This rejection didn’t stop her from joining them again at the lunch table. She stationed herself under it while the two puppies crowded around Brian’s chair. How the hell did they know? And they even knew when to call it a day, which this lunchtime was near its conclusion when a bowl of mangoes was placed on the table. This fruit was clearly not to their liking. They withdrew to the threshold of the dining room and fell asleep. Or maybe they were just closing their eyes to the sight of a group of English people grappling with the challenge of whole fresh mangoes. Because even for those of a barely squeamish disposition, this is not a sight to be welcomed.
Brian didn’t join in. He was only ever prepared to tackle any sort of food when there was a half reasonable chance that a majority of it would end up in his mouth and not on his hands and his face. However there were apparently no such concerns for most of the ladies in the party. And it was just as well that, for these plainly more reckless individuals, there was a generously sized sink at the end of the dining room. It had clearly been installed by the camp’s management as a result of their observation of similar tussles between the English and their mangoes in the past. Brian could only think that for an ex-colonial race, it was all rather embarrassing, and might even border on the shameful. Or did he mean comic?
Nothing more had been mentioned on the subject of books. So Brian suggested to Sandra that they retire to their room again. It was time for more nudity beneath the fan – and for Brian to remind himself of what he’d actually written in those books. If they were mentioned again, he thought it might be useful to know what people were talking about.
In the event, it wasn’t necessary. Even though, as soon as they’d set off in the boat again an hour or so later, Alan had pulled out a copy of “Crats”. He proceeded to read it but not to challenge Brian on any of its contents. Instead he just made Brian feel a little unsettled… For it was one thing to know that people were reading your books; it was quite another to be in their company when they were doing this. Brian tried not to notice and instead occupied himself with some active spotting. If there was anything out there, he intended to call it – and to be seen to be calling it, rather than to be suspected of listening for any reactions from Alan. But it was difficult. They were heading south, to that part of the Sundarbans well away from human settlement where the islands are no bigger but the channels between them become wider all the time. And this meant that because the boat was now keeping to the safety of mid-channel, away from hidden sand banks, the land was more distant than ever – and the prospect of spotting wildlife had become remote. Alan had known this was going to happen and it was why he had brought the book with him and was now reading it – in favour of staring into the distance or attempting another crossword. He had known he was unlikely to add to his bird list on this voyage and he had therefore wanted to add to his reading list instead. Even if it was just the work of an unknown and untested wordsmith.
He had made a good choice. The boat was now “at sea” and land was distant in all directions. In fact Brian began to consider the sea-worthiness of their vessel. They weren’t gliding on smooth water anymore; they were cutting through a choppy main, with flecks of foam around, and occasionally a drift of spray across the upper deck. He just hoped that those ants hadn’t been hungry enough to chew through too much of the boat itself.
It seemed they hadn’t. The boat ploughed on and it soon became clear that enough of it remained un-eaten. Brian was reassured – right up to the point where the master of the boat began to execute a turn. Because in conducting this manoeuvre, he appeared to be taking a risk – and the risk was of capsizing his vessel. Well, maybe it wasn’t leaning that much. But it was now sailing across the direction of the waves – and there were waves now. And it was doing this close to what Brian could only think of as a maelstrom. There was a huge patch of turbulent water that the master clearly wanted to skirt in making his turn, but that threatened to engulf them at any second – with or without the help of those worrying waves…
Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over – and the boat was approaching some land and the mouth of a more modest-sized channel. Brian indulged himself in a sigh of relief – as Alan put his book down and the photographers and cinematographers in the party readied their equipment. They were now getting close enough to the mangroves to stand a chance of seeing something.
They did, but it wasn’t too many birds. Instead their first encounter was with another boat. This was of a similar design to their own, but bigger, and it had on board not a party of birdwatchers but a party of partygoers. This apparently was still the major use to which visiting Indians put the Sundarbans: as an exotic backdrop to their floating and often very noisy celebrations. Why party in crowded Kolkata when you can party at the top of your voice in the middle of the deserted and romantic-looking Sundarbans? And who knows what regulations were recognised on these boats compared to those enforced on the mainland? It seemed like a good idea, even if it didn’t seem to be utilising the Sundarbans for the purpose for which they were now being maintained.
Anyway, the Nature-seekers exchanged waves with the partygoers as their boat passed them in the other direction, and then some of the Nature-seekers, including Brian, realised that there wasn’t just waving going on there, but that there was also some pointing. A number of the revellers were pointing down the channel towards something they must have seen, and that would soon provide the Nature-seekers with their second encounter. The master of the Sundari spotted it first. It was a salt water crocodile on the bank, and it was enormous.
The boat turned towards it and cameras and camcorders were primed for action. Then the boat was virtually alongside it, and everybody on board must have been thinking what Brian was thinking: that the crocodile he’d spotted yesterday and which he’d taken such pride in, was to this crocodile what a midget is to a giant. This chap must have been fifteen feet long – and about half of that wide. He looked as though he’d just eaten a couple of cows and then John Prescott for afters. Brian was humbled and he was impressed, and he took as many photos as he could before they moved on. Then he had a thought, and the thought was that it was a good idea that nobody lived here. It was a very dangerous place. For everybody. And not just for John Prescott.
Then they had their third encounter, and Brian was reminded that although nobody lived on these reserve islands, some people, other than scientists and naturalists, did visit them. For a long-standing aspect of Sundarbans culture is the collection of honey from the wild. Or more specifically the almost lunatic expeditions into the mangrove forests that are still made by a number of licensed honey-collectors, and that frequently get them killed.
No, this third encounter in the channel wasn’t the floating body of a honey-collector, but it was still horrifying nonetheless. It was a scrappy looking flag on the end of a scrappy looking stick, and it told all the living honey-collectors that this was where one of their number had become a departed honey-collector. This was where some poor unfortunate had been taken by a tiger and it was therefore not a good place to search for the sweet stuff. Better to sail a little further up the channel and risk your life there. God, it was terrible. We put up accident black-spot signs when there’s a one in a million chance that we’ll prang our car and even injure ourselves in the process. Here they put up death-spot signs when there’s every chance in the world that even if you take notice of them you’ll still be the cause of a new one yourself – no matter where you try your luck. Pity the tigers but pity the honey-collectors too. How poor do you have to be to run that sort of risk?
Probably about as poor as the workers the Nature-seekers saw next to the camp when they’d finally returned home.
The return trip had been uneventful other than for a dramatic fly-past of literally thousands of yellow wagtails returning south to their roosts – and an upsurge in coughing. It sounded like a barber-shop chorus gone wrong. But now they were back and being escorted by all the camp dogs along the dyke to the camp. An
d there they were: a dozen or so men defying the scale of their task. For these men were not just digging out a new lagoon, they were digging out an Olympicsize lagoon – without any machinery whatsoever. And they had already made incredible progress. They were at the bottom of a very big oblong hole – which had been there when the Nature-seekers had first arrived, but which was now noticeably deeper at its centre where the labourers were gathered. And here, some of them were carving out more chunks of clay from the Earth with their mattocks and loading these into what looked like big, straw fruit bowls. Others were then lifting the filled bowls onto the heads of porters, who themselves would then make their way up the side of the excavation to the head of a dyke. This earthwork ran at right angles to the dyke that carried the path to the camp, and it was being broadened at its top by all the bowls of mud being dumped there and shaped into the flat and regular crest common to all the local dykes. But again by hand. There wasn’t a machine to be seen.
All the Nature-seekers stopped and gawped. They couldn’t not. It was such a splendid and, at the same time, such a truly dreadful illustration of human perseverance and maybe human desperation as well. How long they’d already spent on this work, Brian couldn’t tell. Nor could he estimate how much longer they needed to spend, how many more thousands of fruit bowls of mud they still needed to cart to the top of the dyke before their lagoon hole was finished and it could be filled with water – presumably for raising fish-fry. But he could still be amazed and horrified at what they were doing – and at their lack of resentment. For work had now stopped and they were all lining up for a group photo. There they were, working their proverbial whatsits off, and along come these lazy rich foreigners who have probably never wielded a mattock in their life, let alone carried far too many kilos of mud on their heads, and rather than cursing and shaking their fists in disgust, they go and line up for them – with huge smiles on their faces and not even a hint of annoyance.
Brian was flabbergasted. Why weren’t they indignant? Why weren’t they resentful? How could they be so friendly to these idle strangers? He couldn’t answer these questions, but he suspected it was something to do with absolute poverty and a complete ignorance of how other people lived. It was to become a suspicion that was reinforced in the strongest possible way just the following day.
First, however, there was a shower to attend to, a gin and soda to deal with, and a dinner to enjoy with his companions. It was a good one; the food was excellent, the beer was cool and the dogs were peaceful – as they always were. Furthermore, there were two more references to his books and an indication that Alan wanted more. He had digested the whole of “Crats”, and as Lynn had yet to finish their copy of “Eggshell”, he needed something else. This was all that Brian needed – to fetch a copy of “Ticklers”, one of his full-length books, which was a brilliant (or so Brian thought) parody of his career as an accountant – set of course in the context of an intergalactic band of adventurers. This was a risky strategy on Brian’s part, but he had already risked a lot, so why not some more? And tomorrow, they had a very long trip in store. Sujan had told them. So Alan would need a demanding sort of novel – in terms of word-count, if nothing else.
Then, just before they retired to their rooms, Brian had a final thought on this risk he was running – of embarrassment or rejection or even ridicule. Alan might think he was a prat. But so what, he thought? Because that sort of risk pales into insignificance when you compare it with other sorts of risks. Like the sorts of risks that can earn you a flag at the end of a stick. It was a sobering end to his evening
14.
Today there was to be a “full day’s sailing”. Sujan would be taking his charges to a heronry on a distant island, and that meant that the Nature-seekers would be onboard their boat for most of the day, with even lunch being served whilst afloat. Maybe this is why he thought it would be a good idea to give them all some exercise before they plonked their bottoms on those plastic chairs for several hours. And what better exercise than an early-morning walk to find an owl nest? Yes, before they set out on their vessel, the whole party would process through the village next to the camp and seek out the nest of two barn owls which had apparently been discovered on its far side.
This was a good idea in theory, but in practice it proved less than ideal. To start with the weather had turned unbelievably sultry. Even before they set out it was not only ridiculously hot but also absurdly humid. And as soon as the walking got underway so did the sweating. Brian’s pre-breakfast shower was soon overtaken by a new shower of perspiration and his clothes became disgustingly clammy. Then there was the dawdling. Everyone was interested in everything, whether it was the small schoolroom next to their path, or the lentil-picking going on in the fields – or even the ubiquitous discs of cow dung drying in courtyards and on roofs – for their subsequent use as fuel. It was all fascinating and it all had to be filmed or photographed. And as often as not from an exposed vantage-point in the full blaze of the sun. And the perspiration continued to flow…
Brian wouldn’t have included this excursion in his list of the most cherished events of the holiday, but even he was captivated by the sights around him and he tried to take them all in. There were the houses, for example, all constructed from mud and cow dung with thatched roofs (as was to be expected) but all slightly different and all constructed with an eye to their appearance. They were sculptured – beautifully. They had little sculptured window openings and sculptured door frames and even sculptured seats on their outside walls. There was something “hobbit” about them, and although they were a product of acute poverty they were also a statement of the dignity and pride that this total absence of wealth seems to inspire and that Brian had observed in every poor village they’d visited. Then there was the path they were using, the brick-surfaced dyke that ran all through the village, and for all Brian knew, all the way around the island. It was attractive in its own right, and well-maintained. Even though it was in constant use by any number of pedestrians, scores of bicyclists (each with a working bell) and a host of village dogs. Every house, it appeared, had at least two hounds, and their job was to bark at anything that moved, to run out and challenge their neighbours’ hounds when they’d run out to challenge the Nature-seekers, and generally to be as boisterous as the heat would allow. In fact, it was now so hot that the camp’s own dog, the adult bitch who had started off with the Nature-seekers, had called it a day herself and trotted back home. Very sensible. Why would any animal or anybody exert themselves on a day like today? Well, only if they had to, thought Brian. If they had to pick those lentils. Or if they had to unload a boat-full of bricks.
And this is where the dawdling ground to a complete stop. At a point on the paved dyke where, sitting next to it, in the low-tide mud of a now almost empty channel, were two “brick boats”. At least that’s what they were today; two fat, black cargo boats, each with an open hull (save for a small cabin area in the stern), and these hulls packed tight with bricks. Brian could scarcely believe that these vessels could have floated; they seemed preposterously overloaded. But clearly they had floated – all the way from one of those brick works he’d seen. And here they were now being unloaded – in presumably the same way they’d been loaded in the first place: by hand – and by head. For here, in this crippling heat, were a number of men using the very same method to transfer the bricks from boat to shore as that used by those cheerful chappies who’d been digging that lagoon by the camp. Indeed maybe they were the very same men. Mornings as dockers, afternoons as diggers. And if they were, how the hell did they not just waste away? They must have been burning more calories every day than they were consuming in a week.
Brian was stunned. These guys were carrying on their heads the same fruit-bowl baskets he’d seen in use yesterday, but now not full of mud but instead full of at least fourteen full-size house bricks. He recalled the day when as a student labourer he had attempted to emulate the actions of a professional hod-carrier on a building site (
in the days when hods still existed). He’d loaded it with probably no more than ten bricks, and had managed to walk a few paces with the hod over his shoulder. But then he had come to ascend the ladder to where the bricks were needed, and he’d found he couldn’t even raise himself past the first rung. Fourteen bricks, he knew, constituted a very big weight for anyone to carry. For a slightly-built Indian, walking along a very wobbly gangplank, this number of bricks – on his head – constituted a virtual impossibility, especially when one took into account the temperature and the number of times he would have to bear such a load.
Well, that was it. So many minutes were spent marvelling at these heroes that the Nature-seekers ran out of time. They had dawdled and now they had ceased moving at all, and they would therefore have to forego their viewing of the barn owls and return to the camp. Back there, there might just be time for a further quick shower, a change of clothes and a drink – before their full-day’s voyage got underway and they could get hot and sweaty all over again.
Their journey would take them a little way north and then a long way east. For most of the way, the populated Sundarbans would be on their left and the unpopulated tiger-reserve Sundarbans on their right. And should all go to plan, they would then arrive at the most easterly populated island within the Indian Sundarbans, beyond which was Bangladesh, but on which was the promised heronry and their ultimate destination. And the journey would take three and a half hours – each way.
Fortunately there was plenty to occupy most of the group (although Alan soon resorted to “Ticklers”). The populated islands were all protected by more dykes, but there were local variations in their design and big variations in their well being. Some were recently dressed with bricks and looked capable of withstanding just about anything. Others looked rather more tired and potentially fragile. And others were in pieces; they had been half washed away and new dykes were being constructed beyond their remains. The people here had been forced to retreat and forced to rebuild their defences to stop their retreat becoming a complete rout – with the loss of their homes and their livelihoods. As in so much of the Sundarbans, the houses and the peoples’ farmed land was at or below sea level, and in Brian’s view the word “precarious” seemed almost inadequate in describing their existence.
Brian on the Brahmaputra Page 21