The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [129]
“Sure. Go on.”
Kanai held up a finger and pointed to the heavens. “All right then, comrades, listen: I’ll tell you about the Matla River and a stormstruck matal and the matlami of a lord who was called Canning. Shono, kaan pete shono. Put out your ears so you can listen properly.”
LIKE SO MANY other places in the tide country, Canning was named by an Ingrej. And in this case it was no ordinary Englishman who gave it his name — not only was he a lord, he was a laat, nothing less than a viceroy, Lord Canning. This laat and his ledi were as generous in sprinkling their names around the country as a later generation of politicians would be in scattering their ashes: you came across them in the most unexpected places — a road here, a jail there, an occasional asylum. No matter that Ledi Canning was tall, thin and peppery — a Calcutta sweets maker took it into his head to name a new confection after her. This sweet was black, round and sugary — in other words, it was everything its namesake was not, which was lucky for the sweets maker, because it meant his creation quickly became a success. People gobbled up the new sweets at such a rate that they could not take the time to say “Lady Canning.” The name was soon shortened to ledigeni.
Now surely there must exist a law of speech which says that if “Lady Canning” is to become ledigeni, then “Port Canning” should become Potugeni or possibly Podgeni. But look: the port’s name has survived undamaged and nobody ever calls it by anything but the lord’s name, “Canning.”
But why? Why would a laat leave the comfort of his throne in order to plant his name in the mud of the Matla?
Well, remember Mohammad bin Tughlaq, the mad sultan who moved his capital from Delhi to a village in the middle of nowhere? It was a bee from the same hive that stung the British. They got it into their heads that they needed a new port, a new capital for Bengal — Calcutta’s Hooghly River was silting up and its docks, they said, would soon be choked with mud. Jothariti, teams of planners and surveyors, went out and wandered the land, striding about in wigs and breeches, mapping and measuring. And at last on the banks of the Matla they came on a place that caught their fancy, a little fishing village that overlooked a river so broad that it looked like a highway to the sea.
Now, it’s no secret that the word matla means “mad” in Bangla — and everyone who knows the river knows also that this name has not been lightly earned. But those Ingrej town planners were busy men who had little time for words and names. They went back to the laat and told him about the wonderful location they had found. They described the wide, mighty river, the flat plain and deep channel that led straight to the sea; they showed him their plans and maps and listed all the amenities they would build — hotels, promenades, parks, palaces, banks, streets. Oh, it was to be a grand place, this new capital on the banks of the mad Matla — it would lack for nothing.
The contracts were given out and the work began: thousands of mistris and mahajans and overseers moved to the shores of the Matla and began to dig. They drank the Matla’s water and worked in the way that matals and madmen work: nothing could stop them, not even the Uprising of 1857. If you were here then, on the banks of the Matla, you would never have known that in northern India chapatis were passing from village to village; that Mangal Pandey had turned his gun on his officers; that women and children were being massacred and rebels were being tied to the mouths of cannons. Here on the banks of the smiling river the work continued: an embankment arose, foundations were dug, a strand was laid out, a railway line built.
And all the while the Matla lay still and waited.
But not even a river can hide all its secrets, and it so happened that at that time, in Kolkata, there lived a man of a mentality not unlike the Matla’s. This was a lowly