Brian on the Brahmaputra

by David Fletcher

  Accordingly, when the team of ten plus one boarded their transport outside the hotel, relations were unsullied on the Derek and Yvonne front – and promising on all other fronts. For now, despite the coughing epidemic, which was still in full swing, there seemed to be a renewed sense of bonhomie in the group, something no doubt to do with its reduced number but also with the prospect in everybody’s minds of a new adventure – in the company of people who were no longer complete strangers. There wouldn’t be all that unavoidable evaluation going on, all that gauging whether he or she was even worth talking to, and if they were, whether there were any topics to avoid – like cultural myopia or seaside postcards. That had all been done, and what had been learnt could now be built on, and that would be easy. Heck, even Sujan was now a known quantity. It was going to be a good time for all. Brian was sure of it. And he couldn’t wait to get started.

  He had expected a minibus. The group and its luggage would have fitted into one almost comfortably. What there was instead though was an enormous coach. And not only was it enormous but it was also luxurious, with a really good air-conditioning system, well-upholstered seats, tinted windows and a copious amount of curtaining. It was, in fact, nothing less than an exercise in insulation against the outside world, a lesson in how to hold at bay the reality of the heat out there, the state of the roads out there, and the sight of the squalor out there. It worked well for the heat and as well as it could for the potholes, but even the best of curtain-framed tinted glass was no match for the scenery. Kolkata in all its horror still made its way into the coach and nothing could stop it.

  The coach was so large everybody had selected for themselves a window seat. Brian was no different. He was in the centre of the bus (and thereby emotionally a long way from the consequences of a head-on impact or even a back-of-the-bus crumpling incident) and sitting in a window seat on its right hand side. He therefore had a grandstand seat for all the sights on show on their way out of Kolkata and for all those new ones that came into view in the countryside beyond.

  The Kolkata sights were as dismal and demoralising as ever. They even included his first visual encounter with a rubbish dump and its population of rubbish sorters. This one had no complement of storks on it but it did have its full quota of criminally demeaning behaviour. It was just wrong. No society, no matter how poor, should commit any of its citizens to such an abominable occupation.

  It didn’t get much better in the “countryside”. This turned out to be a string of scrappy looking vegetable plots interspersed with what looked like some forgotten and very unpleasant precursor to the industrial revolution. These were expansive yards within each of which was a vast brown “boiling pot” set above a rudimentary furnace, and surrounded by what looked like piles of rags and beyond these swathes of greyish ash. And amidst the haze of smoke and steam that swirled around the pot were the workers, the benighted individuals whose lives were devoted to the production of fertilizer from off-cuts of leather. For that is what these yards were all about. They took the spoil from Kolkata’s tanneries and by boiling it up (maybe with some other ingredients) they produced a cheap but phosphate-rich compost for use on the adjoining fields. The work must have been hot, hard, smelly and degrading – but presumably a step up from working on a rubbish dump.

  The distance to the Sundarbans was about eighty kilometres. The trip was scheduled to take two and a half hours – before the coach was abandoned in favour of a boat – and it was advertised as passing through several “dusty” villages. In this part of West Bengal, Brian was now learning that “dusty” meant “rural-squalid”. There were more than several of these villages and they were not noticeably dusty at all, just filthy and decrepit, like mini versions of Kolkata and a million miles from the elegance and cleanliness of all those fishing villages back in Assam. What was it about extreme poverty that seemed to spawn a certain pride and almost an innate sense of aesthetics as against urban or semi-urban “mild” poverty that seemed to generate nothing more than neglect and abject ugliness? For it was clear; these semi-urban village dwellers had far more in material terms than their counterparts on the Brahmaputra (there were well stocked shops and all sorts of simple machinery here), but they lived in settlements that were little more than shanty towns, with none of the order and dignity that comes from having barely anything at all. And maybe that was it, thought Brian. It was that simple. If you haven’t got anything, you haven’t got anything with which to foul up your environment. But once you do have something, no matter how little that something is, you can use it to make a mess. There again, that was a terrible thought. It undervalued people’s pride and their natural dignity. So Brian rejected it and instead turned his mind to people’s level of activity.

  The coach had now reached an area where, on each side of the road, there were huge man-made lagoons and on the few pieces of actual dry land, a number of brickworks. What was going on here, as far as Brian could understand, was fish farming, or at least fish-fry farming, and in the brickworks, the useful conversion of excavated mud (from the lagoons) into a product that was much in demand in the Sundarbans (as would soon become apparent). And what struck Brian about these enterprises – and the fertilizer production and the market gardening before – and the “dusty” villages – was people’s level of activity.

  Feeding and tending a boiling pot of tannery waste is clearly hard work. So is working in the fields and digging out and maintaining fish lagoons. Even harder must be working in a brickworks. Everything in these places appeared to be being done by hand – with no machinery of any sort visible anywhere. So all in all, the inhabitants of this part of West Bengal were very active indeed; they worked their socks off and then some more – except if they were in those villages. Then they were not active in the slightest. They were instead like those fabled Assamese, indolent and indeed largely immobile, content merely to sit on the doorstep of a shop or on a sack of rice looking at the traffic or at nothing in particular and staying well out of the way of anything that could be construed as any sort of work or any sort of effort.

  There was an activity apartheid here; one was either overactive or entirely inactive, and Brian could not decide why. How in the face of so much hard work to be done could so many appear to avoid work completely? And what did they do? And how did they support themselves? They couldn’t all be shopkeepers. And they couldn’t all be simply unemployed. Or maybe they were. Maybe work, no matter how demanding or how degrading, was a real prize here in a way it no longer was in Britain, and the village-idles were all the unfortunates. But they didn’t look too distressed, and most of them seemed to be thriving on their idleness. It couldn’t be that simple. And then Brian had a thought. It was a thought about the caste system. Then he aborted the thought. It was probably wrong, but even if it wasn’t he had no way to pursue it. He might know Sujan pretty well now, but quizzing him on that topic was definitely a non starter. In any event, there was now a new circumstance demanding Brian’s attention. The coach had stopped. After two and a half hours on the move it had eventually come to a halt (in the middle of a dusty village) and the Nature-seekers were being invited to disembark.

  Brian’s first thought was that they appeared to have completed their coach ride without the coach colliding with anything. This was good news. Judging from the continuous use of the horn by the coach driver, the occasional swerve and the occasional sharp braking, there had been plenty to collide with. So this was excellent. The other members of the party seemed similarly elated. All for their own reasons no doubt. Indeed, the only small flies in the ointment were not knowing where they were or what was now going to happen, and from some of the ladies in the group, the beginnings of mumblings about their apparent remoteness from any toilet facilities. There had been those two and a half hours on the road, and for some, their bladder capacity was now at its limit.

  ‘This way,’ announced Sujan. ‘The luggage will come.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Pauline.

 
; ‘To the water.’

  ‘Ah,’ she acknowledged, and then clearly chose not to pursue the subject of toilets. But Brian expected her to broach it when they eventually found this “water” – which he hoped was not too far away. It was now exceedingly hot, and nowhere was there any shade.

  It wasn’t far. No more than two hundred yards and there was the promised aqueous medium, a stretch of water that could have been a wide river or a small bit of the sea with a big island in it forming the far bank. Brian had no real concept of the Sundarbans at this stage, and he couldn’t tell which it was. Nor could he tell how they were going to travel on the water. There was no tin boat in sight and just a virtually empty quayside (surfaced with bricks) and neither were there any public conveniences. Pauline spoke again. She had Yvonne and Tina in attendance, both looking concerned.

  ‘Sujan,’ she started, ‘are there any toilets… before we set off… It’s just…’

  ‘On the boat,’ replied Sujan. ‘There.’

  He was now pointing to a vessel that was moored a little way along the quayside. It was not a tin boat and it had clearly been discounted by everybody in the party as being much, much bigger than they had expected.

  ‘On that?’ questioned Pauline. ‘We’re going on that?’

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Sujan. ‘That’s our boat for the next few days. It’s called the “M B Sundari”, and it has two lavatories.’

  People looked stunned – either by the size of the boat or by the incredible news that they would never be more than seconds away from a water closet. It was a lot to take in.

  Brian’s surprise was not at the availability of lavatories but at the size – and the style – of the boat.

  It was about thirty feet long, constructed of wood (anything up to a century ago), had a top deck with a wheelhouse at its centre, and below this deck and running virtually its full length, a line of square portholes. The below-deck cabin was clearly capacious and well able to accommodate a pair of convenience-type pedestals. As became apparent later, there was even a galley down there as well – and the master’s living and sleeping arrangements. This was a serious boat.

  The luggage was now with them, so it was now time to examine the boat at closer quarters. They all moved along the quayside, Sujan in the lead, the Nature-seekers following, and in the rear, a couple of young kids and their baggage tricycles. They were clearly the village stevedores, dependent for a few rupees on the tiny stream of traffic that used this quayside, and eager to earn a few more rupees by loading the baggage onto the boat themselves. This was not allowed. Sujan held them back and invited the Nature-seekers to board while the boat’s own crew tackled the luggage.

  This boarding was achieved by way of the boat’s narrow prow. One stepped carefully onto this, and then two steps later, one climbed a tiny set of stairs to the side of the cabin entrance, to find oneself in the “passenger area”. This was the space on the top deck, in front of the wheelhouse and covered by a blue awning. It was also equipped with ten brown plastic chairs that were arranged in a rough U shape facing out over the front of the boat. For the next few days the reduced band of Nature-seekers were to become forward-facing mariners whose duties would be restricted to those of lookouts – for anything that showed itself before the progress of their craft. It didn’t sound like too arduous a task.

  Soon the luggage had been stowed, the facilities had been utilised, and the Nature-seekers were ensconced on their plastic seats. It was time to cast off. For Brian this was a wonderful experience. Not only was the nastiness of urban and “rural” West Bengal now behind him, but he was about to embark on a journey across water unhindered and unencumbered by any sort of life-jacket! In complete contrast to his experience on the country boat on the Brahmaputra, where each expedition entailed his being constricted in an awful orange strait-jacket, here there was nothing. Health and Safety had simply not got here, a fact that was reinforced beyond doubt by the state of the boat’s life-belts. There were six of these, all within easy reach of the Nature-seekers. But whilst easily reachable they were certainly not easily deployable. All of them were on the rather decorative railings that surrounded the upper deck, and they were tied to these railings – with lots of string and lots of knots. Brian reckoned that it would take ten minutes and three broken finger nails to release any of them. By which time whoever was in the water would either be full of this water or alternatively inside a crocodile and full of just terminal trepidation. They were clearly simply for show and not ever to be used. Brian was delighted.

  They were now under way. The M B Sundari was floating down the placid waters of what had now been confirmed as a river – and tea was being served. Brian was delighted all over again.

  The “cook’s assistant” had appeared from the cabin beneath with two large trays on which there were cups and saucers, spoons and two big tea pots – and for those who did not imbibe of this beverage, a coffee pot as well. There was even a plate of biscuits. Sujan then took control. He had seated himself on a plastic chair just by the cabin door. So he could now stand on the foredeck below the upper deck and play mother. He poured out the teas and coffees, added milk and sugar as requested and then handed round the cups – while Dennis handed round the biscuits. It was all unavoidably charming and at the same time all rather surreal. This wasn’t the Norfolk Broads. This was the Sundarbans – where tigers roam – and where the concept of an English late-morning tea was probably less than firmly rooted – especially when one was “afloat”.

  Brian thought all this, and then he thought about the Norfolk Broads. Because, so far, that was his only frame of reference. He had sailed on those beautiful waters when he was a child, and where they were now was not entirely dissimilar. They were on a broad waterway (albeit much broader than any of those in Norfolk) and the waterway flowed through the flattest of landscapes. There were other vessels on this water, although not many, and there were various signs of habitation along its length. It all had the air of settled occupation about it – in a rather pleasant and ordered environment. Just like the Broads back home. But this was where the similarities ended. This gateway into the Sundarbans might have displayed some superficial likeness to the Broads, but that’s all it was; very superficial. And the scale was all wrong. As the boat proceeded down the river, Brian began to see that the Sundarbans were on a phenomenally larger scale – and that their inhabitants lived rather more risky lives.

  The sides of the river were man-made embankments, some made of just earth reinforced with a palisade of stakes, and many more of earth that had been surfaced with a skin of bricks (no doubt from all those brickworks up the road). Beyond these raised ramparts were trees, palms – and the thatched roofs of houses. But just the roofs. The walls were often not visible. Brian quickly realised that people lived in houses here, which if they were not just at sea level were often just below sea level. They were conducting their lives behind the shelter of a man-made defence, which if it failed would mean the end of their lives. It sounded dramatic but it was true. The Sundarbans environment was not a safe one. Just like those who had carved out a life on the edge of the wayward and unpredictable Brahmaputra, the people who had chosen this place to live had also to accept that their lives were on the edge in more than just a literal sense. The Sundarbans might not be susceptible to flood like the Brahmaputra, but they were even more susceptible to the direct effects of the Monsoon – and to the potentially disastrous effects of cyclones. This was the top of the Bay of Bengal where cyclones were endemic, and the Sundarbans were in reality no more than low-lying specks of land parked in the way of these cyclones, some of them populated by people whose defences against these excesses of nature were just those they could construct by hand – surfaced with some hand-made bricks if they could afford it. It was a very scary thought.

  Presently, however, it just seemed very peaceful. The sun shone, a small breeze blew through the boat, and the world sailed past, a world of more and more embankments and more and more water.
The river had now joined another, and the waterway had become more like an inland sea – which in many ways it was. The Nature-seekers were now entering the Sundarbans proper, a network of huge mangrove-covered islands separated by channels that were more saltwater sea than they were freshwater rivers – and where wildlife took over from hard life…

  Here was an example of it: a whiskered tern sitting on a buoy in the middle of the flow. And there was another: a collared kingfisher. And yet another: a lesser adjutant stork taking to the air from the side of the river – and looking like he had never taken to the air before.

  And so it went on. Until at last, after two hours of enforced but pleasant idleness, the Nature-seekers had their first view of their very own island, the place where they would now be based and from where, over the next few days, they would sail out in their oversized boat to find whatever they could find. It was clearly a very large island; it looked like an infinite stretch of land along the waterway and could have been the mainland itself. But it wasn’t. It was “Bali Island”. No, not that one, just this rather less well known one off the coast of India. It looked very inviting. It was green and in some places there were natural mangrove beaches rather than embankments. And facing it, across the channel, there was another infinitely long island, upon which there were no embankments at all, just uninterrupted mangroves. Presumably that was part of the reserve, as opposed to Bali Island, which was home to a number of people. Brian didn’t know how many, but then Lynn asked Sujan whether he knew. And he did.