“The true tragedy of routinely spent life is that its wastefulness does not become apparent till it is too late.”
The Hungry Tide
This quote does not reflect the theme of this book but it caught my eye in this green-covered book in my hand when today I was flipping its pages thinking what to write about it.
It’s tea time and there is a tray ready on a side table with two pieces of cookies. A squirrel on the wall of the garden is eating something in a ravenous way. I have no idea what is that something, it’s scanty for my eyes, but it must be something very delicious which can be assumed by observing the way this little creature is feeding itself, using both its hands fleetly and effectively.
In fact, for the past few days, I am routinely spending my time this way only, in the evening. A finished book in my hand at tea time… I, thinking something to write about it. Two routinely placed cookies on the side table… A squirrel doing something always on the garden wall and then me postponing writing about the book for one more day. But this quote surprisingly worked as a catalyst today motivating me to write a review as it evoked the sentiments of this mentioned wastefulness in me and I quickly decided to talk about the book here before it’s too late.
So…Talking about the book, Piyali Roy (Piya) is an Indian-origin American cetologist. She studies marine mammals. She comes to India near her ancestral place in the hope to get a permit to do a survey of marine mammals of Sunderbans.
Kanai, who thinks that he has the true connoisseur’s ability to both praise and appraise women, spots her, the moment he reaches onto a crowded platform. Inside the train coach when she was trying to maneuver the cup of tea from the tea seller through the bar of the window then this man (Kanai) sitting opposite to the seat of Piya, suddenly flips over a page. With the jolting of her hand, she tries to make sure most of the tea spills out of the window but she could not prevent a small trickle from shooting over his papers. With a mortified sorry from the Piya there begins the interaction between the two and with their acquaintance begins this exotic tale from the pen of Amitav Ghosh. She does her research and Kanai translates for her some critical things facilitating her understanding of local ambiance and culture.
This story takes the reader on a trip to the long chain of the archipelago of the Bay of Bengal. It talks about the ways of boatmen in the region. It’s an adventure read for lovers of the sea and riverine adventures, loaded with some interesting real facts and some interesting myths that prevailed in a specified area of Bengal.
The story moves in time and space. The characters of the present time are Kanai, Fokir, and Piya and the main character of the past is Nirmal. Intricacy and suspense in the plot are kept in the old diary of Nirmal, which is read by Kanai to connect the dots of events. Amitav has touched on many issues like refugee, freedom, war, government, and tribal conflict, ecology, marine life and lives in seaside habitats in this book.
The most beautiful part of the story for me was the reticent and self-effacing bond between Fokir and Piya. Piya is an educated English-speaking marine biologist and Fokir is a local boatman who knows the only local language, He does not know what she says and she does not know what he says. He saves her life in the early part of the story and then plays a crucial part in the latter part of the story. The restrained communication of emotions between the two despite the language barrier provides the real delight in this story. It was symbolically written and crafted by Ghosh in a very alluring way.
“What was he thinking about as he stared at the moonlit river? The forests, the crabs?
Whatever it was she would never know: not just because they had no language in common but because that was how it was with human beings, who came equipped as a species, with the means of shutting each other out. The two of them Fokir and herself, they could have been boulders and trees for all they knew of each other: and wasn’t it better in a way, more honest, that they could not speak? For if you compared it to the ways in which Dolphins’ echoes mirrored the world, speech was the only bag of tricks that fooled you into believing that you could see through the eyes of another being.”
In my sailing through this beautiful story, I also encountered some well-researched scientific facts about mammal creatures and about the history of those small islands in the Bay of Bengal. The mixing of faith and mythical belief in the story made it more interesting for the reader. Ghosh has tried his best to keep the story equally relevant for both the native readers and for the general English readers and he has done it quite successfully.
One other important thing that happened to me while reading this book.. somewhere in the latter half Ghosh has tried to translate a mythical story through one of his characters and while reading two pages of that chapter completely which was certainly looking similar in structure with the previous prose style, I suddenly found that there was something rhyming and verse like there, I flipped back and rereading those paragraphs again, realizing this time that Ghosh has deliberately and wonderfully created an English pastiche of the Bengali metre dwipadi poyar: a rhymed couplet of about 12 syllables. It was a really wonderful thing in the book. An English reader can have a feel of a mythical poem keeping with its essence in the original form. It was fun reading and knowing about it.
A fulfilling reading journey for me with such fascinating penmanship of Ghosh.
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