In the land where the Brahmaputra meets the holy Ganga, lies an archipelago, unique and distinct in both its flora and fauna. And time here is surely measured by the tide. The contours of land, river and sea are fashioned by the ebb and flow of the tide. The beliefs and practices spring from the eddies of the tide, yarned from fables of the forests—its tigers. This is the Sundarbans in West Bengal, immortalised as the tide country in Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Hungry Tide.

Set in Lusibari, one of the many islands of the region, the novel spans a flood of history. It examines the tide country from its discovery to the arrival of Piyali Roy, an Indian American cetologist who cruises the channels of the tide country to research the endangered Irawaddy dolphin; and Kanai Dutt, a Delhi businessman, who makes the trip on the request of his relative, Nilima, to collect a packet addressed to him from her late revolutionary husband, Nirmal. Both Piya and Kanais encounters with man, animal and nature in tide country forms the crux of the novel. The helplessness of man in the face of the unfettered fury of nature and its beings is juxtaposed with the defencelessness of nature confronted and debilitated by the machinations of a modern manmade world and its complexities. What sets the novel apart is its powerful rendition of contrasting situations, sans the idealisation of man as the noble savage or the habitat as a pristine haven.

The absence of a romanticised and idyllic portrait of Sundarbans, a region home to unique flora and fauna and where the land and the waters are relentlessly at loggerheads, shaping and reshaping each other, the natural and human tragedy are stark, and dispassionately rendered. In a novel such as this, where politics of the people and the place are so evenly balanced, uncomfortable questions on the grave problems facing the environment vis-à-vis its creatures are posed.

The excerpts of Nirmals diary are recounted by Kanai, where events leading up to the fateful night of May 1979 when the actual Morijhapi massacre occurred, are narrated. In fact, Morijhapi forms the most powerful backdrop to events and issues addressed in the novel. Morijhapi was declared a protected area by the Union government as part of Project Tiger launched in 1973 to preserve and protect the dwindling number of tigers in Indian forests. In 1978, the island was taken over by a group of poor and defenceless Bangladeshi refugees, seeking to set up an egalitarian world, free of maladies of class, caste, religion and poverty that had plagued them till date. But it was not to be. Clashes ensued between the State and the settlers. The Left Front government was determined to evict the human inhabitants in favour of its animal populace, which finally resulted in a police shoot out that killed scores of these helpless settlers and forced the rest to flee the island. The memories and memoirs of Morijhapi form a haunting prelude to the novel. In his memoir, Nirmal recollects the agony of Kusum, one of the hapless victims of the Morijhapi massacre, and in her voice we hear the anguish of trying to survive in a world where man and nature are against you. “…the worst part was not the hunger or the thirst. It was to sit here, helpless, and listen to the policemen making their announcements, hearing them say that our lives, our existence, was worth less than dirt or dust. ‘This island has to be saved for its trees, it has to be saved for its animals, it is a part of a reserve forest, it belongs to a project to save tigers, which is paid for by people from all around the world’. Everyday sitting here, with hunger gnawing at our bellies, we would listen to these words, over and over again. Who are these people, I wondered, who love animals so much that they are willing to kill us for them? Do they know what is being done in their names? Where do they live, these people, do they have children, do they have mothers, fathers? As I thought of these things it seemed to me that this whole world has become a place of animals, and our fault, our crime, was that we were just human beings, trying to live as human beings always have, from the water and the soil. No human being could think this is a crime unless they have forgotten that this is how humans have always lived - by fishing, by clearing land and by planting the soil.’ ”

Pitting the conservation of the tiger at the cost of the extermination of its human settlers highlights several paradoxes that find no easy answers even in the real world. Conservation is absolutely necessary. But, why is it always the poor and the underprivileged who are always short-changed in the process?

The paradox does not end here. Piya s expeditions through the crisscrossing waterways of the island country, guided by the local fisherman, Fokir, and at times in the company of Kanai; her trysts with the mother and calf duo of Irawaddy dolphins culminating in the tragic sight of the calfs body bobbing on the water is poignant in drawing the plight of these helpless creatures robbed of their habitat—the irony being that the gash on the dead calfs body was caused by a propeller of a speedboat: the very kind used by the coastguard or Forest Department. A situation further enhanced by Piyas trauma on stumbling upon the tiger caught, blinded and brutally murdered by villagers. The tiger, whom the villagers stand in awe and reverence, refraining from even giving voice to its name. Both situations stand in stark contrast to the Morijhapi massacre. The contradictions are most eloquent in the exchange between Kanai and Priya after the slaying of the tiger.

“ ‘Because it was people like you’, said Kanai, ‘who made a push to protect the wildlife here, without regard for the human costs. And I’m complicit because people like me – Indians of my class, that is – have chosen to hide these costs, basically in order to curry favour with their Western patrons. Its not hard to ignore the people whore dying – after all they are the poorest of the poor…There are more tigers living in America, in captivity, than there are in all of India – what do you think would happen if they started killing human beings?’ ‘But Kanai’, said Piya, ‘there is a big difference between preserving a species in captivity and keeping it in its habitat’ … ‘The difference, Kanai’, Piya said slowly and emphatically, ‘is that it was what was intended – not by you or me, but by nature, by the earth, by the planet that keeps us all alive. Just suppose that we crossed that imaginary line that prevents us from deciding that no other species matter except ourselves. Whatll be left then? Arent we alone enough in the universe? And do you think itll stop at that? Once we decide we can kill off other species, it’ll be people next - exactly the kind of people youre thinking of, people who are poor and unnoticed.’ ”

The human costs and the costs of conservation are certainly complex issues that find no easy resolution. Towards the end of the novel, the tide and the storm that sweeps the islands and the one moment of solidarity Piya shares with the tiger she chances upon—at the peak of the storm, where the victims are both man and animal pitted against the fury of nature—present the third scenario, where man and animal are against the forces of nature. In terms of denouement, the storm, Fokirs death, the loss of all data on the dolphins collected by Piya effect a unpretentious and rather simplistic solution, but a solution nevertheless. Piya decides to remain in Lusibari and start a conservation project that would involve the close participation of the villagers.

In the novel, the tide country spares none and through the chief protagonist, the narrative poses questions crucial to the existence of the earth, man and animal. What are the parameters of what we call nature? Are we part of nature or do we stand apart from nature? Being ‘natural beings’ are we not part of nature? If we are part of it, where do we locate the social and the cultural? Does nature stand outside all that is human? Are not animals a part of nature? If so, at what cost is conservation to be undertaken?

The novel posits these questions and more. The current controversy around the proposal for a five-star eco tourism project by the privately owned Sahara group, floated with the complicity of the Left Front government, finds strong opposition from many voices, including the authors. And rightly so, for the vast and fragile ecosystems of the mangrove forests are home to a wide variety of rare flora and fauna, and any further human encroachments would only sabotage the bionetwork that sustains this unique environment. The disappearance of tigers from reserve forests like Sariska, reiterate the importance of balanced and effective conservation. The indiscriminate poaching of tigers, the Lefts approval for a tourism project endangering an ecologically delicate biosystem, are immediate concerns that underline the need for eco-consciousness and sensitivity. Perils may not be immediately apparent, but the price we have to pay in the long run may prove to be too high. And in a time of escalating ecological crises and ever-increasing social conflicts over the use and distribution of natural resources, the novel poses key questions pertaining to the orientation of our social and cultural paradigms, vis-à-vis the natural: Questions, whose answers are imperative to ensure life on earth for man, animal and plant.