Indian fiction writing in English falls into two distinct phases. The RK Narayan, Khushwant Singh, and Raja Rao era between 1940 and 1980 treated fiction as it was meant to be. The characters were genuine, simple yet troubled, spiritual without being exhortative, and also came with honest alcoholism and loads of sex. However after Salman Rushdie, Indian writers have had this fixation with developing a narrative around political and popular uprising. While the causes were genuine, the narrative and voices always sound concocted. RK Narayan, Khushwant Singh, and Raja Rao wrote for themselves and lived in an era, which was unaffected by market compulsion. The post- Rushdie writers suffocate their characters in an attempt to make them consumable to the West.
Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide is set in the mangrove islands of Sunderbans, West Bengal. The Hungry Tide explores refugee resettlement in the forest reserves of Marichjhapi, Sunderbans and the complex Man-Animal relationship in the archipelagos ecosystem. The book makes for a fast reading because the characters do not throw any new light on the two issues.
The central characters are Mr Kanai Dutt, Ms.Piyali Roy, and Mr. Fokir. Mr Dutt is in his early 40s, single, and runs a profitable translation service in New Delhi. He employs his polyglot skills to mollify his ego and charm women. His life is sexless and preys on unsuspecting, yet intelligent women. His aunt, Nilima Bose compares his preying instincts to the “Tigers in the Sunderbans”. He is called by Ms Bose to Lusibari Island, Sunderbans to read his deceased uncle’s unopened notebooks.
Ms. Piyali Roy, a cetologist from Seattle is in Sunderbans to do a research study on the last surviving group of fresh water dolphins- the Irrawady Dolphins. Mr. Ghosh’s description of her research sounds dubious. She spots and then stalks dolphins, makes some disparate entry in her data sheets and notes the GPS reading. God forbid, the journal, which takes her manuscript. Mr Dutt flirts and calls her a “brave woman” for her often lonesome work. Ms. Roy is mostly self-pitying throughout the story.
“Kanai, tell me, do you see anything easy about what I do? Look at me: I have no home, no money and no prospects. My friends are thousands of kilometers away and I get to see them maybe once in year, if I’m lucky. And that’s the least of it. On top of that is the knowledge that what I’m doing is more or less futile.’
Mr. Fokir is the boatman who has a preternatural understanding of the Sunderban waters. He rescues Ms. Roy, when she drowns herself, while going out in a forest department’s launch. Despite hampered by language and experiences, Ms. Roy and Mr. Fokir communicate seamlessly with each other.
An interesting back story to Mr. Fokir is provided by the notebook left to Mr.Dutt by his uncle, Mr Nirmal Bose. Mr Bose, a dreamer and a poet, upon retiring as headmaster of a school in Lusibari is restless. On hearing about the refuge resettlement and protest against government on a nearby island his youthful communist ideals are brought to the forefront and springs into action. But the uprising is not his only draw; he is also drawn towards Kusum, Fokir’s mother who is part of the settler group from Bihar in Marichjhapi. On meeting the group’s leader in the island he realizes he has nothing to offer to the movement. He writes this in the notebook he leaves for Mr. Dutt.
‘There’s only one thing I know to do,’ I said.’ And that is to teach.’
‘Teach?’ I could see he was struggling to suppress a smile. ‘What could you teach here?’
‘I could teach your children about this place that you’ve come to: the tide country. I have time – I am soon to retire.’
I’ll teach them to dream.’
In the notebook he bemoans his life spent in Lusibari, but hides everything to indicate his love for Kusum.
" The true tragedy of a routinely spent life is that its wastefulness does not become apparent till it is too late."
In the middle section of the book, Mr. Ghosh alternates the narration between the research trip and the Mr. Dutt’s reading of his uncle’s notebook (written in 1979). While he may not possess the delectable simplicity of Mr. Naipaul, Mr. Ghosh smoothly and effortlessly changes narrative voices within a chapter and at times within a page.
Besides an all-revealing, confessional notebook of Mr. Bose, the other characters lack depth. And when they do talk there voices sound inauthentic. Alright, all Indian characters speaking in English lack authenticity. Ms Roy, despite doing captivating research, digresses into loneliness of her work on every conversation, which last more than two pages. However Mr. Ghosh correctly assesses the persona of Mr. Dutt and his depiction of a Bengali man from New Delhi is accurate. Besides being forced to read the drivel by his uncle, he creates opportunities to flirt with Ms. Roy, until Ms Roy acknowledges his companionship.
The conversation between Ms. Roy and Mr. Dutt are pretty vacant. It is quite surprising to read Ms. Roy’s thoughts on Man-Animal relation in a difficult ecosystem are naïve. In addition, Mr. Ghosh unashamedly suggests that illiterate can also fall in love. This and the settlement issues are straight pandering to the west. The west loves to read about anti-governmental agitations in developing countries.
The attractive part of this book is the nonfiction description of the Sunderbans. The secondary research done on the mangrove forest by Mr. Ghosh is highly commendable.
There is Eastern mind and there is Western. The East is always looking into within and the West without. East is apparently full of inertia exploring the internal, while West teems with go getters and earth movers, bringing technology and affluence (which has never been without help from the East, whether today or during colonial times). So how does one reconcile the disparate methodologies of the East and West? I believe this division and debate will be endless for some, while for several others, there never was a debate to begin with. They have realized the importance of both and can reconcile and imbibe one without diluting the other.
If Johan Sebastian Bach invited Tyagaraja to his house for Christmas, how would he have honored his guest? Bach would have probably arranged tulasi dalamula composed by Tyagaraja in Raga Mayamalava Gowlai to be played for the highly discriminating German audience in his town. In the interludes, Tyagu would have enjoyed playing his veena alongside the pianists and violinists, making sure that the grammar of the raga remained resolved throughout. The grand orchestral arrangement would have sounded something like this:
