The hungry tide

The Hungry Tide, an amazing fiction

The Hungry Tide- a book review

The Hungry Tide, a novel by Amitav Ghosh has been appearing in the best sellers list for quite some time. Though I did not like his earlier fiction, Calcutta Chromosome, so I was not driven for this best seller. But its inclusion in the list for month after month changed my mind. And after reading the book  I realized “Man is the measure of all things”.

                It is an amazing story of the land and the people of Sundarban. Their struggle against nature, the tide, the storm, the tiger, the fearful surroundings. Still some people like Sundarbans. They  die for a piece of land in this God forbidden land.

   Sundarban , the largest delta is hardly one hundred kilometer away from Kolkata. The Kolkatans never took much interest in these muddy islands, infested with snakes and crocodiles. The danger of man eater, the Royal Bengal Tiger, always looms in some parts. Some poor people live there. But who cares for them? There are so many interesting things for us. Some times a great writer makes us look beyond what we don’t see.  Now after reading this book, the vast stretches of the rivers and its mohona, the confluence of the rivers with the sea, innumerable small islands lined with special trees and mangroves are dancing before my eyes. My horizon has definitely got extended.

              The story has two lines running parallel. Piyali Roy, (called Piya) is a scientist, brought up by her ambitious father in USA. She does know a single word of Bengali language. She has come to Sundarban to do her research on Gangetic dolphins. On the way to Canning (gate way of Sundarban) by a local train, she meets a man named Kanai Dutta, who was going to Lusibari, the further most islands, where her aunt Nilima, a social worker has been living for last five decades. Kanai invites Piya to Lusibari. Piya obtains all the Government permits for work and hires a steamer escorted by a Govt guard. She feels a small boat would be much useful for her study of the behavior of the dolphins and approaches near a boat on the river. While she was negotiating with boatman named Fokir, she suddenly fell off the steamer and gets drifted away by the strong current of the river. Fokir, risking his own life jumped into the river and saves her from drowning. From a flashcard of Piya, Fokir could identify what she is looking for. Fokir takes her to places where these dolphins are in abundance. After two/ three days search, they come back to Lusibari, where Fokir also lived with her wife Mayna and son Tutul. Now Piya readies for journey to the confluence for her study with a bigger boar driven by a diesel motor, locally called bhotbhoti. Kanai also accompanies her as a translator. Fokir follows them with his small boat.  At some point, Piya and Fokir sail by the boat in search of dolphins. That day they do not find any dolphin and Fokir goes on  searching through the narrow canals. Actually a very strong storm was approaching Sundarban while Kanai and other got aware of it and left for Lusibari, Piya and Fokir could take shelter in a tree to face the storm. They tied themselves with a sari to the trunk of a tree. The gale lambasted Sundarban. The fury was extreme in the island. Some very heavy uprooted trunk of a tree hit Fokir and he dies. Piya is rescued and she plans to stayback at Lusibar to carry out a bigger research project.  

             The other line revolves round Nirmal, the husband of Nilima. He was a lecturer of a college in south kolkata. Under some circumstances, the husband and wife took shelter in Sundarban. He becomes a headmaster and Nilima a social worker. Nirmal had a poetic bend of mind.  He used to write a diary, where he wrote about the people of Sundarban. During late seventies, lots of refugees from East Pakistan who were given land at Dandyakaranya for rehabilitation started coming back to Sunderban. As these people are from the land of rivers and mud, they could not adjust in the dry place of Madhya Pradesh. They came to Marichhjhapi, a muddy island owned by Govt of West Bengal and set up a beautiful a colony. But Govt of Bengal was not happy with encroachment by these refugees. They forcefully evicted the people from the island. There was stiff resistance from the people who had nothing to lose but life. Lot of people died. Nirmal was associated with them. He also mysteriously vanished since then. He left the diary for Kanai which was retrieved after many years. Nilima called kanai to hand over the dairy so that he reads it and gets it printed. Though Kanai could finish reading it, but he lost it in the river. 

          The author gives  very beautiful description Lusibari; an island surrounded by seven rivers, its evolution over the years, the hope and aspiration of its residents. The dairy narrates mostly about the Morichjhapi. Those hapless displaced persons could never find a house of their choice. They liked the island Marichjhapi, a vacant place, set up the colony. It shows the longing of some uprooted people to set up a new home at a place of their chose. But how brutally they were treated. No one came to their help. The Island was surrounded by all sides by Police boats, no supply of provision, all tube wells were damaged, their houses were demolished, they were forcefully evicted from their houses they built with so much zeal. The brutal treatment to these helpless people rocked Bengal at that time.  Here arises the question, are the animals more important from human being? Are we not more concerned for the habitat of tigers rather than our fellow brethren?

      Mr. Ghosh has made tremendous research work. He imparts so many information about gangetic dolphin, about flora and fauna of the locality. He also shows Sundarban is not only the confluence of rivers and the sea; the place is an amazing meeting point  of different cultures, which seems impossible at other places.

           It is also a strange love story, where the lovers (Piya and Fokir) could never exchange words. They spent days and night in the vast stretches of the rivers, on the tree. Finally Fokir died saving life of Piya. It may seem very strange, but Piya, the scientists from  USA greatly valued the feelings of Fokir, an illiterate person for her. She plans to name her project after Fokir.

       The descriptions of the rivers at different times, in the misty morning, in the brigh sunlight, during sunset or the fool moon night are superb. The stormy night on the trees is so vivid; the reader would feel he is on the spot. Even after finishing the book, I feel the rocking of the boat; those beautiful sights are still my eyes. My vision has stretched far upto those islands of Sundarbans . It is an amazing book!