The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [110]
Kanai scratched his head. “This must be a recent trend,” he said. “Perhaps it has something to do with overpopulation, or encroachment on the habitat, or something like that?”
“Don’t you believe it,” Nilima said scornfully. “These attacks have been going on for centuries — they were happening even when the population here was a fraction of what it is today. Look.” Standing on tiptoe, she pulled a file off a shelf and carried it to her desk. “Look over here — do you see that number?”
Kanai looked down at the page and saw that the tip of her finger was pointing to a numeral: 4,218.
“Look at that figure, Kanai,” Nilima said. “That’s the number of people who were killed by tigers in lower Bengal in a six-year period — between the years 1860 and 1866. The figures were compiled by J. Fayrer — he was the English naturalist who coined the phrase ‘Royal Bengal Tiger.’ Think of it, Kanai — over four thousand human beings killed. That’s almost two people every day for six years! What would the number add up to over a century?”
“Tens of thousands.” Kanai frowned as he looked down at the page. “It’s hard to believe.”
“Unfortunately,” said Nilima, “it’s all too true.”
“And why do you think it happens this way?” Kanai said. “What’s behind this?”
Nilima sat at her desk and sighed. “I’ve heard so many theories, Kanai. I just wish I knew which to believe.”
The one thing everyone agreed on, Nilima said, was that the tide country’s tigers were different from those elsewhere. In other habitats, tigers attacked human beings only in abnormal circumstances: if they happened to be crippled or were otherwise unable to hunt down any other kind of prey. But this was not true of the tide country’s tigers; even young and healthy animals were known to attack human beings. Some said that this propensity came from the peculiar conditions of the tidal ecology, in which large parts of the forest were subjected to daily submersions. The theory went that this raised the animals’ threshold of aggression by washing away their scent markings and confusing their territorial instincts. This was about as convincing a theory as Nilima had ever heard, but the trouble was that even if it was true, there was nothing that could be done about it.
With every few years came some new theory and some yet more ingenious solution. In the 1980s a German naturalist had suggested that the tigers’ preference for human flesh was somehow connected with the shortage of fresh water in the Sundarbans. This idea had been received with great enthusiasm by the Forest Department, and several pools had been excavated to provide the tigers with fresh water.
“Just imagine that,” said Nilima. “They were providing water for tigers! In a place where nobody thinks twice about human beings going thirsty!”
The digging was in vain, however. The pools had made no difference. The attacks continued as before.
“Then there was the electric-shock idea,” said Nilima, with laughter shining in her eyes.
Someone had decided that tigers could be conditioned with the methods Pavlov had used on his dogs. Clay models of human beings had been rigged up with wires and connected to car batteries. These contraptions were distributed all over the islands. For a while they seemed to be working and there was much jubilation. “But then the attacks started again. The tigers ignored the clay models and carried on as before.”
Another time, a forester came up with another, equally ingenious idea: what if people wore masks on the backs of their heads? Tigers always attacked humans from behind, the reasoning went, so they would shy away if they found themselves looking at a pair of painted eyes. This idea too was taken up with great enthusiasm. Many masks were made and distributed; word was put out that a wonderful new experiment was being tried in the Sundarbans. There was something so picturesque about the idea that it caught the public imagination: television cameras descended, filmmakers made films.
The tigers, alas, refused to cooperate: “Evidently they had no difficulty