The Honeyman and the Hunter

by Neil Grant

  ‘No, Madam.’

  ‘Why did you leave your job, Raj? We’ll be gone soon and the money we give you won’t last.’

  ‘Madam, I needed to be risky.’

  ‘To take a risk?’

  ‘Yes. With Madam Ursu it was not good. If I am to live my dreams then I must begin sometime.’

  The countryside eases by. A slow rain is winnowed from the clouds, turning the road to butter. Villagers sit under trees, under squares of clear plastic and umbrellas and absurd yellow rain hats, waiting for buses or life.

  But Rudra and his mum and their brand-new guide, Raj (who-is-not-a-guide), keep forging on – blasting through the grey mist, swerving around dilapidated trucks and whining autorickshaws. The road grows long and silence envelops them again. And all there is to do is look out of the window and wonder what comes next.

  Rudra has really no idea what to expect when they get there. His only points of reference are what his grandmother told him about the Sundarbans. The legends of Bonbibi, about the honeymen and the wood collectors, and how complete the forest is. How the river swells and blots out the landscape – mills around the protective banks, the bunds, nibbles at them and enters the villages like a mugger, steals the walls of houses until their roofs sigh and fall. And what Didima told him about tigers and their appetite for human flesh. About Dokkhin Rai himself.

  He wants to ask his mum for more, but they are so close now that it seems unnecessary. He will be seeing the place, the people, the great rivers, soon enough. They will be there, he thinks, and all of Didima’s stories will be made real.

  Their driver is silent too. So silent that if it were not for the fact of the taxi moving on without bumping into things, Rudra could believe he was not there. Perhaps that is what makes a good taxi driver – knowing when to shut up as much as knowing when to open up. Rudra is diagonally opposite him, in the back seat, and sees him only in profile: one dark eye and a bouffant of thick, oiled hair. Half a moustache cowers beneath his cheekbone. The collar of his shirt is pulled high against his neck and he is wearing a grey woollen vest. He fumbles with his top pocket, finally extracting a small green parcel, which he quickly tucks into his lower lip. He works it for a while and Rudra can hear him sucking juice from it. After a while, he winds the window down and spits a gob of red juice at the road – a fair portion of it streaks down Nayna’s window. His mum clucks her tongue and shakes her head.

  ‘What is it?’ asks Rudra.

  ‘Paan,’ replies Nayna. ‘Betel nut.’

  At least it is better than beedi smoke. The spitting is hard to take but at least the smell doesn’t claw at their throats.

  They cross another bridge and travel through Basanti – a town that is more a village – tree-lined and pleasant enough, Rudra guesses. He is bored, he realises, and wonders how people travel for years on end. What do they find so fascinating about this tireless movement? Soon, though, the road expels them from Basanti and they plunge on towards Gosaba.

  ‘What’s the plan, Mum?’ asks Rudra.

  ‘We’ll stay overnight in Gosaba and then hire a boat to take us to Baghchara. We can scatter Didima’s ashes. You can get rid of that skull and we’ll catch the boat back to Gosaba to sleep.’

  ‘What’ll we do after that?’

  ‘We’ll be normal tourists,’ says Nayna. ‘Take a tiger tour. Eat crab and fish. Admire the forest from a boat. Maybe read a book or two.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then we’ll go home, Rudra.’

  Of course we will. That’s exactly what we must do.

  20

  ‘A GHAT IS STEPS THAT ARE leading down the riverbank.’ Raj sits with the mist gathering at his ankles. Over the Bidyadhari River lies Gosaba, but it is hidden from them. They are sitting above the ghat, waiting for the Gosaba ferry.

  ‘A ghat can also be a holy place,’ he continues. ‘Like in Varanasi – famous for the Dasaswamedh Ghat, where Brahma made puja with ten horses.’

  ‘Made puja?’ asks Rudra.

  ‘Killed them,’ says Nayna, looking aside deliberately. ‘He killed ten horses. Isn’t that so, Raj?’

  Raj looks at Nayna like she is a child and then back at Rudra. ‘It is a long-ago thing, before the age of Kali Yuga.’

  ‘What’s Kali Yuga?’

  ‘It is a story used to keep people in their place,’ says Nayna, turning away into the mist. It swallows her whole, burping silence.

  ‘Finish your story, Raj,’ says Rudra.

  Raj softens a beedi between his fingers, then sticks it into his mouth and lights it with a match. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But do not tell your mother.’

  He looks at the tip of the beedi – its little red eye sore and bitter.

  ‘Ashvamedha is the sacrifice of a horse. Before Kali Yuga – this age of darkness – a horse would be chosen by a king. It would be allowed to roam free for one whole year, protected by a hundred young men. Other men could try to kill or catch the horse, if they wanted to be king, but if they did not then the horse would be brought home, bathed in a river, and anointed with ghee. Then it was sacrificed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is a powerful puja used by powerful men. Everything must have sacrifice, you know.’

  ‘Do you think spilling blood can change the way things work?’ asks Rudra, thinking about what his didima said about the tiger god demanding sacrifice for those who defiled his forest.

  ‘That is for the gods to decide, not me. I am only a poor man.’

  Nayna returns, dragging the mist behind her. ‘The ferry is here,’ she says, picking up her bag.

  Once the mist is penetrated, the ghat turns out to be little more than an isthmus of concrete sitting on the mud of the riverbank.

  ‘It’s low tide,’ says Nayna. ‘At high tide the ghat would be at the water’s edge.’

  Tides are something Rudra understands – the link between his two worlds. Tides – the pull of the moon on the great seas. He remembers his dad showing him how it all worked, a rare moment at the breakfast table, aged eight. Taking his boiled egg and placing it on the table. Pretend this is the whole world. His rough fingertip rubbing the point of the egg. This is the high tide, Rudra. See how it bulges out? His mum slipped a chickpea beside the egg. And this is the moon, she said, working the chickpea slowly round the egg. His dad kept the egg’s bulging point directed at the chickpea. See how the tide follows the moon? The moon is doing that, Rudra. It pulls the oceans towards it as it spins round the earth. On this side – low tide. His free finger on the blunt bottom of the egg – the part that would sit in an eggcup. And this side – high tide. The point of the egg, still tracking that little moon – a chickpea satellite with so much power.

  And here in the Sundarbans – the land of the eighteen tides, a place where the sea claims more than beaches – the moon holds sway. He remembers his didima’s words; how she told him of the tides that suck and pull at this low-lying delta, swallowing whole towns, disgorging corpses onto river flats and forcing people into the trees.

  The concrete pad that is the ghat reaches a plastic pontoon arm to the river. Tied at the end of the pontoon is a skiff, laden with women and men and boys and girls, chickens, a bike, towers of hessian-wrapped parcels, and plastic bags of every size and shape. The women and men are perched on the gunnels, their saris and dhotis fringed with mud. Some of them have black umbrellas opened against the mist.

  Nayna has already taken up her position near the bow and Raj nods for Rudra to walk down. As he nears the end of the pontoon – where it floats on the turbid water – he feels it move beneath him. He has known this rhythm since childhood, the gasping sea beneath his feet. He turns to see Raj frozen at the end of the ghat, refusing to set foot on the pontoon.

  ‘Come on, Raj.’

  ‘I cannot swim.’ Raj is shaking visibly.

  ‘That’s why we have a boat.’

  ‘But if I fall—’

  ‘I won’t let you.’ Rudra goes back and, taking Raj’s hand, leads
him to the boat.

  Once Raj is seated on the gunnel of the boat he seems to calm. ‘I am from Nepal.’

  ‘I know,’ says Rudra. ‘You told me.’

  ‘We have rivers. But I am from a mountain village. No river.’ The crew casts off and they enter the flow of the river. Rudra can feel its strength as it muscles below the rough planks of the boat. This river means business.

  The helmsman sits high on the stern, on a wooden bench, squinting into the mist. Three of his mates sit beside him, chewing paan or smoking beedis, waving the cloying diesel smoke from their faces. The helmsman is dressed in grubby slacks and a down jacket with the words Most Excellent Day emblazoned on a breast pocket. His bare toes grip the deck for balance as they cross a wake. The tiller is made from bent water pipe with great knobs of rust where it joins the shaft. The muscles in the helmsman’s forearm betray how hard he is holding it, willing the boat on as it swoons towards the far bank.

  Rudra is seated beside a young woman dressed in a pink sari. She is hugging a small boy in her lap; Rudra guesses as much for warmth as for love. The child has the darkest eyes he has ever seen. They are glossy like pomegranate seeds and he looks like he is wearing eyeliner.

  ‘Why is the kid wearing make-up?’ he whispers to his mum.

  ‘It’s kajal – kohl,’ she replies. ‘They believe it makes the eyes strong.’

  ‘Does it?’

  Nayna gives him a sceptical look. ‘They also believe it protects children from the evil eye.’

  Rudra smiles at the boy with the kohl-lined eyes, and the child buries his head in the folds of his mother’s sari. Rudra rummages in his bag and produces one of the tacky koalas they bought at the airport – presents to give to streetkids. The boy’s mother smiles and shakes her head.

  ‘Ţhik ache,’ Raj says. ‘It’s okay.’

  Rudra squeezes the koala’s torso, making its arms open, then clips it onto the boy’s jacket. He is overjoyed at the simple toy, clipping it on and off his jacket.

  Rudra turns back to Nayna. ‘Where are we staying in Gosaba?’ he asks.

  ‘I have one excellent recommendation,’ says Raj.

  ‘We’ll stay with your aunty,’ says Nayna. ‘She’s your dadu’s cousin.’

  ‘Didima told me about her – Aunty Bansari.’

  ‘Means flute,’ says Raj.

  ‘Her voice is far from flute-like,’ replies Nayna.

  Suddenly, the boy cries out, his fingers splayed towards his koala swirling in the river. Rudra reaches for a replacement but the boy squirms from his mother’s arms and silently drops like a pebble into the muddy water.

  The mother screams and tries to follow but people clutch at her arms. The helmsman begins to turn the boat, but it is a long and cumbersome procedure.

  ‘Why doesn’t someone jump in?’ shouts Rudra.

  ‘They’re afraid of crocodiles,’ says Nayna, smoothing the frantic mother’s hair.

  Without thinking, Rudra rips off his shoes and socks and jumps into the water. It is colder than he imagined, and fat bubbles stream up his cheeks. Then he rises, water ringing in his ears, and Nayna shouting, ‘Rudra Solace, back in the boat!’ Ignoring her, he strikes out for where he last saw the child.

  At water level, the river is much lumpier and it is difficult to see more than a few metres ahead. Rudra can feel that the tide has turned and is now pushing upriver. He swims against it but can’t locate the boy. The boat is still turning and Rudra, following the pointing fingers of the people onboard, swims madly for a marker he cannot see. Then the boy surfaces about five metres from Rudra, clawing the water like a drowning dog. Rudra reaches him and grabs hold of his jacket. With his hand under the boy’s chin, he backstrokes for the boat. It comes round in a slow arc and hands reach for them. Rudra pushes the boy up, then climbs in himself.

  He is exhausted and cold. They wrap the boy in a towel and his mother grasps him tightly, whispering in his ear. And Rudra knows what she is whispering, even though it is in another language. Has had it whispered a thousand times in his own ears – that mix of love and fury.

  He grabs a jumper out of his bag and pulls it on over his wet clothes. Then he hands the boy another koala.

  ‘Bhaluk?’ says the boy.

  ‘Bear,’ says Raj. ‘He asks if it is a bear.’

  Rudra turns to the boy. ‘Ko-a-la,’ he says, splitting the syllables into manageable chunks. ‘It means goes without water.’

  ‘He wants to know if it drinks salt water like a tiger,’ says Nayna.

  ‘It lives in trees,’ Rudra says. ‘It drinks from the leaves.’

  Nayna translates this for the boy. He looks beyond them and says something very quietly.

  ‘What did he say?’ Rudra asks Nayna.

  ‘He wishes tigers would drink from the leaves. Then they wouldn’t need the sweetness of blood.’

  The Gosaba ferry ghat climbs the slippery bank. There are two rows of stone steps separated by a narrow ramp, up which people wheel their bikes. Nayna points out the jagged sticks reaching up from the mud like fingers.

  ‘Those are the roots of the sundari tree. They’re called pneumatophores. The roots steal oxygen from the air.’

  A woman calls out shrilly from the ghat. ‘Nay-naaaaaa. My Nay-naaaaaa.’

  ‘Speaking of oxygen thieves,’ says Nayna, ‘there is your Aunty Bansari.’

  ‘She does have a voice like a flute,’ Rudra says.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Played a little too hard, for a little too long.’

  ‘Shhh, Rudra, she’ll hear you.’

  They hire a cycle rickshaw and Bansari climbs on with the luggage. She is plump, with tiny feet and a luminous yellow sari. Her mouth, nose and eyes are crowded in the centre of a wide face as if afraid of her immense gold earrings. ‘Come on, you three,’ she trills.

  But the rider looks unable to pull them all, even along the flat, beaten paths of Gosaba village.

  ‘We’ll walk,’ says Rudra.

  ‘Okay, the men can walk. The women shall ride,’ says Bansari.

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Noooo aaaarguing, pleaaaase, Nay-naaa.’ She draws out every word to force her point.

  Nayna climbs wearily onto the rickshaw and the rider pushes his vehicle to gain momentum, before leaping on and leaning into the pedals to keep it going.

  Gosaba is laid out neatly. The houses nearest the bund –the sea wall – seem poorer, made of rough planks and branches with grass thatch on the roofs. But as they move further into the interior, the houses are built of brick and concrete, painted Krishna-blue or turquoise, and capped with new tin. Eventually, they stop in front of a small house with a garden edged with flattened tin cans.

  ‘Be it ever so humble,’ Bansari beams, ‘there is no place like the home.’ She swings open the gate so they can take the ten steps to her house.

  The house is dark inside, and on the walls and every flat surface are photos of a young man. ‘My son,’ explains Bansari. ‘He is in Kolkata studying engineering, of all things.’ Rudra can tell she means, This is actually the best of things.

  ‘And your husband, Pisi Bansari? I am sorry, I forget his name.’

  ‘Nayna, you forget so quickly. Is this what living in Australia means?’ Bansari gives a tight smile. ‘Alas, most sorrowfully, he is departed. No longer with us, as it were.’

  ‘Dead?’ asks Nayna.

  ‘Yes, quite dead,’ replies Bansari, as if it is the most vulgar thing she has ever heard. ‘Have you eaten?’ she continues. ‘I have some rosogolla I made specially.’

  ‘That would be nice, thank you, Bansari,’ says Rudra.

  ‘Call me aunty, or pisi if you must. I think that’s best, don’t you?’ She goes to the kitchen and lights a burner on the stove. ‘I will make some tea too. You will have tea.’

  ‘Cha?’

  ‘I will not make you cha in this house. It is for truck drivers and policemen. You will drink tea with milk separate.’ She smiles again. ‘Like the Br
itish.’ She moves back through the open kitchen door. ‘Come, I will show you your quarters. Your guide will need to stay elsewhere.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It is not appropriate. What would my neighbours say? Two women in a house with a strange man.’

  Raj whispers to Rudra, ‘I will make my own arrangement.’ And he slips out the front door like a ghost.

  Nayna purses her lips and Rudra, seeing she is about to comment, asks quickly, ‘Aunty, have there been many tigers this year?’

  Bansari ignores the question and opens a door. ‘You will stay here, Nayna. No charpoy, notice, this is a full inner-spring bed. Come, put your baggages down and I will show you Rudra’s room.’ She pushes past them and, dragging Rudra by the sleeve, enters another room. It is plainly the biggest room in the house; a large set of double doors opens onto a small rear garden.

  ‘It’s nice, Aunty. Thank you. Only … ’

  ‘Only what, Rudra? This is my son’s room. He lives like a prince when he is in Gosaba. But these days he prefers Kolkata.’ She shrugs. ‘It is to be expected.’

  ‘I thought I might be able to see the river.’

  ‘The river? You don’t want to see the river. Low caste people live there. Some people call them Pods. I do not call them Pods because this is a rough word,’ she whispers, ‘meaning arses. They are prawn seed collectors, meendharas, and honeymen. If the tigers you love so much arrive by night, it is the Pods they will take. They are our early warning system.’ She laughs, showing gums reddened by paan. ‘Those Pods, some people say that they eat their food raw and this makes their meat sweet for tigers. You should stay away from the river.’

  On the plane Nayna had outlined the caste system for Rudra, or tried to. How it extends to every facet of Indian life. How people are born, live and die, locked to one idea of who they are – a priest, a warrior, a merchant or a servant. The untouchables, so lowly that they are not even a part of the system, doing the jobs no one else will. Cleaning the streets of shit, carting rubbish and burning the dead. After independence from the British, who used the system to their own advantage, the Indian government tried to dismantle it. Renaming the untouchables the Scheduled Classes or Scheduled Tribes, Nayna explained, has done little to improve their cursed lives.