The Hungry Tide (41 page)

“Marxism and poetry?” Piya said drily, raising her eyebrows. “It seems like an odd combination.”

“It was,” Kanai agreed. “But those contradictions were typical of his generation. Nirmal was perhaps the least materialistic person I've ever known. But it was very important for him to believe that he was a historical materialist.”

“And what exactly does that mean?”

“For him it meant that everything which existed was interconnected: the trees, the sky, the weather, people, poetry, science, nature. He hunted down facts in the way a magpie collects shiny things. Yet when he strung them all together, somehow they did become stories — of a kind.”

Piya rested her chin on her fist. “Can you give me an example?”

Kanai thought about this for a minute. “I remember one of his stories — it has always stuck in my mind.”

“What's it about?”

“Do you remember Canning, the town where we got off the train?”

“Sure I remember Canning,” Piya said. “That's where I got my permit. It's not what I'd call a memorable place.”

“Exactly,” said Kanai. “The first time I went there was in 1970, when Nirmal and Nilima brought me to Lusibari. I was disgusted by the place — I thought it was a horrible, muddy little town. I happened to say something to that effect and Nirmal was outraged. He shouted at me, ‘A place is what you make of it.' And then he told a story so unlikely I thought he'd made it up. But after I went back home, I took the trouble to look into it and discovered it was true.”

“What was the story?” Piya said. “Do you remember? I'd love to hear it.”

“All right,” said Kanai. “I'll try to tell it to you as he would have. But don't forget: I'll be translating in my head — he would have told it in Bangla.”

“Sure. Go on.”

Kanai held up a finger and pointed to the heavens. “All right then, comrades, listen: I'll tell you about the Matla River and a stormstruck
matal
and the
matlami
of a lord who was called Canning.
Shono, kaan pete shono.
Put out your ears so you can listen properly.”

LIKE SO MANY
other places in the tide country, Canning was named by an
Ingrej.
And in this case it was no ordinary Englishman who gave it his name — not only was he a lord, he was a
laat,
nothing less than a viceroy, Lord Canning. This laat and his
ledi
were as generous in sprinkling their names around the country as a later generation of politicians would be in scattering their ashes: you came across them in the most unexpected places — a road here, a jail there, an occasional asylum. No matter that Ledi Canning was tall, thin and peppery — a Calcutta sweets maker took it into his head to name a new confection after her. This sweet was black, round and sugary — in other words, it was everything its namesake was not, which was lucky for the sweets maker, because it meant his creation quickly became a success. People gobbled up the new sweets at such a rate that they could not take the time to say “Lady Canning.” The name was soon shortened to
ledigeni.

Now surely there must exist a law of speech which says that if “Lady Canning” is to become ledigeni, then “Port Canning” should become
Potugeni
or possibly
Podgeni.
But look: the port's name has survived undamaged and nobody ever calls it by anything but the lord's name, “Canning.”

But why? Why would a laat leave the comfort of his throne in order to plant his name in the mud of the Matla?

Well, remember Mohammad bin Tughlaq, the mad sultan who moved his capital from Delhi to a village in the middle of nowhere? It was a bee from the same hive that stung the British. They got it into their heads that they needed a new port, a new capital for Bengal — Calcutta's Hooghly River was silting up and its docks, they said, would soon be choked with mud.
Jothariti,
teams of planners and surveyors, went out and wandered the land, striding about in wigs and breeches, mapping and measuring. And at last on the banks of the Matla they came on a place that caught their fancy, a little fishing village that overlooked a river so broad that it looked like a highway to the sea.

Now, it's no secret that the word
matla
means “mad” in Bangla — and everyone who knows the river knows also that this name has not been lightly earned. But those Ingrej town planners were busy men who had little time for words and names. They went back to the laat and told him about the wonderful location they had found. They described the wide, mighty river, the flat plain and deep channel that led straight to the sea; they showed him their plans and maps and listed all the amenities they would build — hotels, promenades, parks, palaces, banks, streets. Oh, it was to be a grand place, this new capital on the banks of the mad Matla — it would lack for nothing.

The contracts were given out and the work began: thousands of
mistris
and
mahajans
and overseers moved to the shores of the Matla and began to dig. They drank the Matla's water and worked in the way that matals and madmen work: nothing could stop them, not even the Uprising of 1857. If you were here then, on the banks of the Matla, you would never have known that in northern India chapatis were passing from village to village; that Mangal Pandey had turned his gun on his officers; that women and children were being massacred and rebels were being tied to the mouths of cannons. Here on the banks of the smiling river the work continued: an embankment arose, foundations were dug, a strand was laid out, a railway line built.

And all the while the Matla lay still and waited.

But not even a river can hide all its secrets, and it so happened that at that time, in Kolkata, there lived a man of a mentality not unlike the Matla's. This was a lowly shipping inspector, an Ingrej shaheb by the name of Henry Piddington. Before coming to India, Piddingtonshaheb had lived in the Caribbean, and somewhere in those islands he had fallen in love — not with a woman nor even with a dog, as is often the case with lonely Englishmen living in faraway places. No, Mr. Piddington fell in love with storms. Out there, of course, they call them hurricanes, and Piddington-shaheb's love for them knew no limits. He loved them not in the way you might love the mountains or the stars: for him they were like books or music, and he felt for them the same affection a devotee might feel for his favorite authors or musicians. He read them, listened to them, studied them and tried to understand them. He loved them so much that he invented a new word to describe them: “cyclone.”

Now, our Kolkata may not be as romantic a place as the West Indies, but for the cultivation of Piddington-shaheb's love affair it was just as good. In the violence of its storms the Bay of Bengal, let it be said, is second to none — not to the Caribbean, not to the South China Sea. Wasn't it our
tufaan,
after all, that gave birth to the word “typhoon”?

When Mr. Piddington learned of the viceroy's new port, he understood at once the madness the river had in mind. Standing on its banks, he spoke his mind. “Maybe you could trick those surveyors,” he said, “but you can't make a fool of me. I've seen through your little game and I'm going to make sure that they know too.”

And the Matla laughed its mental laugh and said, “Go on, do it. Do it now, tell them. It's you they'll call Matla — a man who thinks he can look into the hearts of rivers and storms.”

Sitting in his rooms in Kolkata, Piddington-shaheb drafted dozens of letters; he wrote to the planners and surveyors and warned of the dangers; he told them it was crazy to build a town so deep in the tide country. The mangroves were Bengal's defense against the bay, he said — they served as a barrier against nature's fury, absorbing the initial onslaught of cyclonic winds, waves and tidal surges. If not for the tide country, the plains would have been drowned long before: it was the mangroves that kept the hinterland alive. Kolkata's long, winding sea-lane was thus its natural defense against the turbulent energies of the bay; the new port, on the other hand, was dangerously exposed. Given an unfortunate conjunction of winds and tides, even a minor storm would suffice to wash it away; all it would take was a wave stirred up by a cyclone. Driven to desperation, Mr. Piddington even wrote to the viceroy. Begging him to rethink the matter, he made a prediction: if the port was built at this location, he said, it would not last more than fifteen years. There would come a day when a great mass of salt water would rise up in the midst of a cyclone and drown the whole settlement; on this he would stake his reputation, as a man and as a scientist.

Of course, no one paid any attention; neither the planners nor the laat shaheb had the time to listen. Mr. Piddington, after all, was nothing but a lowly shipping inspector and he stood very low in the Ingrej scale of caste. People began to whisper that he was, well, he was a man so mental, who could blame him if there was a little
gondogol
in his mind; wasn't he the one who'd once been heard to say that storms were “wonderful meteors”?

So the work went on and the port was built. Its streets and strand were laid out, its hotels and houses were painted and made ready, and everything went exactly as planned. One day, with much noise and drum beating the viceroy planted his feet on the Matla's flanks and gave the town its new name, Port Canning.

Piddington-shaheb was not invited to the ceremony. On the streets of Kolkata, people laughed and sniggered now when they saw him pass by: Oh, there goes that old matal Piddington. Wasn't he the one who kept bothering the laat shaheb about his new port? Hadn't he made a prediction of some kind, staking his reputation?

Wait, said Piddington, wait — I said fifteen years.

The Matla took pity on this matal. Fifteen years was a long time and Mr. Piddington had already suffered enough. It let him wait one year, and then one more, and yet another, until five long years had gone by. And then one day, in the year 1867, it rose as if to a challenge and hurled itself upon Canning. In a matter of hours the town was all but gone; only the bleached skeleton remained.

The destruction came about just as Mr. Piddington had said it would: it was caused not by some great tufaan but by a relatively minor storm. Nor was it the storm's winds that wrecked the city: it was a wave, a surge. In 1871, four years after the Matla's uprising, the port was formally abandoned. The port that was to be one of the reigning queens of the eastern oceans, a rival to Bombay, Singapore and Hong Kong, became instead the Matla's vassal — Canning.

“BUT AS ALWAYS
with Nirmal,” said Kanai, “the last word was reserved for Rilke.”

He put his hand on his heart and recited aloud:

“But, oh, how strange the streets of the City of Pain …

Oh, how an angel could stamp out their market of comforts,

with the church nearby, bought ready-made, clean,

shut, and disappointed as a post office on Sunday.

“So now you know,” said Kanai, as Piya began to laugh. “That is what Canning has been ever since that day in 1867 when the Matla stamped out the laat's handiwork: a Sunday post office.”

A KILLING

T
HE
MEGHA
'S CABINS
were each outfitted with a raised platform that could be used as a bunk. By piling blankets, pillows and sheets on this ledge, Kanai was able to make himself a bed that was reasonably comfortable, although far from luxurious. He was fast asleep when he was woken by the sound of voices, both near and distant. Reaching for his flashlight, he shone the beam on his watch and discovered it was 3
A.M.
The voices of Horen and his grandson were now clearly audible on the upper deck, joined in excited speculation.

Kanai had gone to sleep in a lungi and vest, and now, as he pushed his blankets aside, he was surprised to find a distinct chill in the air. He decided to wrap a blanket around himself before stepping out of his cabin. Horen and his grandson were close by, leaning on the rails and watching the shore.

“What's happened?” said Kanai.

“It's not clear,” came the answer, “but something seems to be going on in the village.”

The flood tide had set in some hours before, and with the boat anchored in midstream there was now close to a mile of water between them and the shore. The night was advanced enough for cottony clouds of mist to have arisen from the water's surface: although much thinner than the dense fog of dawn, it had still obscured the outlines of the shore. Through this shimmering screen, glowing points of orange flame could be seen moving quickly here and there, as if to suggest that people were running along the shore with burning torches. The villagers' voices could be heard in the distance, despite the mist's muffling effect. Even Horen and his grandson were at a loss to think of a reason why so many people would bestir themselves so energetically at this time of night.

Kanai felt a touch on his elbow and turned to see Piya standing beside him, rubbing her knuckles in her eyes. “What's up?”

“We're all wondering.”

“Let's ask Fokir.”

Kanai went to the bhotbhoti's stern, with Piya following close behind, and shone his flashlight into the boat below. Fokir was awake, sitting huddled in the center of his boat with a blanket draped around his shoulders. He held up an arm to shield his face and Kanai switched off the beam before leaning over to speak to him.

“Does he know what's going on?” Piya inquired.

“No. But he's going to take his boat across to find out. He says we can go with him if we like.”

“Sure.”

They climbed in, and Horen came to join them, leaving his grandson in charge of the bhotbhoti.

It took some fifteen minutes to cross over, and as they approached the shore it became clear that the commotion had a distinct focus: it seemed a crowd was congregating around that part of the village where Horen's relatives lived. As the shore neared, the voices and shouts rose in volume until they had fused into a pulsing, angry sound.