The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [93]
“Look, comrade,” I said. “Look. Follow your eyes and tell me. What do you see?”
I suppose he was asking himself what I wanted. After looking this way and that, he said at last, “I see the bãdh, Saar.”
“The bãdh? Yes, of course, the bãdh.”
This was not the answer I had expected, but I fell upon it with inexpressible relief. For the bãdh is not just the guarantor of human life on our island; it is also our abacus and archive, our library of stories. So long as I had the bãdh in sight, I knew I would not lack for something to say.
“Go on, comrade. Look again; look carefully. Let’s see if you can pick out the spots where the embankment has been repaired. For each such repair I’ll give you a story.”
Fokir lifted a hand to point. “What happened there, Saar?”
“Ah, there. That breach happened twenty years ago, and it was neither storm nor flood that caused it. It was made by a man who wanted to settle a score with the family who lived next door to his. In the depths of the night he made a hole in the dyke, thinking to drown his neighbor’s fields. It never entered his mind to think that he was doing just as much harm to himself as to his enemy. That’s why neither family lives here anymore — for ten years afterward nothing grew in their fields.”
“And there, Saar? What happened there?”
“That one began simply enough, with an exceptionally high tide, a kotal gon, that came spilling over the top. The contract for the repairs was given to a man who was the brother-in-law of the head of the Panchayat. He swore he would fix it so that never again would a drop of water leak through. But they found later that the contractor had put in only half the materials he had been paid for. The profits had been shared by many different brothers-in-law.”
“And over there, Saar?”
Even storytellers know that discretion is sometimes a wiser course than valor. “As for that one, comrade, I had better not tell you too much. Do you see the people who live there, in those dwellings that run beside the embankment? It happened once that the people of that “para” had voted for the wrong party. So when the other party came to power, they decided to settle scores. Their way of doing it was to make a hole in the bãdh. Of such things, my friend, are politicians made, but let’s not dwell on this too much — it may not be good for our health. Look there instead; follow my finger.”
I pointed him in a direction where half a mile of the embankment had been beaten down, in the 1930s, by a storm.
“Imagine, Fokir,” I said. “Imagine the lives of your ancestors. They were new to this island, freshly arrived in the tide country. After years of struggle they had managed to create the foundations of the bãdh; they had even managed to grow a few handfuls of rice and vegetables. After years of living on stilt-raised platforms, they had finally been able to descend to earth and make a few shacks and shanties on level ground. All this by virtue of the bãdh. And imagine that fateful night when the storm struck, at exactly the time that a kotal gon was setting in; imagine how they cowered in their roofless huts and watched the waters rising, rising, gnawing at the mud and the sand they had laid down to hold the river off. Imagine what went through their heads as they watched this devouring tide eating its way through the earthworks, stalking them wherever they were. There was not one among them, I will guarantee you, my young friend, who would not rather have stood before a tiger than have looked into the maws of that tide.”
“Were there other storms, Saar?”
“Yes, many. Look there.” I pointed to an indentation in the island’s shore, a place that looked as if some giant had bitten off a part of Lusibari’s coast. “Look. That was done by the storm of 1970. It was a bhangon, a breaking: the river tore off a four-acre piece of land and carried it away. In an instant