The Hungry Tide: A Book Review

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 | 0 comments

by

Sumanya Anand Velamur

This review may be downloaded as a Word document from here.

The following review was written with a focus on the community and its development.


The Hungry Tide is a novel set in the Sunderbans. Piyali Roy, an American of Indian origin, comes to the Sunderbans in search of the Orcaella brevirostri or the Irawaddy Dolphin. A cetologist by profession, she is unsuspectingly thrown into the events of the story. A typical independent American, someone who likes to be left alone, she for the most part, tries to keep to her business. But the tide country pulls her into the story. In many ways, Piya can be considered the protagonist, because she shares a value system with the reader (most probably urban and western). So Piya’s reactions to that indigenous culture would be understandable to the reader. Kanai Dutt, a businessman in Delhi who specializes in different languages, comes into this mini community in order to read the letters written to him by his uncle, Nirmal. But, he too becomes intensely involved in the story, so much so that his self-composure and self-confidence that is so striking in the beginning, is destroyed by the end of the book. Kanai again represents a typical male chauvinist urban dweller. His initial interest in Piya is purely sexual. There are certain places in the story when Kanai’s literary and intellectual talents surface but only momentarily, for he has been forced to make a business of his talent. Fokir, a member of the community is a fisherman by profession and one may argue, the protagonist of the story. He specializes in catching crabs. He is the typical tribesman, proud of his traditions and heritage. This ‘noble savage’ aspect of his character makes him extremely attractive to Piya.

Piya and Kanai met each other on the train to Canning. After they parted ways, there is a section where Ghosh describes Piya’s unpleasant experience with government officials and the nexus they have with big businesses, in this case the owner of a launch who obviously tries to cheat Piya. As a fallout of this event Piya lands in Fokir’s boat where she spends a couple of days and nights with Fokir and his son Tutul. Meanwhile, Kanai reaches Lusibari and there he finds that Moyna, a trainee nurse in the hospital, is missing her husband Fokir and son, Tutul. In Fokir’s boat Piya catches her first glimpse of the Irawaddy dolphin. Throughout the journey Piya is taken up with Fokir and the rituals he performs. And for her, this last gesture of leading her straight to the Irawadddy dolphin only increases the mysticism surrounding him. They did not seem to feel the language barrier that existed between them. They just seemed to understand everything the other says.

The package that his uncle Nirmal had left for him before his death some years ago contained a notebook where Nirmal had written about Morichjapi, an island in the Sunderbans. Nirmal, a Marxist from Calcutta, came with his young bride Nilima to teach in a school in Lusibari in 1950. Originally from Dhaka, Nirmal had come to Calcutta as a student where he subsequently married Nilima, an enterprising student whom he had the good fortune to teach. Coming from a highly educated background that was also known for its tradition of public service, having been involved in the Congress party, she was mesmerized by the passionate and fiery lectures given by Nirmal, her English teacher. She pursued him relentlessly and announced her marriage plans to her outraged family. Subsequently, the couple settled in Lusibari. The plight of women in the Sunderbans was shocking to Nilima, who began the Mohila Saghoton or the women’s union that later became the Badabon Trust.

During the British era, a Scotsman, Sir Daniel Hamilton had a vision that the fertile lands of the Sunderbans could produce gold. He learnt that this land had been occupied before but people were driven out by tempests, tides, crocodiles, tigers and above all the Forest Department that acted as if the land was their ‘kingdom’. The mangroves, the prime vegetation of the land, make it impossible for people to live, and once they are gone erases all evidence of their sojourn there. In 1903 he bought ten thousand acres of the tide country from the British sarkar. He opened the land to people who were willing to work. At that time, land was such a scarcity that people came in droves. They left their petty differences and came to work hard and control the unruly land. Predictably, the tigers and the crocodiles began killing people and soon Sir Daniel started rewarding those who killed these predators. Daniel Hamilton’s vision involved creating a utopian society where there wouldn’t be any exploitation, where men could be farmers, poets and carpenters all at once. He had also evolved his own currency which carried the inscription, “ The Note is based on the living man, not on the dead coin. It costs practically nothing, and yields a dividend One Hundred Per Cent in land reclaimed, tanks excavated, houses built, &c. and in a more healthy and abundant LIFE”.

The community was relatively new and had to contend with natural disasters to survive. In this case the land itself was the enemy of the people. The Sunderbans are an immense archipelago of islands formed by the Ganga as she makes her way to the sea. The uniqueness of this area is that the tides submerge whole pieces of land and throws up new sandbanks where earlier there were none. So almost everyday, there is a change in the landscape, making it a very difficult terrain to conquer. This also explains the title of the book, The Hungry Tide because the tide seems to swallow whole masses of land. Added to this, the kind of vegetation it offers is nothing short of fatal. The mangroves and the wild animals that lurk within are a constant source of threat in this region. This also gives the tide a predatory nature as humans become the prey. Even the existing folklore revolves around this hostility of the land. For example, the tales of Bon Bibi who is supposed to keep the forests safe for the people, safe from Dokhin Rai, the bad Demon. Moreover immense destructive storms are known to hit these lands, sparing nothing as they destroy everything. In fact, the novel ends with precisely such a storm.

Another source of concern is the government, i.e. the forest department. In its efforts to conserve wildlife, the government does not consider the lives of the people living there. In the incident involving the forest officer dispatched to guide Piya in her search for the Irawaddy dolphin and Fokir, first the forest officer insists they take a certain launch because he may benefit from the proceeds. Moreover, the launch owner and the forest officer demand a lot of money by way of pay. When Fokir’s boat is seen at a distance fishing in off-limits waters, the officer gives chase. When they catch up with the small boat, the forest officer points his rifle at Fokir and tells Piya that he is a poacher. Most government policies for conservation of natural wild life are effective only in keeping the local people, fisherman, hunters etc from reaping the benefits of the land. Where as big business, for the most part, gets away with exploiting the land. Ultimately, Fokir had to pay huge amounts to get rid of the forest officer.

In another incident, Moyna, Fokir’s wife tells Kanai, that there is no future in fishing since the nylon nets that are used to catch the prawns are so fine that they succeed in catching the eggs of the prawn too. Nilima had tried to ban these nets because with the momentum that fishing and trading had gained, it only meant the death of the fish and an imbalance in the marine ecosystem.

In yet another incident, the Fokir’s boat nears a village and drops anchor for the night. During the night they witness the killing of a tiger by villagers. They learn that the tiger had been troubling these people for some time and had killed many people as well as some animals that belonged to the village. When it attacked a poultry shed that night, the villagers locked the shed and set it ablaze, thereby killing it. Next morning, forest boats were seen to make their way to the island and the people were punished. What is glossed over is that the tiger has been a natural predator in these parts and the people have taken the most logical obvious step of collective action. Also, there is a difference between a primitive and poor people, struggling against the destructive forces of nature, killing a tiger, and that of big business interests poaching tigers. One must also remember that a primitive and poor people provide and are part of the ecosystem unlike mass forest destruction carried out by business interests.

Moreover, these people have their own form of conservation. Their folktales tell of the good land controlled by Bon Bibi, their goddess, and the dangerous land controlled by Dokhin Rai, the bad demon. Whoever ventures into this land may not return alive. There is also a symbiotic relationship that the tide people have with the rest of the ecosystem. This is reflected in one incident where Ghosh describes how a pair of Irawaddy dolphins herd a school of fish towards the boat, in the process getting a catch themselves. The government needs to take cognizance of that. After all, the idea of forming a community is to make a collective effort at battling the forces of nature. One is again reminded of the hungry tide, as the tide of the government that swallows all efforts to settle made by people.

Another issue is that of refugees coming in from Bangladesh. As a sad fallout of communal politics and the division of Bengal into East Pakistan and West Bengal, the Sunderbans were divided. So many refugees crossed over and finding lots of land available to them decided to settle there.

That is the basis of the Morichjhapi story. Kusum, another important character in this story, also Fokir’s mother, is one of the people who has settled in Morichjapi. Kusum’s father is killed by a tiger and Kusum’s mother is in search of a means of livelihood when she is sold into the immoral trade by a local pimp who promises her a respectable job in Calcutta. Kusum herself is rescued by Horen, a distant relative, who places her with the Baodabon Trust. That is her first meeting with Nirmal, Neelima and Kanai, a small boy at the time. She later marries a fellow migrant from the tide country. There, Kusum comes in contact with the refugees from Bangladesh. These people were the “poorest of the rural poor, exploited both by the Muslim fundamentalists and the Hindu upper castes”, dalits from the Bangladeshi Sunderbans. When these people crossed the border during partition they were met with the Indian police who took them to the settlement camps in Madhya Pradesh. The land was so different from the tide country land that these people could not live there. Sometime in 1978, they heard of a large empty island on this side of the Sunderbans called Morichjhapi. Battling the police and other government authorities, these refugees left their camps and started making their way towards the east. Kusum joins them for she too hankers for the fertile land and the rivers of the tide country. Unfortunately, Morichjhapi is detailed for tiger conservation. Consequently, there were many confrontations between the people and the government. The notebook that Nirmal leaves for Kanai to read is all about the resistance that these refugees offer to the government. To Nirmal, it acquired a revolutionary colour. Again, one gets the feeling that government ideas are skewed for the land that the refugees occupy is reserve land detailed for forest conservation.

Who are the good Samaritans? There is a dilemma that visits many do-gooders at various points of time in their lives. Which is good – propogating revolutionary ideologies or helping people cope with existing circumstances? There are differences that exist between Nirmal and Neelima that is reflective of this paradox. Neelima, like a typical enterprising social worker, established the Badabon trust and began empowering the women in the community. Her biggest achievement yet is the establishment of the hospital in Lusibari. A successful hospital, it also trains aspiring nurses like Moyna. Nirmal, does not approve of this kind of social work. His contribution to the community is by recognizing the revolution waged by the Bangladeshi refugees and taking part in it and writing about revolution. In fact, Neelima goes so far as to tell him not to go to Morichjapi since his anti-establishment actions will not help the Trust or the hospital. Her philosophy is to work with the system at changing it from within; his philosophy, on the other hand, is to work against the system by changing it entirely through revolution. This particular dynamic in their relationship is reflective of not only the paradox between the different kinds of ‘do-gooders’, it is also reflective of the paradox that exists all over India. When is it time for revolution? Can the work done by people like Neelima be nullified just because they are more practical?

Development is another issue that Amitav Ghosh tries to raise questions about in the novel. The idea of development being an issue in this novel may be contested as being far-fetched and consequently, speculative. Indeed, the community's origin itself is enterprising in nature because these people answered Sir Hamilton’s call. So there is no reason why these children of such a hard-working and futuristic people should not be, in fact, ready for change and a better life.

There is a section in this community that is enterprising, wants to progress, earn more, be educated and in other words develop into a community much like any other urban community all over India. Moyna, Fokir’s wife, is one such person. Nilima describes her as “ambitious and bright”. Without any support or encouragement from her family she had educated herself in the neighbouring school. After finishing with school, she wanted to go to college but her family balked at the idea. So they got her married to Fokir, who could ‘neither read or write and made his living by catching crabs’. But determined as she was in her ambitions she was successful in making Fokir shift to Lusibari so that she can take the nurse training course in the hospital built by the Bodabon Trust. Predictably, she does not want her five-year-old son, Tutul, to catch crabs for a living and prefers that he go to school. There is no future in crab catching. Fokir finds these concepts difficult to understand. So development at what cost? Is development a human right or are human rights the first to be discarded in the pursuit of development?

Most of these issues are general social issues. The Sunderbans are a microcosmic representation of national and international (pertaining to the Third World) social issues with minor variations. Ultimately, they represent the skewed priorities and policies of a government that achieves sanction from a process that is exclusive of certain communities and certain people.

Apart from being a novel that raises many social questions, The Hungry Tide primarily tells of the personal stories of Piya, Kanai, Fokir, Kusum, Nirmal and Neelima. The novel deals with conflict and affinity in personal relationships. Piya is attracted towards Fokir and vice-versa. Kanai is attracted towards Piya and Moyna. His urban and elite chauvinism makes it difficult for him to understand what makes Fokir attractive to Moyna and Piya. He goes so far as to ask Moyna if her ambitious nature would not prefer a successful man like himself to a primitive man like Fokir. Therefore, there is a visible and obvious hostility between Fokir and Kanai. This hostility reaches its climax in the incident where Fokir successfully scares Kanai out of his wits when they are rowing together in Fokir’s boat. That is Fokir’s way of showing he is the master of the tide. A similar parallel is seen in Nirmal’s adoration of Kusum pitted against Horen’s love for Kusum. The author goes into great depth in describing the work of a cetologist or a marine biologist; his history of the tide country also seem to be well-researched. Both shows of scholarship only increase the reader’s conviction of the story. Also, the authors description of Nirmal, a Marxist, shows both the glory of Marxism and the poignancy inherent in it. The author also shows sensitivity to people and emotions, a quality found in another of his novels, Shadow Lines.


Ghosh, Amitav. The Hungry Tide, Ravi Dayal Publisher, New Delhi, India, 2004.

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