Going to Extremes

by Nick Middleton

  I found an Internet café and logged on to The Times of India site. Here at least were some stories of rain. The floods in Kerala had eased, although the death toll had reached 89 since the onset of the monsoon. Orissa, meanwhile, was officially a disaster zone with all but one of the state’s rivers flowing above their danger levels in several places. The Indian air force had begun to drop food parcels in remote areas. The number of people displaced by the floodwaters was put at 7.5 million.

  With the start of the monsoon in Goa, local traffic police had appealed to vehicle drivers to exercise restraint while driving on slushy roads in an effort to reduce the usual rainy season peak in the accident rate. Among the instructions issued were the following: wear bright-coloured waterproof gloves and boots for better grip on brakes; put on headlights and don’t use umbrellas; and keep to the middle of the road.

  Even the Calcutta area had finally got a soaking. Two days of heavy showers had washed away 100 houses south of the city and damaged 70,000 acres of crops, while the whole of West Bengal was suffering power cuts because the coal was too wet to burn in the electricity generating stations. The monsoon was also blamed for power cuts in Delhi, something to do with underground cables getting wet, but as The Times of India leader put it, ‘Blame it on the monsoon if every other excuse fails to hold water.’

  The weather in Pakistan was even hitting the headlines in the Indian press. Southern parts of the country were being drenched by the heaviest monsoon rains in 50 years, but there was no mention of the situation in the north-east of India where I was going. The weather in Dhaka, meanwhile, continued bright and sunny.

  A map on the India Meteorological Department’s excellent website showed the full extent of my dilemma. India’s north-eastern states had received a third less rainfall than normal since the notional beginning of the monsoon on 1 June. In the previous week just half the normal amount of rain had fallen. I scanned the daily satellite images of the subcontinent. Most of India and Pakistan was wreathed in thick rain-bearing cloud, but Bangladesh and the north-east of India were consistently clear.

  I’d been through the full gamut of emotions, from amusement through frustration and annoyance to incredulity, since I’d arrived in Calcutta to be met with no rain. The situation was now becoming ridiculous. Here I was, halfway through my journey to the world’s wettest place, during the monsoon’s traditionally rainiest month, and all I’d seen was a bit of drizzle and a few half-hearted showers.

  I was getting desperate. I spent a morning on the telephone in my hotel room ringing round meteorological centres in India and Bangladesh in search of positive news about the rains. The Bangladesh meteorological office gave me the forecast for Dhaka the following day. It was mostly going to be sunny.

  ‘What about the day after tomorrow?’

  ‘You must be ringing again tomorrow for that,’ the man said rather impatiently.

  I scoured the phone book and found a number for Dhaka’s storm warning centre. I thought they might deal in longer-range forecasts, but after a couple of rings all I got was an answerphone with a message in Bengali. They had probably been given the day off to enjoy the sunshine. Dhaka’s civil aviation authority meteorological office told me they weren’t expecting any rain for at least three days, but beyond that they couldn’t say.

  I found some numbers for likely looking sources of information in India. First I rang the meteorological centre at Guwahati, the regional depository of weather data from Mawsynram, the record-holding wettest place, and other stations in Meghalaya, as well as the neighbouring state of Assam. The news wasn’t good there either.

  ‘We are expecting isolated thunder showers around Mawsynram,’ a voice told me. Thunderstorms were something. At least there was some rain in the world’s wettest village, but it wasn’t the monsoon.

  ‘What about monsoon rains?’ I asked.

  ‘Monsoon is yet to begin in north-east region,’ the voice said.

  ‘When will it start do you think?’

  ‘This we cannot be saying.’

  I had read a number of academic articles about the monsoon written by researchers at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, so I rang there. A Dr Nandargi told me that more than 100 years of monsoon records indicated that when Orissa received particularly heavy monsoonal rainfall, as it was now, India’s north-east didn’t.

  ‘Historical records are showing this quite clearly,’ he said. ‘Low pressure zones move westward from Bay of Bengal over Orissa, but north-east region remains quite dry.’

  ‘Do you have any idea when these systems might cease?’ I asked him.

  ‘Low pressure is currently building once more in Bay of Bengal.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it is likely to move in westerly direction from Bay of Bengal over Orissa.’

  ‘What does that mean for monsoonal rains over the north-east in the next week, say?’

  ‘Little chance of monsoonal rains in north-east in next week.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘This we cannot be saying.’

  So that was it. Everyone I had spoken to had voiced serious doubts about my chances of seeing monsoonal rains. Certainly in the next week, and after that the likelihood of rains appeared to be anyone’s guess. So much for the India Meteorological Department’s long-range monsoon forecast. As far as I could see, it appeared to be anything but a normal rainfall year in Mawsynram and the areas I had on my itinerary.

  I hung around in Dhaka for a few days, killing time. I could see why they reckoned its air pollution was the world’s worst. Dhaka’s traffic made Calcutta’s look tame and positively well organized. Policemen sheltering from the sun beneath black umbrellas tried their best to keep it flowing but they were fighting a losing battle. Their plight was summed up by the first set of traffic lights I saw on arrival. Its red and green lights were on simultaneously, as if to say, ‘stop, go ahead, do what you like, we know you will anyway.’

  Runa said the city’s population had skyrocketed in the last few decades, from a million people in 1971 to around 12 million today. The number of motor vehicles had probably grown at a similar rate but no one really knew the figures. The city’s authorities had issued licences to 89,000 auto-rickshaws, but the number of unlicensed vehicles was estimated to be at least seven times greater. The government had promised to ban the three-wheelers since their two-stroke engines were a major source of contamination, but the promise had never materialized. Some said this was because unlicensed auto-rickshaws were such a significant source of income for corrupt officials that they would never get rid of them from the streets.

  ‘The pollution is not so bad when the rains start,’ Runa told me, ‘it washes the air clean, you know.’

  I just looked at her.

  After three days of waiting, I decided to hit the road again. If it wasn’t going to rain, it wasn’t going to rain. It was very unsatisfactory, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. I would just have to see the world’s wettest place when it was dry.

  Runa had found a driver, a man named Babu, who would take us north to the border. The roads weren’t very good, he said, so it would be a couple of days’ drive.

  We didn’t get very far on the first day. Babu was a bit of a law unto himself and had already exhibited an annoying tendency to feign deafness whenever I asked a question that he either didn’t feel like answering or didn’t know the answer to. He stopped on the northern outskirts of town to investigate a gaggle of people that had gathered near the road where it sloped down to some flooded fields.

  ‘Why are we stopping, Babu?’

  He just leapt out of the car.

  I thought about laying down the law. I had hired his vehicle, so I should decide when we stopped. However, Babu had already disappeared into the small crowd, which rather stole my thunder. But what the hell? It wasn’t as if I was in any particular hurry.

  The crowd turned out to have gathered to see a group of river gypsies who were setting out b
y boat to an island some way off. The gypsies were of interest because they carried an assortment of snakes. They were off to the island to do a bit of public snake charming, Babu announced breathlessly when he returned.

  ‘Would you like to go with them?’ he asked. ‘I can arrange it.’

  We all crowded into a long wooden boat with an outboard motor for the crossing. The island was notorious in the Dhaka underworld, Babu said, as the main repository for the capital’s stolen and contraband goods.

  None of the island’s inhabitants looked particularly delinquent to my mind, but they were all very keen to see the snakes. A large circle of people, with children squatting at the front, formed around the river gypsies almost immediately on our arrival. A grandstand view was afforded for additional kids and a number of young women by the roof of a half-finished brick building overlooking the circle.

  The three river gypsies hunched down in the midst of the crowd and proceeded to unload an assortment of coloured wooden boxes from the wraps they were carrying. I counted ten boxes in total. One of the men tuned up on a flute made from an ancient gourd decorated with flecks of red paint.

  Bangladesh’s river gypsies, the Badhi, make their living plying from river to river selling herbal remedies and jewellery, but they are also renowned for their capabilities with snakes. They turn up in villages like this one to perform their snake-charming routine, and also offer a snake-catching service to anyone unlucky enough to find one has taken up residence in their house. As Runa related these details to me, I was reminded of a warning given to me by one of the guests at the Calcutta dinner party.

  ‘Beware of snakes in the monsoon season,’ he had said, as he proceeded to tell me how as a boy he had always been confined to bed when the rains started. ‘During flood conditions, you see, snakes flee the rising waters and they frequently enter people’s houses. I had to remain in bed until the water had receded and was not permitted to leave until a thorough snake hunt had been conducted throughout the house.’

  The snake charmers had opened some of their boxes to release a remarkable array of serpents. There was a long yellow one, a sluggish brown one that looked more like a giant earthworm than a snake, and two cobras. The man with the gourd flute began to play an alluring tune, but none of the snakes seemed very interested in being mesmerized. The long yellow one slunk off at surprising speed towards the edge of the circle, precipitating a gasp from the line of children at the edge as they moved hastily backwards before the flute player grabbed the snake by its tail and flung it back into the middle of the circle. Having failed in its bid for freedom, the yellow snake decided to retire back into its box instead, but the flute player grabbed it by the tail again and held it in the air. He dropped it and resumed his music, but the yellow snake just lay there immobile and fixed the flautist with its beady green eye.

  One of the flautist’s colleagues, who wore a purple headscarf tied round his forehead, was having more success with one of the cobras. The snake had reared its head and was flaring its hood ready to strike as the crouching man dangled his fists a foot or so from its head. Every time the cobra struck, the man’s fists were not there. Meanwhile, the third river gypsy had produced half a dozen small snakes from his box, which were winding themselves round his hands like bright green bangles. To the horrified delight of the crowd, he proceeded to feed one of the little green monsters into his mouth.

  While all this was going on, a man from the crowd beckoned the gypsy in the purple headscarf to the side of the circle. Runa and I could see an animated conversation ensuing, after which the gypsy said something to his friend with the small green snakes, who had to pull three of them from his mouth before he could answer. He squatted down to replace them in one of the wooden boxes as the purple headscarf set about coaxing his cobras back into their boxes. In the meantime, the flautist played on.

  Babu appeared at my shoulder. ‘This man has snake in his house,’ he said excitedly. It was a job for snake-busters.

  Part of the crowd peeled off to follow the two river gypsies as the man led them to his unhappy abode. Runa, Babu and I joined them. The man’s house was right on the edge of the island, his backyard sloping down to the flooded fields. The two river gypsies checked the first of the man’s rooms, an outhouse with a corrugated iron roof. Their survey didn’t seem very thorough to me. While the man with the purple headscarf took a brief look under a makeshift table, his snake-swallowing colleague took a large pinch of earth from the entrance and rubbed it quickly into a sausage between his hands. He smelt the earth and offered it to his friend to do the same. They moved on.

  ‘If earth is smelling of fish, they know snake is there,’ Babu whispered in my ear.

  They gave the slope down to the water a brief once-over, ignoring a woodpile that to me looked like a prime site for a snake nest, and moved to the main house. The snake swallower did a bit more earth smelling at the entrance, then they disappeared inside. The crowd moved up to the door and spilled into the first of what turned out to be two rooms. The river gypsies had given the first room, evidently the kitchen, short shrift. They were in the main room, which had a large bed on one side and a neat row of cooking pots lined up above a sideboard. If the snake was anywhere, it was here, it seemed.

  The owner of the house, evidently rather pleased with the attention he was getting, particularly since there was a foreigner involved, beckoned me in to his bedroom and pointed to the bed. Assuming that the bed would be the safest place from which to observe the proceedings, I jumped on. The two river gypsies had become distinctly more cautious in the way they surveyed this room.

  Suddenly, there was a commotion beneath the sideboard and the gypsy with the purple headscarf darted down with his hand outstretched. He emerged holding a full-sized cobra, as long as his arm, by the tail. The snake hissed as it arched its head round to try and face the gypsy who expertly twisted his arm to keep the cobra from striking at him. The crowd at the bedroom entrance let out a short collective gasp as he grabbed the snake by the neck and began to force it into one of his coloured wooden boxes.

  But the show was not over yet. The snake-swallowing gypsy had his head beneath the bed where I was cowering and emerged in a flash holding a second cobra, just as long as the first.

  ‘Husband and wife,’ Babu called from the bedroom entrance. ‘Cobras are very faithful partners. Always they travel together.’

  Dusk was falling as we boarded the boat for the return journey to the mainland. I asked the gypsy with the purple headscarf what would happen to the two cobras he and his colleague had caught. He said they would be trained until they could join their snake-charming display.

  ‘Are you ever bitten during the course of your work?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, many times.’ He showed me his forearms, which were a mass of scars. ‘We cut open the bite, suck out the venom and rub the wound with herbs. Then it is sealed with a cigarette or hot knife.’

  ‘If you did nothing, how long would it take to die after a bite from one of those cobras?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘About 20 minutes,’ he replied.

  We left Dhaka for good the following day. The sky was grey and overcast which was at least a step in the right direction. Two hours north, we passed through Narsingdi, a town noted for its textile industry. Row upon row of screen-printed saris were hanging out to dry on washing lines and I could hear the clack-clack-clack of the looms as we passed each factory. Swarms of bicycle rickshaws zipped back and forth piled high with rolls of fabric.

  ‘It is known as the “Manchester of Bengal”,’ said Babu, but it was a Manchester of the nineteenth century.

  Cows grazed by the roadsides and electricity pylons marched across the paddy fields. The road was tarmac but the potholes had been filled with fragments of red brick. While we were waiting to catch a car ferry across the Meghna river, a small girl carrying a metal vessel full of water propped expertly on her hip like a baby offered me a one taka coin and I gave her a pen in exchange. She responded
with a huge smile of pearly white teeth and disappeared to show it to her friend. Ten minutes later she was back, wanting to sell me the pen for five taka. I told her to keep it, but a man who was watching offered her six and the girl looked even happier. The man also looked pretty pleased with the deal.

  Every so often we had to stop for railway crossings, though I never saw any trains. The railway lines were laid on high embankments and I asked Runa if they were ever flooded. ‘Very rarely,’ she said, ‘although it happened in the 1998 floods, and in 1988 before that.’

  Babu said there had been 2 feet of water in his bedroom in 1998. ‘I had to put my bed on bricks for one month and ten days. Yesterday reminded me of that time, because a snake came to stay in my bedroom,’ he went on. ‘He, or it might have been a she, slept on the bookcase. Every time I looked at him, or her, it just flicked its tongue. It was a cobra, normally a rather dangerous snake, as you know. But during this time we spent together I did not bother her, or him, and he, or she, did not bother me. When the floods went down, he, or she, disappeared.’

  We spent the night at Srimongal, in a bungalow with rose bushes growing in the flowerbeds and a faded photograph of the Queen hanging in the dining room. The compound was surrounded by the regimented bushes of a tea garden. They marched up and down a topography that was definitely undulating but couldn’t quite be described as hilly. The humidity had been building all afternoon and that evening I was rewarded with rumbles of thunder, great flashes of lightning, and then the sweet music of rain smacking the brick driveways round the bungalows. The downpour was all the more welcome for being unexpected. Things were definitely looking up.