A Journey to Tide Country of Sundarbans by Amitav Ghosh
Between the sea and the plains of Bengal, on the easternmost coast of India, lies an immense archipelago of islands known as “the Sundarban”, which means, “the beautiful forest” and often known as “the tide country”. Boundaries between land and sea are always mutating, unpredictable in these islands and so is the destiny of the vigilant settlers residing there.
In his book “The Hungry Tide”, Amitav Ghosh takes us on a roller coaster ride to the tide country when a young American cetologist, Piyali Roy, of Indian parentage arrives to track rare species of dolphins in the gigantic sea. While Piya is on her journey, she meets Kanai Dutt, a sophisticated Delhi linguist who returns back to the island to unveil some long lost chapters of the tide country on the request of his aunt, a public figure.
Through Piya’s venture, Ghosh introduces us to the rare and exquisite breed of freshwater dolphin, the Orcaella brevirostris, that adorns the Bay of Bengal, and rich biodiversity of these mangrove swamped islands. At the same moment, the author will also address the harsh reality of survival at the cost of keeping wildlife in its habitat, which will shatter us to the core.
While at the beginning, with a touch of Rilke’s poetry, Nirmal’s (Kanai’s Uncle) storytelling lures us by the ideas of a visionary Scotsman who at the beginning of last century dreamed of a utopian society where people of all races, religions and classes could live together. The same will similarly leave us totally baffled at the end when some settlement incidents lead to a local massacre, followed by Nirmal’s mysterious death. It’s so mystifying that to look at these islands one would never know about such things and in Ghosh’s words: “the speciality of mangroves is that they do not merely recolonise land; they erase time.”
Tide begins to turn when Piya hires Fokir, a skilled local boatman, to guide her through the gigantic sea, with Kanai as translator. It’s so intriguing how slowly and mysteriously Fokir will later become an integral part of their journeys and their lives will turn out to be more intertwined than they could possibly imagine.
More than its characters and their individual journeys, this book is an expedition to the boundless affairs of the mighty sea. To our surprise, over the pages, the book will also walk us through many unexplored tales of the Sundarbans like history and early identification of rare sea species, port town of Canning and the folly of its foundation by the British, beautiful Bonbibi prayers, fusing Hindu-Muslim faiths, to protect dwellers from Tiger’s attack, rarest Moonbow seen at Garjontola in the tide country seducing enough to entice any being with the unfathomable resourcefulness of these islands.
By the end, one may have doubts about who is the main protagonist of the story (Piya or Fokir) but in my opinion it’s the wordless language between the both, between the sea, wildlife and humans that narrates everything. The settlers of the Sundarban believe that a pure heart is all the courage one needs to venture into the watery labyrinth and this narration will tell you what happens when someone disturbs its settlement where not only does the forest take its toll; the tides, too, exact their revenge. Narrated in perfect suspension between the worlds of language and silence this masterpiece will make you ask at every turn: it’s not about who is right or wrong but is there really a way out of it.
It is the speciality of this novel that beside the manifest threats posed by human settlement to the unique biodiversity of the Sundarbans, Ghosh perfectly manages to address equal dangers for the human settlers as well. The book perfectly fits the beautiful yet mysterious and dangerous paradigm often portrayed in fictions, except that it is very much real.
Here are some good quotes from this masterpiece :
“and at no moment can human beings have any doubt of the terrain’s utter hostility to their presence, of its cunning and resourcefulness.”
“we, who have always thought of joy as rising . . . feel the emotion that almost amazes us when a happy thing falls.”
“Every generation creates its own population of ghosts.”
“the true tragedy of a routinely spent life is that it’s wastefulness does not become apparent till it is too late”
“The sounds and signs that had served, in combination, as the sluices between his mind and senses had collapsed: his mind was swamped by a flood of pure sensation”
“I am afraid because I know that after the storm passes, the events that have preceded its coming will be forgotten”
“How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory, like an old toy in a cupboard, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?”
