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By Root 893 0

with an angry outburst of clicking and clattering. The unlikely eloquence of the sound drew a laugh from Piya. Her birthday was in July and she had often wondered why the ancients had included a crab in the zodiac when there were so many other, more interesting animals to choose from. But now, as she watched the creatures scuttling about in the hold, she found herself wishing that she knew more about crabs. She recalled a class in which the teacher had demonstrated how some kinds of crabs actually laundered the mud they lived in, scrubbing it grain by grain. Their feet and their sides were lined with hairs that formed microscopic brushes and spoons. They used these to scrape off the diatoms and other edible matter attached to each grain of sand. They were a sanitation department and a janitorial team rolled into one: they kept the mangroves alive by removing their leaves and litter; without them the trees would choke on their own debris. Didn’t they represent some fantastically large proportion of the system’s biomass? Didn’t they outweigh even the trees and the leaves? Hadn’t someone said that intertidal forests should be named after crabs rather than mangroves since it was they — certainly not the crocodile or the tiger or the dolphin — who were the keystone species of the entire ecosystem?

She had thought of these concepts — keystone species, biomass — as ideas that applied to things other than herself. To nature, in short — for who was it who had said that the definition of “nature” was that it included everything not formed by human intention? But it was not her own intention that had brought her here today; it was the crabs — because they were Fokir’s livelihood and without them he would not have known to lead her to this pool where the Orcaella came. Maybe the ancients had it right after all. Perhaps it was the crab that ruled the tide of her destiny.

TRAVELS

RETURNING TO THE Guest House, Kanai found that Moyna had left him his lunch in a tiffin carrier. The meal was simple: plain rice, musuri’r dal, a quick-cooked chorchori of potatoes, fish bones and a kind of green leaf he could not identify. Finally there was a watery jhol of a tiny but toothsome fish called murola. Even cold, the food was delicious. Kanai’s cook was from Lucknow, and his table at home in New Delhi tended to be set with elaborate Mughlai dishes. It was a long time since Kanai had eaten simple Bengali food and the tastes seemed to explode in his head. At the end of the meal he was giddily replete.

After he had put away the utensils, Kanai made his way up the stairs to Nirmal’s study. Shutting the door behind him, he pulled a chair up to the desk and flipped open the notebook.

You, Kanai, were among the last to see Kusum in Lusibari, in 1970. That year, on the eve of the performance of the Bon Bibi Johuranama, she vanished as if into the eye of a storm. No one knew where she went; no trace of her remained. That was the last we heard of Kusum and, to be truthful, we paid little mind to her fate. Sadly, it is all too common in these parts for young people and children to disappear into the city: there are so many such that one loses track of them.

The years went by and the time of my retirement approached. I would be lying if I did not admit that the prospect filled my heart with trepidation. I had been headmaster for close to thirty years: the school, my pupils, my teaching — these things had become my life. Without the pattern and order of a classroom routine, what would become of me? I remembered my days of disorder when the world looked so irredeemably confused that to lie abed seemed the best possible course. Would this condition beset me again? You can imagine my despondency.

The true tragedy of a routinely spent life is that its wastefulness does not become apparent till it is too late. For years I had been telling Nilima that I’d been writing, up in my study. She was glad for me; she took no pleasure in the fact that she enjoyed so much esteem in the world and I so little. She wanted me to be known for what she believed me to be