The tide country, at last!

“The islands are the trailing threads of India’s fabric, the ragged fringe of her sari, the ãchol that follows her, half-wetted by the sea. They number in the thousands, these islands; some are immense and some no larger than sandbars; some have lasted through recorded history while others were washed into being just a year or two ago... The rivers’ channels are spread across the land like a fine mesh-net, creating a terrain where the boundaries between land and water are always mutating, always unpredictable. Some of these channels are mighty waterways, so wide across that one shore is invisible from the other; others are no more than two or three kilometres long and only a few hundred metres across. Yet, each of these channels is a ‘river’ in its own right, each possessed of its own strangely evocative name. When these channels meet, it is often in clusters of four, five or even six: at these confluences, the water stretches to the far edges of the landscape and the forest dwindles into a distant rumour of land, echoing back from the horizon.”

Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide (2004)

This is where it began. For eight long years, since the first time I read these paragraphs, the tide country has been a constant, haunting image in my mind: one of my most desperate dreams, so to speak. When Vidya and I booked a tour package to the Sundarbans via India Beacons Sojourn this September, I consciously stopped imagining, expecting, looking forward. It was too intense, what I held within myself for this place, its creatures and its people. I was only thinking of a week-long holiday in December, so hard-earned for both of us.

Kolkata was a lovely welcome and meeting a dear online friend for the first time was already one wish granted. Shantiniketan, an artist-town, was a perfectly planned holiday complete with many take-aways. And then, before we knew it, we were at Science City, Kolkata on the morning of Friday, 14th of December, waiting for our pick-up to Godhkhali from where we were to be taken to the Sundarbans on a launch. After some initial mix-up with the directions, we joined a group of 8-10 people, pinching ourselves, at the brink of an experience that heaped rewards on my years of waiting.

The launch that greeted us at Godhkhali was called Purbasha. Dipankar Mondol and the other members of our crew (our ever-smiling driver Bhola and our expert cook Lala) took us aboard while the rest of the group that had travelled with us so far was put on another launch. We learnt later that the group that was to come with us had cancelled plans last minute. Surprise was the way Bon Bibi granted us our best holiday to date. The only travellers on our boat for two-and-a-half days, Vidya and I found ourselves negotiating stretches of water surrounded by mangrove forests – exactly as Amitav Ghosh describes the islands.

Purbasha is not just a launch, it is a household, complete with a well-equipped kitchen and comfortable bunk-beds on the lower deck, a neat little cubicle of a washroom and luxury encapsulated in its simple amenities. After a couple of hours – during which time we were served the first of our scrumptious meals on board – we reached the Sajnekhali watch tower. Crocodiles and deer were visible in the distance. The experience of peering through the binoculars, searching the mangrove forests and the waters for sightings, is something I cannot describe here in words, try as I might, though I can still hear the swish of the tides and feel that wind on my skin as I write this.

The Sajnekhali and Sudhanyakhali watch towers are well-maintained posts, the former housing a beautiful museum on the ecology of the Sundarbans, a cluster of islands densely forested with 84 species of mangroves, only a small part (about one-fifth) of which lies in India and the rest in Bangladesh. The rivers that criss-cross this region are now cut off from the Ganga and it is only the Bay of Bengal’s saline water that flows here. Everywhere as we moved on the waters we saw nets on the banks, supposed to stop the famed Sundarban tigers from emerging out of the forests and attacking the populated parts of the tide country. But that, of course, is no guarantee of safety. As our guide of the third day, Sanyasi Mondol, told us, no villager believes the tiger count given by the Forest Department (a recent census revealed the total number to have shrunk alarmingly) and many fishermen risk their lives by rowing into narrow channels with dead ends. A tiger can leap from the bank, grab you while you are on the boat and be gone silently many minutes before your companions realise you are missing. Why, most of the victims would die of a heart attack at the mere sight of the ferocious animal, even before it has got to them! Mondol claimed that in and around his village, some twenty people had been carried away in the past six months. We found the statistics hard to believe, but while we were there, it seemed too likely.

Life is far from easy around these parts. To the visitor, these islands are a beauty past compare, but would the villagers in these harsh regions, given a choice, have lived here? Poor fishermen and honey collectors risk their lives everyday even as the catch/produce they gather is exported all over the world. In parts, women walk for five to six hours on kaccha roads (banks, really) to get from one place to another. Although there are some schools here, the nearest college is in Kolkata. And medical care is almost non-existent beyond some rudimentary first aid. Tourism seems to have brought some hopes to young men, but I must add that the behaviour of the average tourist leaves much to be desired. It was, however, encouraging that Dipankar's brother had become a professor in a college and though he now lived away from his home country, was avidly promoting its economy as well as ecotourism there through the Purbasha Helpline Society.

The first two days were spent on the launch till 4 pm. Deer, monitor lizards, kingfishers in a jubilation of colours, cormorants, bee eaters, pond herons and the like filled our world with the sort of company we long for but seldom have. The thrill that a sighting brings to a traveller in these regions is incomparable to any other joy. While it is, doubtless, a photographer’s paradise, even to have captured the moments with your overjoyed eyes creates a memory of a lifetime.  

No, we did not see a tiger. That one ultimate wish remained unfulfilled though we experienced the thrill -- as well as the chill -- of an imminent glimpse on the third day as we sat on a country boat that took us terrifyingly close to the forested banks where a tiger could have been crouching, ready to spring on us and take its pick from amongst the group. That ride is unforgettable, what with our boatman Sujit Bidda guiding the boat through the high tide with nothing more than a stout bamboo stick, in a display of astounding strength and control. Our company was complete with a little Tutul (here, Rahul) and we were travelling along the banks of Morichjhãpi – I couldn’t have asked for more! That village with a bloody history now lies deserted, a no man's land whose scars remain unhealed.

Forest faces village across about a quarter of a kilometre of water. Our resort stood at the edge of the inhabited island, in the village of Dayapur, and we could have seen a tiger from our balcony if one had chosen to emerge. I could not help remember the episode in the novel where Kusum’s father is killed by a tiger even as villagers watch and hear helplessly from the other bank the sound of his neck bone cracking in the tiger's grip.

After 4 pm on both the days, we were escorted back to the Royal Bengal Resort. The islands have no electricity, but the tourist resorts run on generator were yet another surprise for us. We got to see an enactment of the Bon Bibi legend by a local women’s group on the very first evening. The play was done laudably: the acts, the songs and dialogues (even though they were in Bangla, a language we don't follow, the drama was good enough to keep us riveted), not to mention the costumes, brought this jungle-lore alive before us. 

On the last day, we travelled on the Baba Vishwanath – another, smaller launch – and were taken to see the farmland and settlements in the village of Charkerighar. We walked across an embankment, taking in the destruction wrought by the cyclone Alia, signs of which were everywhere. Alia had flattened the human settlements completely and ripped apart the manmade banks. The ‘farms’ in the tide country are not as one would visualise them in other parts of India. Imagine land floating on water, here rising and there sinking. Water finds its own way into little and big inlets and reminds you in no uncertain terms, lest you forget your school geography, that it is water that dominates the planet and that land is a mere digression.

Vidya has uploaded a few pictures here.