‘A fascinating, moving novel of one man’s ambition against the
forces of nature’.
This one-liner appears on the cover of the book but I beg to
differ from it. This is not a story of one man or for that matter, any man (or
woman). The protagonist of this book, I feel, is its setting, the Sunderban or
“the beautiful forest”. Yes, it is the
story of Kanai and Piya, Fokir and Kussum, Nirmal and Nilima but their stories
exist only because of the Sunderban or the ‘tide country’.
The Sunderban is 'a complex ecosystem comprising one of the three largest single
tracts of mangrove forests of the world. Situated mostly in Bangladesh, a small portion of it lies in
India'. (Source: Wikipedia). This natural wonder is explained in great
detail by the author in the very beginning, "A mangrove forest is a universe unto itself, utterly unlike other
woodlands or jungles. There are no towering, vine-looped trees, no ferns, no
wildflowers, no chattering monkeys or cockatoos. Mangrove leaves are tough and
leathery, the branches gnarled and the foliage often impassably dense.
Visibility is short and the air still and fetid. Every year, dozens of people
perish in the embrace of that dense foliage, killed by tigers, snakes and
crocodiles".
Where there are people, there are stories and in this bleak and somewhat
scary landscape there is a story of refugees, massacre, women trafficking, and
tiger attacks, folk-tales and superstitions. The principal characters of the
novel are Piya, Kanai and Fokir. Piya is a young cetologist of Bengali heritage who has come from USA to
conduct a survey on the marine mammals of the Sunderbans. While in search of
the Irrawady dolphin she meets and befriends two completely opposite men, Kanai and Fokir.
Kanai, a translator by profession based in New Delhi, comes to
Lusibari (a fictional village)on the request of his aunt Nilima. Nilima, or Mashima,
runs the Badabon Trust in the village. She wants Kanai to look into the
contents of a sealed packet which her late husband Nirmal, Kanai’s uncle, left him
in his will. The sealed packet contains a diary which describes in detail,
among other things, the incident of Morichjhapi or Marichjhanpi, which is
mostly remembered today for the massacre of 1979. (For more details of the actual incident read here).
Fokir, on the other hand, is a local fisherman. Illiterate and
simple, Fokir is one with the mangrove forests. Unlike Kanai and Piya who have
come to the tide country to seek something, Fokir belongs to this land. Both Kanai
and Piya are dependent on his knowledge for their survival and are connected to
him, Piya more so as Fokir is her guide and it is he who rescues her, leads her to the dolphins and saves her life. "Love flows deep in rivers" and Piya does develop feelings for the uneducated fisherman who is both married and a father. Language does not act as a barrier but draws her closer to him for she believed"..speech was only a bag of tricks that fooled you into believing that you could see through the eyes of another being".
The author has divided the book into two parts; The Ebb and The
Flood. The flow of the narrative follows these two words to the letter. The first
part drags a bit in places where there is a lot of scientific details
about the dolphins (some of the details are fascinating though). The pace of the book is faster in the second part where
there is more action due to interaction among all the
characters.
Woven into the story are a lot
of rich details of life in the mangrove forests. How the wildlife, especially
the tiger, affects the lives of the people. This is a land where even the mere
mention of a tiger is considered an ill omen. As the author said in an
interview (read the entire interview here): ‘The mangroves are so thick you
can’t see the tigers but the tiger is always watching you’.
At the heart of this book is the search for identity. It is more
obviously stated in case of the Morichjapi settlers who demand from the authorities
at one point, “Who are we? We are the dispossessed”. Nirmal is also haunted by
questions of identity which is obvious from the notes in his diary, “Who was I? Where did I belong? In
Calcutta or in the tide country? In India or across the border? In prose or in
poetry?”
The tide country affects both Kanai and Piya and at
the end of the book both characters change considerably from the people on the train station in the opening chapters. The only person who remains unchanged is Fokir, a man who belonged to the Sunderbans; body, heart and soul.
It is a moving and very well researched novel and its simple prose makes it a pleasing read. Reading about the mangroves inspired me to conduct a little search on the mangrove forests of the coastal areas of Sindh. WWF has a detailed research on the condition of our mangroves which is available on their website. It is sad how we are destroying (and have destroyed) this amazing ecosystem but in a country where not much value is put on the lives of humans, there is very little hope for both the mangroves and the wildlife which inhabits it.
Book Cover: Google Images
Note: Excerpts from the book are in italics.
