A Wild Jungle




Bushra Khalique

 
© Copyright 2024 by Bushra Khalique



 Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

“People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

I remember those days when I was a child, sitting in the back of my father’s car, with my eyes glued to the window. Every road we didn’t take, every side-street choked with dead leaves and gnarly, old trees was enchanting. Like that one special warehouse which is visible from a certain point on the new flyover, which from a distance looks like it’s been decorated for Christmas, or that faded red brick building which I think is a boarding-school, but have never asked. That feeling of anticipation, the thrill of not knowing what exactly lies beyond those barriers was delicious. I enjoyed that feeling, I filled my imagination with the wonderful things that were lying there, just out of my reach, just as long as I didn’t open the door too soon. My eyes were filled with unfulfilled dreams.

So, perhaps I opened the door too soon. A few years ago, I read Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, set in the Sundarban Islands in West Bengal. The pages of the book were a portal, they drew me in bodily and transported me to another world. I was there, I watched as Sir Hamilton sounded his call, I stood by, a mute spectator, as the Morichjhapi Massacre took place, finally I watched as Piya* was dragged into the mud of the Sundarbans, to be marked by these islands as their own. I cried, I laughed, I fell in love. Life moved on. My imagination was coloured with beautiful descriptions of India’s natural beauty, but that was not the India I knew. My India was covered in concrete, with rubbish heaps piled up at street corners, and dusty trees standing forlornly inside walled compounds. Picture Anne Shirley running around Lover’s Lane, and Willowmere, and The Birch Path with Diana, and picture me looking out my window to see only an ugly concrete jungle.

I think I convinced myself that reading this book was a sign to me, or maybe it was just another tide-country mirage. I had wanted to see a jungle for a very long time, and now I was finally going to see one. However that may have been, that was how I ended up dragging my very unenthusiastic family, with me to the Sundarban Islands. The Sundarban Islands are Bengal’s outermost frontiers; together man, beast, and nature all bear the first onslaught of any natural calamity that heads towards Bengal. The name of these islands translates literally to ‘beautiful forests’ although they are not very prepossessing at first glance. According to some, the name of these islands comes from the Sundari tree, which is a type of mangrove which grows here in abundance. These mangrove trees with their knotted, exposed roots present a forbidding sight to any visitor who sets foot on these islands.

I hate long bus rides. For one thing, those tourist buses always stop at the hotels with the most crappy washrooms. For another, the heavy book I had insisted on stuffing into my mother’s old purse, was hurting my legs. After five hours of riding, we were greeted by the boats on which we would begin our trip. Very nice, well-equipped, two-tier boats, which nonetheless were not proper replacements for comfortable hotel rooms. My bladder was sending me grave warning signals as I plied myself with heaps of rice, dal, fish and vegetables, but I was too much in awe of the small toilet which stood perched on one end of the boat, to venture there. That was the day we started our three-day vigil for the Royal Bengal Tiger. All day long we stared at the mangrove trees, which looked more and more jangli (wild) by the minute. Mangrove forests, are after all, nothing like the wooded paths which are common in the works of the English authors whose works I was fond of reading.

When night finally descends on the Sundarbans, it envelopes the islands with a velvety-black darkness, unlike in Calcutta, where the night sky is often a putrid shade of orange-ish black. The Sundarbans are actually a collection of islands, some so small that I could see their entire extent from my seat on the boat. Sometimes, I would see a small sign of human presence on those deserted islands; a red cloth tied to a tree, perhaps as a sign of devotion. I am afraid that I don’t remember the names of the islands where we stepped, or the one on which our hotel was situated. Some names ring out: Pakhiralay, Sajnekhali, Gosaba, but for the most part, I have no idea where we were. The island to which we would retire every evening after it was too dark to see anything, seemed to me to be populated entirely with tourist hotels. So, I nicknamed it the ‘Island of Hotels’.

At night, our ‘Island of Hotels’ is very quiet. Every little sound echoes in the night air, and voices are hushed of their own accord. Only the haunting sound of the drums, and the songs of the women can be heard. We were being treated to a traditional folk dance. I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat, my cheeks burning with shame, as I wished desperately for some square piece of cloth to cover my face. My heart, that of a Marxist revolutionary who preaches from the comfort of her armchair, uttered bitter words of reproach to me, for supporting such a commercialisation of local culture. I was only glad that Nirmal* wasn’t here to witness my shame. I could imagine him shaking his head at me. But then, I shifted my focus to the delicious fried chicken I was eating. It was miraculous, but my heart was suddenly three times lighter! After all, I consoled myself, we can’t all be Greta Thunberg. We don’t have her guts.

I don’t recollect much of that day, except for some fragments of memory which stand out more sharply than the rest. In particular, I seem to remember one of the dancing girls, a young woman who seemed to be around my age. If I had passed her on the streets of Calcutta, I would not have looked at her twice. But for some reason my memory has chosen to focus on her image. I find myself wondering about her, about her hopes and dreams, her wishes, her desires. What kind of castles in the air is she cherishing and how different are they from mine? She becomes another one of those characters who reside in my mind, a dream-image which will grow dull with time.

The rest of the trip was for me a blur of monotony. I suppose if I was an overworked housewife (like my mother), or a sedentary old lady, I might have enjoyed it, but being only an unduly idealistic 21-year-old young woman, spoilt by the instant gratification provided by modern smartphones, I found it very dull indeed. All day long, we would sit on the boats staring at the mangrove trees, hoping for one glimpse of that elusive beast, the Royal Bengal Tiger. I want to make it known here, that I am not one of those people who think it is fun to be on an African safari, hunting lions. I would have settled for a crocodile, floating along deceptively like a log, but hopefully at a safe distance so we could retreat quickly to a safe position. But when reality runs afoul of my expectations, I often take refuge in the clouds. The water, I was delighted to see, was just as dark and murky as Ghosh had promised, and the clouds were a thing of beauty, tumbling down on the surface of the water like big, tufty cotton balls. These tides, which were so gentle before me, are the lifeblood of the Sundarbans. It is their relentless ebb-tide, which constantly gives life to new islands, while submerging others, apparently at will, an invisible pen creating seductive layers of palimpsests. According to Ghosh, to the inhabitants of the Sundarbans this is the bhatir-desh or tide-country.

The various islands on which we alighted all merge into one in my memory; there was one on which we walked through a narrow, netted enclosure, while the animals moved freely; I watched as a monkey snatched a packet of chips from a boy. There was another on which was inscribed the Bon Bibi legend, among other things, which I read out proudly to my disbelieving family. The patron goddess of the Sundarbans is a goddess without borders; a Muslim who was born in Medina, she is worshipped by Hindus in the form of a Hindu ritual, with words which remind one of a Muslim prayer; in short, a goddess who would be considered blasphemous by practitioners of both religions. The tides wash away borders, lives, and narrow beliefs; if the partition of Bengal couldn’t stop the mangrove forests from growing on both sides of the border, holding together the two halves of Bengal like a beating heart, then how could other petty beliefs hold? By all means, Bon Bibi is an appropriate goddess for some of the most downtrodden people of the country. Who else would be fool enough to stay in a place so beset by dangers of all kinds? The demon-king Dokkhin Rai, her archenemy, plagues her devotes by taking the shape of a tiger; he stalks the islands, growing forever bolder in an age where human life accounts for less than nothing.

*****

There is something incredibly romantic about sailing on a river while it is raining. The clouds darkened, and the winds blew soft kisses on my face, as I watched some ten or fifteen people huddled together on a small nouka or boat, all holding up black umbrellas to ward off the rain. I landed on Gosaba Island to see the famous Hamilton Bungalow, the abode of Sir Daniel Hamilton, who was responsible for the resettlement of the Sundarbans. Like Kanai*, I was disappointed at seeing that rickety structure be called a bungalow. The markets of Gosaba made me feel like I was in some part of Calcutta. The people passed by me, all utterly unremarkable, like ghosts who had to hurry to do their daily business. I hadn’t expected to actually meet the ghost of Sir Hamilton, nor had I expected the people there would have wings. Maybe I should have, that would have explained the profound sense of disappointment I was experiencing. I had come expecting poetry, and I had found prose instead.

Every day I sat on our boat, feeling like a fat coloniser, except of course for my colouring, my clothes, and for matters related to my birth. I stuffed my belly with food, and wondering what the point of all this was. A naughty comparison entered my mind as I saw the boat penetrating the narrow waterways. I blame Freud. Maybe this is what bad sex feels like. If it does, then I can only hope that it doesn’t last quite so long. Not that I would know either way. It was hard for me to spend three days in the Sundarbans, I wondered how the people who chose to live here managed to do so with constant threats from the tides, the animals, and the government. The Matla River, whose very name suggests the Bengali word matal or mad, had clearly seeped into the blood of these people, infusing them with its madness, just as surely as it had refused to whisper its secrets to me.

I thought about the Sahara group’s 2003 proposal to turn the Sundarbans into a tourist haven. I chuckled darkly at the thought of there being anything here to satisfy the casual tourist. I had been lured by an excellent book, by movies which mystify everything which feels exotic to eyes unused to the slow magic of a place which has held on to its true essence in the face of a changing world. The wild jungles of the Sundarbans kept themselves carefully shrouded from my gaze, I never saw anything there except for deer. I had suspected my idol Amitav Ghosh of romanticising the Sundarban Islands even as he had set out to demystify it, and here was I, doing the same despite his warnings. In Freudian terms, I sought to overreach my father, and was brought crashing down to earth.

Throughout the trip, my shoes eerily remained clean, cleaner than they are in Calcutta, where I live. But I could not have hoped to find gold in the soft mud of the Sundarbans, when I was unwilling to soil my feet. As we left, I could feel the islands heave a collective sigh of relief at our departure, even as it prepared for more boatloads of tourists. The Sundarbans were glad to be rid of us, and so were we. The silence of the Sundarbans is deceptive. In it, I felt a haunting echo of my own silence. This silence should never be taken at face value. Or else, it will remind us of the wildness that lurks beneath the surface, just as the Matla reminded Lord Canning of his impotency in the face of nature, by tearing down his Port Canning to pieces. As for me, the goddess has chosen not to include me in her warm embrace. But that’s alright. I have always had a good imagination.

*Piya, Kanai, and Nirmal are characters in The Hungry Tide.


My name is Bushra, and I have completed my Masters degree in English Literature a few years ago, although I am still studying, much to the dismay of my parents. I would like to get my stories and my essays published in magazines and blogs, hopefully for a lot of money. If you have read this far, you may want to read my short story which was published in Out of Print, which up till now is my only published story. Its called Dadi/Amma. I won’t get money if you read it, but I just wanted to brag. Okay, I’ll stop typing now.


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