatever faults might be laid at their door, the bearing of grudges, or at least the open manifestation of grudges through hostility or even a coolness of manner, did not rank amongst them.

  Brian had also been impressed by the friendliness of his fellow Nature-seekers and the kindness and professionalism shown by Tika from Nepal. Maybe everybody on the expedition had been infected not only with gippy tummies and a (still lingering) chronic cough, but also with the goodwill of their Indian hosts, and this had persuaded them to show their better side themselves. Or maybe it was in part their reaction to some other aspects of India, aspects of the country that forced them to seek solace in the company of fellow foreigners and to ensure they maintained this company. These aspects of India could not be ignored and now had to feature on the second part of Brian’s list.

  Prominent amongst them was the flip side of that first entry concerning the richness of India’s wildlife and the beauty of its wild areas. It was the fact that these wild areas are few in number, tiny in size, that they are being eroded all the time and that there is every likelihood that eventually they will be extinguished completely. And even if they are able to hang on at all, the wildlife within them might still wither, such are the pressures of poaching, illegal grazing, illegal clearance, pollution – and the scourge of corruption. All that stands in the way of all these threats is an under-resourced and de-motivated band of forest guards and a handful of people like Sujan.

  This won’t be enough. The vast majority of Indians, and indeed all those people who inhabit the subcontinent, still regard land as a utility, something that must always be used for farming or grazing or building, and something that should never be left idle and abandoned for just the benefit of animals and birds. Brian knew that this attitude to land-use and its associated indifference to wildlife extended to the wellbeing of even that most iconic of India’s animals, the failed-to-be-seen on this trip and much endangered tiger. Many of this magical animal’s so-called reserves are now no more than denuded landscapes, over-grazed grasslands, chopped-down, burnt-out woodlands, and teak-tree plantations. And the tigers themselves are on the way out. There are probably less than a thousand of them in the whole country. Soon there will be none.

  Of course, Brian knew that no matter how indifferent a country’s population might be to its wildlife and how careless it might be with its land use, this in itself was not the major problem. If India had a population of just one million, then that population could be as irresponsible and short-sighted as it liked and the wild parts of India and their wild inhabitants would cope very well. But India hadn’t got just one million people. It had one thousand, two hundred million people, three times as many souls as it had at independence in 1947. And this was where the problem really lay. India – and Bangladesh and Pakistan – were all simply bursting with people. The cities were jammed with them, the countryside was overflowing with them – and the very last remnants of wilderness would soon be overtaken by them.

  This mass of humanity, everywhere, would probably be one of the two major enduring impressions that Brian took home with him. Quite simply, there were far too many people. It was a population out of control. It might be quite disconcerting occasionally to be presented with statistics of population growth and to consider their consequences, but to see it for real, and to start to appreciate, first hand, what a burgeoning mass of humanity means in terms of degradation and suffering and squalor… Well, that was really frightening – and really demoralising. Because India was a window into the future. Look at the subcontinent and you could see what the whole world will look like later this century. How things will be when South and Central America, Africa, the Middle East, most other parts of Asia and indeed everywhere where fertility rates are now off the scale, follow India’s lead. It will look wrecked, impoverished, exhausted and ugly. It will also be devoid of most of its wildlife.

  The other enduring impression was the general Indian attitude to the state they were already in. They seemed blind to it. Other than those really poor people whom Brian had seen in the remoter parts of both Assam and West Bengal, they appeared not only to have lost their sense of aesthetics but also any sense of pride in their surroundings and a desire to care for their environment. Brian had seen many other “disadvantaged” people around the world, but never had he seen them living in such hideous and neglected conditions. It had been truly appalling, and no more so than in Kolkata, where there was simply no relief from the decrepit, the dirty and the disgusting. What would it take to wake them up to their situation? And what would it take to wake them up to their need to have fewer children?

  It was all very depressing, not least because Brian knew that there was nothing to wake them up. Their government wouldn’t do it and neither would their religions. Indeed both their temporal and their spiritual institutions were in many ways the cause of their problems. When it came to reforming their culture to give it any chance of surviving into the future (let alone giving the wildlife of India a chance), the government was either unwilling or incapable, and the religions were set against it. Religions always were.

  So that was it. The holiday had been great – for the wildlife that was still around, for the accommodation and for the people Brian had met. But for what it had shown him about the condition of India now and the rest of the world in just a few years’ time, it had been dispiriting in the extreme. It had been truly awful. He knew that there was much to criticise in his native country, more than was needed to fill a whole book. But at least in Britain – now – there was a sense that things can’t go on the way they are, and no matter how awkward it’s going to be, we can’t ignore that we’ve got only one planet – and only one chance. The trouble, however, was that Brian was only too aware that this “we” was now in a rapidly diminishing minority, and that even with whole armies of Nature-seekers recruited to the cause, the chance of our stopping the rot had probably already past.

  Nevertheless, it would be good to get home. Good to get back to what he now saw, despite all its shortcomings, as a more rational and more enlightened place than ever.

  Then he was home. Their plane had landed at Heathrow and Brian’s expedition was finally at an end. Strange then that the first person with whom he had dealings was an Indian. Brian was about to ask him whether he knew the Brahmaputra or the Sundarbans. But as soon as he’d inspected his passport he waved Brian on. And Brian stepped into England.

 

 

 
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