The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [88]
After all this came the feast, done in the old style and artfully arranged, with banana leaves set out on the earth and the guests seated in the shade of murmuring trees. Among those who were serving I spotted Kusum, who showed me the massive dekchis in which the food had been cooked. There were gigantic prawns, both golda and bagda, and a fantastic variety of fish: tangra, ilish, parshey, puti, bhetki, rui, chitol.
I was amazed: knowing that many of the settlers went hungry, I couldn’t understand how this show of plenty had been arranged.
“Where did all this come from?” I said to Kusum.
“Everyone contributed what they could,” she said. “But there was not much to buy — only the rice. The rest came from the rivers. Since yesterday we’ve all been out with nets and lines, even the children.” She pointed proudly to the parshey: “Fokir caught six of those this morning.”
My admiration was boundless. What better way to win the hearts of these city people than by feeding them freshly caught fish? How well these settlers understood their guests!
Kusum urged me to sit down and start eating. But I could not bring myself to sit with the guests: I was not of their number. “No, Kusum,” I said. “It’s better you feed those who can spread the word. This is precious food — it would be wasted on me.” I hung back in the shade of the trees, and from time to time Fokir or Kusum would bring me a few morsels wrapped in a banana leaf.
It was soon evident that the occasion had served its purpose: the guests were undeniably impressed. Speeches were made extolling the achievements of the settlers. It was universally agreed that the significance of Morichjhãpi extended far beyond the island itself. Was it possible that in Morichjhãpi had been planted the seeds of what might become, if not a Dalit nation, then at least a safe haven, a place of true freedom for the country’s most oppressed?
When the day was almost at an end, I went up to Khokon, the writer I had once known, and stood silently in his line of sight. He glanced at me without recognition and went on with his conversation. In a while I tapped his elbow: “Eijé. Here, Khokon?”
He was annoyed at being addressed so familiarly by a stranger. “And who, moshai, might you be?” he said.
When I told him who I was, his mouth fell open and his tongue began to flop around inside it like a netted fish. “You?” he said at last. “You?”
I said, “Yes. It’s me.”
“You haven’t been heard from in so long, everybody thought —”
“That I was dead? As you see, I’m not.”
On the brink of saying “It would have been better so,” he cut himself short. “But what have you been doing all these years? Where have you been?”
I felt then as if I had been called upon to justify the entirety of my existence, to account for the years I had spent in Lusibari.
But what I had to say in answer was very modest: “I’ve been doing schoolmasteri in a place not far from here.”
“And your writing?”
I shrugged. What was there to say? “It’s a good thing I stopped,” I said. “My work would have been put to shame by yours.”
Writers! How they love flattery. He put his arm around my shoulders and led me off, indulgently lowering his voice, as an elder brother might with a younger. “So, Nirmal, tell me, how did you get mixed up with these settlers?”
“I know a couple of them,” I said. “Now that I’m almost retired, I’m thinking of doing some teaching here.”
“Here?” he said dubiously. “But the problem is, they may not be allowed to stay.”
“They’re here already,” I said. “How could they be evicted now? There would be bloodshed.”
He laughed. “My friend, have you forgotten what we used to say in the old days?”
“What?”
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
He laughed in the cynical way of those who, having never believed in the