The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

Author:Amitav Ghosh
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP (CANADA)
Published: 2011-12-21T00:55:49+00:00

STORMS

I would have gone back to Morichjhãpi the very next week but was prevented by the usual procedures and ceremonies that accompany a schoolmaster’s retirement. At the end, however, it was all over and I was officially reckoned a man who had reached the completion of his working life.

A few days later Horen knocked on my study door. “Saar!

“I’ve just come from the market at Kumirmari,” he said. “I met Kusum there and she insisted I bring her here.”

“Here!” I said with a start. “To Lusibari? But why?”

“To meet with Mashima. The Morichjhãpi people want to ask Mashima for help.”

I understood at once: this too was a part of the settlers’ efforts to enlist support. Yet I could have told them that in this instance it was unlikely to bear fruit.

“Horen, you should have stopped Kusum from coming,” I said. “It’ll serve no purpose for her to meet with Nilima.”

“I did tell her, Saar. But she insisted.”

“So where is she now?”

“She’s downstairs, Saar, waiting to see Mashima. But look who I’ve brought upstairs.” He stepped aside and I saw now that Fokir had been lurking behind him all this while. “I’ve got to go to the market, Saar, so I’ll just leave him here with you.” With that he went bounding down the stairs, leaving me alone with the five-year-old.

As a schoolteacher I was accustomed to dealing with children in the plural. Never having had a child of my own, I was unused to coping with them in the singular. Now, subjected to the scrutiny of a lone pair of wide-open, five-year-old eyes, I forgot everything I had planned to say. In a near panic I led the boy across the roof and pointed to the Raimangal’s mohona.

“Look, comrade,” I said. “Look. Follow your eyes and tell me. What do you see?”

I suppose he was asking himself what I wanted. After looking this way and that, he said at last, “I see the bãdh, Saar.”

“The bãdh? Yes, of course, the bãdh.”

This was not the answer I had expected, but I fell upon it with inexpressible relief. For the bãdh is not just the guarantor of human life on our island; it is also our abacus and archive, our library of stories. So long as I had the bãdh in sight, I knew I would not lack for something to say.

“Go on, comrade. Look again; look carefully. Let’s see if you can pick out the spots where the embankment has been repaired. For each such repair I’ll give you a story.”

Fokir lifted a hand to point. “What happened there, Saar?”

“Ah, there. That breach happened twenty years ago, and it was neither storm nor flood that caused it. It was made by a man who wanted to settle a score with the family who lived next door to his. In the depths of the night he made a hole in the dyke, thinking to drown his neighbor’s fields. It never entered his mind to think that he was doing just as much harm to himself as to his enemy.

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