The Hungry Tide

by Amitav Ghosh

  HORIZONS

  AT DAYBREAK, when Piya woke, her face and hair were wet with dew, but the water’s surface was almost completely clear of fog. She guessed this had something to do with the unusually warm night and was pleased to notice that a brisk breeze had started up and was stirring the river: it looked as though the weather would be somewhat more pleasant than it had been the day before.

  Fokir was still asleep, so she lay motionless in her place, taking in the sounds of the early morning: the hooting of a distant bird, the rustle of the wind blowing through the mangroves and the lapping of the swift currents of high tide. As her ears grew attuned to her surroundings, she became aware of a sound that did not fit with the rest — a brief, breathy noise not unlike a sigh. It sounded like an exhalation, and yet it was not at all like the breathing of an Irrawaddy dolphin. She turned over onto her stomach and reached for her binoculars: her instincts told her it had to be a Gangetic dolphin, Platanista gangetica. Moments later she spotted a finless back rolling through the water some five hundred feet from the boat’s bow. Yes, that was what it was; she was excited to have her intuition so quickly confirmed. Nor was it just a single animal: there were maybe three of them in the immediate vicinity of the boat.

  Piya sat up. So far the paucity of her encounters with Platanista had disappointed her — this sighting was an unexpected bonus. She took a GPS reading and then reached into her backpack for some data sheets.

  It was the data sheets that made her suspect something was amiss. Logging the dolphins’ appearances, she saw that they were surfacing with unusual frequency, with barely a minute or two separating their exhalations. And more than once, along with the breathing, she heard a sound not unlike a squeal.

  There was something odd here, she decided; this was not the way these animals normally behaved. She put away her data sheets and raised her glasses to her eyes.

  As she was puzzling over the dolphins’ behavior, her mind wandered idly back to an article she had read some years before. It was by a Swiss cetologist, Professor G. Pilleri, one of the pioneers in river dolphin studies, a doyen of the field. As far as she could recall, the article had been written in the 1970s. Pilleri’s research had taken him to the Indus River, in Pakistan, and he had paid some fishermen to catch a pair of Platanista, a male and a female. The article, she remembered, had described the process in great detail. It was no easy task to capture these dolphins, for Platanista’s echolocation was so accurate that they were usually able to detect and evade a net once it had been lowered into the water. The fishermen had resorted to a strategy of luring unwary dolphins into places where nets could be dropped on them from above.

  Once his two specimens had been secured, Pilleri’s next step was to transport them to his laboratory in Switzerland. The story of this journey, Piya recalled, was so complicated that it had made her laugh out loud as she was reading it. The animals had been wrapped in wet cloths and taken by motorboat to a roadhead on the Indus. A waiting truck took them to a railway station and they traveled by train to Karachi. All through the journey their bodies were regularly moistened with water from their native river. A Land Rover met the train in Karachi and transported them to a hotel, where a swimming pool had been prepared for the two cetaceans. After the dolphins had rested there for a couple of days, the Land Rover came back to take them to Karachi Airport. There they were driven to the tarmac and loaded onto a Swissair plane. With the two dolphins in its hold, the plane made a stopover in Athens before proceeding to Zurich, where the temperature was well below freezing. Warmed by blankets and hot-water bottles, the animals were put in a heated ambulance and driven to an anatomical institute in Bern, where a special pool awaited them — a tank in which the water was kept at a temperature similar to that of the Indus.

  It was in this strange habitat — this Indus in the Alps — that Pilleri had observed a curious and previously unknown aspect of Platanista behavior. These animals were very sensitive to atmospheric pressure: weather fronts passing over Bern would cause them to behave in markedly unusual ways.

  Piya was trying to recall the exact details of their behavior when her glasses strayed from the river and gave her a glimpse of the horizon to the southeast. Although the rest of the sky was cloudless, at this point of the compass the horizon had acquired a peculiar steely glow.

  Piya let her glasses drop and looked from the sky to the dolphins and back again. Now she understood. Without thinking she began to shout, “Fokir, there’s a storm coming! We have to get back to the Megha.”

  HOREN’S FINGER POINTED Kanai’s eyes to the southeastern quadrant of the sky, where a dark stain had spilled over the horizon like antimony from an eyelid. “It’s come quicker than I thought,” Horen said, glancing at his watch. “It’s half past five now. I’d say we can wait for thirty minutes more. Any longer than that and we won’t be able to make it back to Lusibari.”

  “But Horen-da,” Kanai said, “how can we leave them here to face the cyclone on their own?”

  “What else can we do?” Horen said. “It’s either that or we’ll all go down with this bhotbhoti, right here. It’s not just my life or yours I’m concerned about: there’s my grandson to think of too. As for safety, don’t think too much about that — I’m not sure we’re going to make it back either.”

  “But couldn’t you find a sheltered spot somewhere nearby?” Kanai said. “Someplace where we could wait out the storm?”

  Horen’s forefinger swept over the landscape. “Kanai-babu, look around. Where do you see any shelter? Do you see all these islands around us? When the storm hits, they’re going to be under several feet of water. If we stay here, this bhotbhoti would either capsize in midstream or be driven aground. We have no chance here. We have to go.”

  “And what about them?” said Kanai. “What are their chances?”

  Horen put a hand on Kanai’s shoulder. “Look. It won’t be easy, but Fokir knows what to do. If anyone has a chance, he does; his grandfather is said to have survived a terrible storm on Garjontola. Beyond that, what can I say? It’s not in our hands.”

  LOSSES

  IT WAS JUST AFTER five-thirty when Fokir nudged his boat out of the creek’s mouth. Although the wind had stiffened, Piya took heart from the fact that the sky was clear for the most part. And in the beginning the wind and the waves were more a help than a hindrance, pushing the boat in the direction they wanted to go, so it was like having extra pairs of hands to help with the rowing. Piya had her back to the bow, so at the outset, when the wind was behind them, she was able to watch the waves as they advanced on the boat from the rear. At this point they were just undulations on the water’s surface and there was no foam on their crests — they swept up quietly from behind the boat, raising the stern and then dropping it again before moving on.

  After half an hour Piya took a reading of their position and was reassured by the result. If they managed to keep up the pace, she calculated they would be back at Garjontola in a couple of hours — probably before the storm broke.

  But as the minutes crept by, the wind kept strengthening and the dark stain in the sky seemed to spread faster and faster. Their route, in any case, was a circuitous one, involving many changes of direction. Every time they turned, the wind came at them from a different angle, sometimes hitting them in such a way as to make the boat list. As the speed of the wind mounted, the waves grew taller and flecks of white appeared along their crests. Although there was no rain, the wind carried the churning spray right into their faces. Piya’s clothes were soon wet and she had to lick her lips to keep them from developing a crust of salt.

  On entering their first mohona, they ran into waves much taller than those they had already faced. When the water curled up ahead of them, they had to strain against the oars to carry the boat over the crests. They seemed to be working twice as hard to cover half the distance: it was as if a once level track had now been stretched over a range of hills and valleys.

  Piya took her next GPS reading after th
ey had crossed the mohona — brief as it was, the operation gave her a minute to catch her breath. But there was nothing heartening about the reading itself: it confirmed her impression about the drop in their pace — it had slowed to a crawl.

  Piya was reaching for her oars when something brushed against her cheek and fell into her lap. She glanced at it and saw that it was a mangrove leaf. She looked to her left, the direction from which the leaf had come. It so happened that they were in the center of a widebodied river — she estimated that the wind had carried the leaf a good mile and a half, from the shore to the boat.

  They made another turn and now Piya found herself rowing with her back to the wind. It was oddly disorienting to be hit by a wave coming from her blind side; after it had lifted her up there would be a dizzying moment when the boat seemed to hang on the crest of the watery ridge. Then suddenly she would find herself tobogganing backward into the wave’s trough, clutching at the gunwales to keep her balance. Water came sluicing over the bow with each wave and it felt as if a bucket were being emptied on her back.

  The impact of these descents soon began to shake loose the assorted bits of plywood that covered the boat’s deck. They began to quiver and rattle and the wind caught hold of one of them and tore it off the boat; it vanished in an instant. Minutes later, another slat of plywood went spinning away, and then another, exposing the boat’s bilges. Piya found she could see right into the hold where Fokir stored his crabs.

  Another turn brought the wind around so that it was hitting them side-on, tilting the boat steeply to one side. The oar in Piya’s right hand was now almost a foot higher than the other: she had to lean sideways over the gunwale to bring it into contact with the water. As the boat tilted, her backpack began to roll around under the hood.

  She had thought it would be dry there, but now it hardly seemed to matter. The spray was coming at them from so many different angles that everything was soaked. The boat lurched again and the pack was tossed into the air; it would have gone over but for the hood. Piya dropped her oars and scrambled forward to throw herself on the backpack. All her equipment was in it — her binoculars, her depth sounder, everything except her GPS monitor, which she had attached to a belt loop on her pants. The backpack also contained all the data she had gathered over the past nine days: she had put the sheets in a plastic bag and fastened it to her clipboard.

  Piya was looking for some means of securing this precious piece of luggage when Fokir interrupted his rowing to pass her a length of rope. She took it from him gratefully and after threading it through the pack’s straps, she bound it tightly to one of the bamboo hoops of the hood. Then she opened the flap just wide enough to check her equipment. The backpack was made of a heavy waterproof material and its contents were more or less dry. As she was closing the pack her eyes fell on the pocket where she kept her cell phone: she had not activated it for use in India, so it hadn’t been charged or turned on since her arrival. Now, as the boat was heaving and listing below her, a sudden seizure of curiosity made her press the power button. Her spirits leapt at the sight of the familiar green glow of the screen, only to fall again when an icon appeared to indicate that there was no coverage where she was. She put it back in the bag and fastened the flap again before returning to her oars.

  The wind seemed even stronger now and the boat’s tilt was more pronounced than before. As she pushed at the oars, her mind strayed back to the phone. She remembered reading accounts of people making calls from under the wreckage of derailed trains, from the rubble of houses that had been demolished by earthquakes, from the burning towers of the World Trade Center.

  Who would she have called? Not her friends on the West Coast — they didn’t know where she was and it would take too long to explain. Kanai maybe? She remembered that along with his address he had also written down a couple of phone numbers on the back of his “present” — one of them was for a cell phone. He was probably on a plane, on his way to New Delhi; or maybe he was in his office already? It would be strange to reach him: he was sure to say something that would make her laugh. She bit her lip at the thought of this: it would be good to laugh right now, with the boat groaning as if it were going to come apart at any minute.

  She shut her eyes tight, as she used to when she was little. Let it be on land, she said to herself, muttering aloud, as if in prayer. Whatever happens, let it be on land. Not the water, please. Not the water.

  The boat banked into another turn, and after it had rounded the corner, Fokir rose to a crouch and pointed in the direction of a distant spit of land: Garjontola.

  “The Megha?” she said. “Horen?” He shook his head and she raised herself to get a better look. It took just a glance to confirm what Fokir had indicated — the boat was not there. The waters that flanked the island were empty except for the white-flecked waves.

  She was still trying to absorb this when the wind caught hold of the gray plastic sheet that lined the boat’s hood — the remains of the

  U.S. mailbag Piya had recognized when she first stepped into the boat. Suddenly a part of the sheet broke out from under the thatch. It billowed outward like a sail and there was a fearsome cracking sound in the timbers. It was as if the wind were a clawed animal doing all it could to tear the boat apart.

  The boat’s stern reared up as the sheet strained at its ties, pushing down the bow. Fokir dropped his oars and threw himself forward to cut the mailbag free. But even as he was hacking at the plastic bindings there was a loud cracking sound and the entire hood tore away from the boat and went sailing off into the sky, with Piya’s backpack trailing behind like the streamer of a kite. Within minutes the whole unlikely assembly of objects — the hood, the plastic sheet, the backpack with all its equipment, its data and Kanai’s gift — was carried so far off as to become a small speck in the inky sky.

  IT WAS ALMOST eleven when the Megha steamed into the Raimangal’s mohona and turned in the direction of Lusibari. The water, Kanai noticed, had become peculiarly translucent: against the steely darkness of the sky, the brown water seemed to glow like neon, as though lit up from beneath.

  This was the widest expanse of water they had crossed and the waves were taller than any they had encountered yet. The sound of the bhotbhoti’s engine changed in rhythm with the waves, rising to a plaintive whine as it plowed into the swells. So much water flew over the bow that the windows of the wheelhouse were continually awash in spray.

  Through most of the journey Kanai had sat in the wheelhouse with Horen, who had grown increasingly taciturn as the wind picked up speed. Now, as the Megha met the waves of the mohona, Horen turned to Kanai and said, “We’re taking on a lot of water. If it gets into the engine, we’re finished. You’d better go below and see what you can do.”

  Kanai nodded and rose to his feet, stooping to keep his head from bumping into the low roof. Pulling up the hem of his lungi, he tucked it in at the waist before opening the door.

  “Be careful,” Horen said. “The deck will be slippery.”

  No sooner had Kanai turned the handle than the wind tore the door from his grip and slammed it back on its hinges. Kanai kicked off his sandals and left them in the wheelhouse. Then he went to deal with the door. He had to step around and put his shoulder behind it, to push it shut against the wind. Step by step, keeping his back against the bulwark, he began to move toward the ladder that led to the deck below. The ladder was exposed to the wind and he felt the gusts clawing at him as he put his foot on the first rung — had he been wearing sandals, they would have been torn from his feet. The wind was pulling at him so hard that he knew it would take only a slight slackening in his grip for a gust to tear him from the ladder and send him into the churning water below.

  When he stepped off the last rung and entered the cavernous galley, his foot sank immediately into ankle-deep water. He spotted Nogen deep in the deck’s unlit interior, standing beside the casing that housed the diesel engine, grimly baling water with a plastic bucket.

  Kanai wa
ded through the ankle-deep water. “Is there another bucket?”

  Nogen answered by pointing to a tin container afloat in a slick of oily water. Kanai took hold of its handle, but when he reached for the water he was all but knocked off his feet by a sudden lurch of the bhotbhoti’s hull. Righting himself, he found that to fill the bucket was far more difficult than it might seem, for the Megha’s pitching kept the water moving in such a way that it seemed almost to be toying with them, making them lunge ineffectually from side to side. In a while Nogen broke off to point to the shore. “We’re close to Lusibari now,” he said. “Is that where you’re going?”

  “Yes. Aren’t you?”

  “Not us,” said Nogen. “We have to go to the next island: it’s the only sheltered place in this area. You’d better go and ask my grandfather how we’re going to drop you off. It won’t be easy in this wind.”

  “All right.” Kanai clawed his way back up the ladder and went step by step along the slippery gangway to the wheelhouse.

  “How is it down there?” Horen said.

  “It was bad when we were in the middle of the mohona,” said Kanai. “But it’s better now.”

  Horen flicked a thumb at the windshield. “Look, there’s Lusibari. Do you want to get off there, or do you want to come with us?”

  Kanai had thought this over already. “I’ll get off at Lusibari,” he said. “Mashima is alone. I should be with her.”

  “I’ll take the bhotbhoti as close to the bank as I can,” Horen said. “But after that you’ll have to wade across.”

  “What about my suitcase?”

  “You’d better leave it behind. I’ll bring it to you later.”

  Kanai cared about only one thing in the suitcase. “I’ll leave everything but the notebook,” he said. “I’ll wrap it in plastic so it won’t get wet. I want to take it with me.”