River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [9]
By the time Neel set foot on the Morne the notion that storms revolved around an eye was almost a commonplace – but the concept had made such an impression on Neel that he remembered very clearly his own first encounter with it, some ten years before. He had read about it in a journal and had been astonished and captivated by the image it conjured up – of a gigantic oculus, at the far end of a great, spinning telescope, examining everything it passed over, upending some things, and leaving others unscathed; looking for new possibilities, creating fresh beginnings, rewriting destinies and throwing together people who would never have met.
Retrospectively, the idea gave shape and meaning to his own experience of the storm – and yet, at the time, Neel had had no conception of its significance. How was it possible then that Deeti, an illiterate, frightened young woman, had been granted this insight? And that too at a time when only a handful of the world’s most advanced scientists knew of it?
It was a mystery, there was no doubt of that in Neel’s mind. This was why, in listening to Deeti’s telling of the story, he began to feel that Deeti’s voice was carrying him back into the eye.
… And now the Serang and the others are shouting in my ears: Alo-alo! Alé-alé! And your granper, heaven knows how big he is, how heavy and byin-bati. He goes to the side of the ship and I fall at his feet: Let me come with you, let me come, I beg him, but he pushes me away: No, no! You must think of the baby in your stomach; you cannot come! And then they all begin to climb into the boat – and all around us, the tufaan, raging, raging; a blink of an eye and the boat pulls away. Suddenly it is gone …
Neel could almost feel the the planks of the boat, shuddering under his feet, the rain driving against his face: it was so real that he was grateful when the children began to tug at his arm, bringing him back to the shrine: What happened next, Neel-mawsa? Were you afraid?
No, not then, he said. I am afraid now when I think of it – but when it was happening there was no time. The wind was blowing with such violence that it was all we could do to cling to the boat; it seemed as if at any minute the boat would be whirled away with all of us in it. But miraculously it didn’t happen: when we were least expecting it, the storm’s eye came upon us and the winds fell away. It was in that brief interval that we rowed the boat ashore. Once our feet were on the sand, our first thought was to pick up the boat and carry it to some safe place. But Serang Ali stopped us: No, he said, the best thing to do was to knock a couple of planks out of the bottom, overturn it, and push it back into the current! We couldn’t believe it; it seemed like madness – how would we ever get off that island if we didn’t have a boat? But the Serang brushed us off: there were boats a-plenty on the island, he said, and to keep the longboat, with its tell-tale marking, would entail many risks. If it was found, people would know we were alive, and we’d be pursued till the end of our days – far better to let the world think we were dead; that way we would be written off and could start new lives. And he was right, of course – it was the best thing to do.
And then? What happened then?
The first night we spent under an overhang of rocks, sheltered from the full blast of the storm. We were, as you can imagine, in a strange state, battered in body, but alive, and better still, free. Yet, what were we to do with this freedom? Apart from Serang Ali none of us knew where we were. We thought we’d been