The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [87]
“Saar,” Horen said one day, “I have news from Morichjhãpi. There’s to be a big feast there. Kusum said you should come.”
I was astonished. “A feast? What kind of feast?”
“They’ve invited many people from Kolkata — writers, intellectuals, journalists. They want to tell them about the island and all they have achieved.”
This explained everything: once again I was impressed by the acumen of the settlers’ leadership. Clearly they had decided their best defense was to enlist the support of public opinion and this was to be a step in that direction. Of course I had to go. Horen said we would leave in the morning and I told him I would be ready.
When I got back home, Nilima took one look at me and said, “What’s the matter? Why’ve you got that look on your face?”
Why was it I’d never spoken to Nilima about Morichjhãpi before? Perhaps in my heart I knew she would not share my enthusiasm; perhaps I knew she would see my excitement about their project as a betrayal of her own efforts in Lusibari. In any event, these fears were soon confirmed. I described as best I could the drama of the settlers’ arrival; I told her about the quest that had brought them from their banishment in central India to the edge of the tide country; I explained their plans, their program for building a new future for themselves, their determination to create a new land in which to live.
To my surprise, I found she already knew about the settlers and their arrival: she had heard about it in Kolkata from bureaucrats and politicians. The government, she said, saw these people as squatters and land grabbers; there was going to be trouble; they would not be allowed to remain.
“Nirmal,” she said, “I don’t want you going there. It’s not that I have anything against the settlers. I just don’t want you to be in harm’s way.”
I realized at that moment, with a great sense of sadness, that from now on my relationship with Morichjhãpi would have to be conducted in secret. I had intended to tell her about the feast of the next day but now said nothing. Knowing Nilima as I did, I was sure she would find a way to prevent me from going.
Yet I would not have lied had she not pressed me. She saw me packing my jhola and asked if I was planning to go somewhere.
“Yes, I have to leave tomorrow morning.” I made up a story about visiting a school in Mollakhali. I knew she didn’t believe me, for she looked at me closely and said, “And who are you going with?”
“Horen,” I said.
“Oh?” she said. “Horen?” And the inflection of her voice as she said this was enough to make me fear for the safety of my secret.
Thus was sown the seed of our mistrust.
But to the feast I went — and it proved to be one of the strangest days of my existence. It was as if, on the eve of my retirement, I had been presented with a glimpse of the life I might have led if I had stayed in Kolkata. The guests who had been brought in from the city were exactly the people I would have known: journalists, photographers, well-known authors; there was the novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay and the journalist Jyotirmoy Datta. Some of them I even recognized for I had known them back in the university. One of them — we used to call him Khokon in those days — had once been a friend as well as a comrade. I observed him from a distance, marveling at how well he looked, at the bright effulgence of his face and the raven-black hue of his hair. Would this have been me had I stayed on, living the literary life?
I became aware as never before of all my unacknowledged regrets.
I hung back, following at a distance, as the settlers’ leaders led the guests on a tour of the island. There was much to show — even in the short while I had been away, there had been many additions, many improvements. Salt pans had been created, tube wells had been planted, water had been dammed for the farming of fish, a bakery had started up, boat builders had set up workshops, a pottery had been founded as well as an ironsmith’s shop;