The Hungry Tide

“He could tell from the awkwardness of her pronunciation that this was literally true: like strangers everywhere, she had learned just enough of the language to be able to provide due warning of her incomprehension.”

From the novel’s first chapter, it is clear that language—both its barriers and its abilities to connect—will be a major theme throughout the novel. Piya, despite being of Indian descent, has actively chosen to learn only the phrase “I don’t speak Bengali.” From this, the reader can extrapolate much about her: she desires to be polite and not impose on others, but sees herself as wholly American, not Indian.

“‘It’s only in films, you know, that jungles are empty of people.’”

This quote, said by Nirmal to a young Kanai, subverts an expectation readers may have about the novel and its setting. Though it is an action-packed novel set in a very rural place, the focus of The Hungry Tide is on the interpersonal relationships between human beings. When nature does surface in the form of tigers, dolphins, or killer tidal waves, it only serves to illuminate the characters and their relationships with one another.

“On the banks of every great river you’ll find a monument to excess.”

Rivers are a central symbol in The Hungry Tide. Here, Kanai remembers what his uncle once said to him. This is a very early example of foreshadowing—as Kanai looks around the marketplace at Canning Train Station, he notes how busy and alive it is. It is, as his uncle said, a monument to excess, yet, with that line, along with Kanai’s observation that the tides are receding, the reader is clued in to the fact that something terrible will destroy this monument to excess.

“Like an optical illusion, the picture seemed to change shape as she looked at it; she had the feeling that she was looking at it through his eyes.”

When Piya first meets her government guides, she is unable to communicate through words that she is searching for dolphins. When she shows a picture of the dolphin to one of them, he thinks it is a bird. At first, Piya finds this laughable, but soon realizes that all humans see the world in terms of their own experiences. This man had never seen a dolphin, but he had seen a bird. He changed the picture to fit within his own frame of reference.

This makes her eventual match with Fokir so strong—she is able to (mostly) see the world through the framework of his life experiences. She eventually grows complacent with this, which makes her experience with Fokir and the trapped tiger all the more devastating.

“I am reminded of the moments before the coming of a cyclone, when you have barricaded yourself into your dwelling and have nothing else to do but wait.”

The foreshadowing continues. Characters speak of storms constantly, whether they are historical or metaphorical. As the reader sees more lines like these (the above is from Nirmal’s journal) the sense of unease grows. In Nirmal’s case here, he is doing the opposite, translating his inner anxieties over Kusum and Fokir’s safety into nature metaphors. In this novel, the weather and human emotions have an almost symbiotic relationship.

“Where others sought to preserve their memories of the old country, he had always tried to expunge them.”

Here, Piya remembers her father, an Indian immigrant who gladly, forcefully assimilated into American culture. She contrasts him with her mother, who did not assimilate well. Piya’s sense of being on the outside while in India presents a complex look at cultural identity. Her father was an outsider in America, and so forced himself to forget the place of his birth. Piya grew up an outsider in America as well, always different from her white classmates, and yet in India, the land of her parents’ birth, she is an outsider as well, too American to find identity there.

“This would consume all those years and more: it was the work of a lifetime.”

This is a turning point for Piya. Having found the dolphins, she sees that this underfunded research trip to India is far more than that—she has stumbled on something unknown, something worth discovering, something that will likely define her research, her career, and therefore her life. This is the moment when Piya, a young adult, has the timeline of her years on Earth altered. Her life has changed in a single moment.

“‘Its people like us who’re going to suffer and it’s up to us to think ahead. That’s why I have to make sure Tutul gets an education. Otherwise, what’s his future going to be?’”

Moyna, Fokir’s wife, says this to Kanai as they speak of her dreams. This quote sets up a dichotomy between Fokir and Moyna, and there is no clear middle ground. Fokir is physically engaged with the world he’s always known, trawling for crabs in his boat. This is what he wants his son, Tutul, to know and appreciate: the way he and his ancestors have always lived. Moyna, on the other hand, looks towards the future, the way people will live, as opposed to the way they survive now. For Moyna, Tutul’s only hope for a bright future is to abandon his father’s ways and focus on education.

“Staring at it now, she was struck by the way the greenery worked to confound the eye. It was not just that it was a barrier, like a screen or a wall: it seemed to trick the human gaze in the manner of a cleverly drawn optical illusion.”

As an environmental scientist, Piya is naturally primed to respect and even be in awe of nature. But the Sundarbans, she soon learns, are unlike her other research camps. In this quote, she assigns human characteristics to the mangroves, and they are not positive traits. The mangroves hide the forest from view; the greenery “confounds” and “tricks.” The Sundarbans themselves emerge as a character in this novel—an antagonist.

“She understood now that this was indeed some kind of superstition—to say that word or even to make a gestural reference to it was taboo.”

Piya (unwittingly) nearly breaks a strong cultural taboo against referencing tigers or even making gestures that bring them to mind, such as claws and bared teeth. She remembers this in the future, but clearly thinks it is a bit silly—saying the name of a tiger won’t make it appear. After her experiences with tigers, however, she begins to see the root of this taboo. The inhabitants of the Sundarbans live in constant danger and with hundreds of years of generational trauma regarding tiger attacks. For Piya, tigers live behind zoo walls. Here, they are murderers.

“As he listened to its advance, it occurred to him to wonder why, in English, silence is commonly said to ‘fall’ or ‘descend’ as though it were a curtain or a knife.”

In this quote, it is Kanai who examines the oddities of language, rather than Piya. As a translator able to speak six languages, Kanai provides another angle with which to examine the power of words and translation. He is able to pinpoint differences in speech that other characters cannot, and his presence as the translator between Piya and Fokir shows two things: first, how much does get lost in translation, as words must pass through an intermediary, and second, how a translator’s own human emotions sometimes alter what is being said.

“What greater happiness could there be than this: to be on the water with someone you trusted at this magical hour, listening to the serene sound of these animals?”

This moment of introspection shows the reader exactly what Piya values: calm, trust, and her dolphins. And yet With the use of the word “magical” Piya implicitly acknowledges that this is not quite reality. She cannot stay with Fokir forever, tracking dolphins in a boat. On land, far from where they are now, Fokir has a wife and Piya has her own obligations. What she is experiencing right now is beautiful, but it is inevitably fleeting.

“For if you compared it to the ways in which dolphins’ echoes mirrored the world, speech was only a bag of tricks that fooled you into believing that you could see through the eyes of another being.”

As Piya observes the way in which dolphins communicate as opposed to humans, she draws a parallel between the dolphins, and herself and Fokir. She and Fokir, like the dolphins, communicate beyond speech. She believes that they are better for it, that language acts almost as a crutch. Words signify different things to different people, but a shared language flattens those individual peculiarities.

“Each slow turn of the world carries such disinherited/ones to whom neither the past nor the future belongs.”

Here, Nirmal quotes the Austrian poet Rainer Rilke, whom he frequently references simply as “The Poet.” In this instance, he appends the above quote to Kusum’s story of how she and Fokir came to Morichjhapi, along with hundreds of other refugees. Kusum and Fokir are the “disinherited.” Kusum is an orphaned, widowed, single mother. She is literally disinherited, as in she has no inheritance, but also disinherited in the sense that there exists no place for her in the current world, as is true for the other refugees. The past does not belong to them, and as the government forces make clear during the massacre, neither does the future.

“Who was I? Where did I belong? In Calcutta or in the tide country? In India or across the border? In prose or in poetry?”

Nirmal is yet another character who struggles with his identity. His family was separated during the Partition of India; he was forcibly removed from Calcutta due to his political views, and writes prose in his journal though he loves poetry. He has just reached retirement and has no job to ground his sense of self. It is this very ungrounding that causes him to become involved in Kusum and Fokir’s life. Their struggle for a new, better society gives his days meaning.

“‘Because words are just air, Kanai-babu…When the wind blows on the water, you see ripples and waves, but the real river lies beneath, unseen and unheard.’”

Moyna draws a comparison between the hidden depths of the water and the hidden depths of human beings. Humans may talk, but their words are meaningless unless they match a person’s soul. It is perhaps for this reason that Fokir and Piya develop their unearthly bond. Without words to lie, distract, or equivocate, they are forced to communicate with their true selves.

‘No one could think this a crime unless they have forgotten that this is how humans have always lived—by fishing, by clearing land and by planting the soil.’”

Kusum says this to Nirmal, speaking of the government soldiers’ attack on her island home. Kusum cannot understand the government’s opposition to this. Isn’t this how people have always lived? For a woman who has suffered immeasurably and owns nothing, the intricacies of land ownership and government oversight are lost. Kusum knows how her people have always lived, and this is enough. Her son, Fokir, will share the same opinions once he is grown.

“And all the while the Matla lay still and waited.”

Kanai recalls a story about Lord Canning, the Englishman who gave his name to the train station town on the banks of the Matla River. Despite being told by local people that the Matla (the Bengali word for “mad”) was unpredictable, a gorgeous town is built. Five years later, a cyclone and flood destroys the town. In Kanai’s telling, the Matla becomes a person—a scheming, insane, yet patient person. This continues the narrative’s tradition of assigning negative human characteristics to nature.

“‘Because it was people like you…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 favor with their Western patrons.’”

Kanai speaks to Piya about the damage they have both done to the people of the Sundarbans. Piya, as a scientist and conservationist, has forced villagers to live in close proximity with dangerous tigers. Killing a tiger is illegal thanks to people like her, and villagers die as a result. Indians of Kanai’s class ignore this suffering because it is useful for them to do so. Westerners control the lives of people they do not know, and upper-class Easterners enable them.

“Fokir had brought him here not because he wanted him to die, but because he wanted him to be judged.”

This is a moment of major transformation for Kanai, who finds himself helpless and alone on an island with a tiger. Before Fokir dropped him off, he asked Kanai if he was “clean,” and Kanai here realizes that he meant clean of spirit or heart. Kanai is being judged by the island and is found wanting. Kanai has stridden through life with utter self-confidence and is here forced to recognize his many shortcomings.

“‘Kanai, the dreamers have everyone to speak for them…But those who’re patient, those who try to be strong, who try to build things—no one ever sees any poetry in that, do they?’”

Nilima speaks to Kanai about what was in Nirmal’s journal. She is concerned that Kanai will think her cold or unfeeling because she did not participate in Nirmal’s political ventures. She offers a different perspective: what Nilima did—building a hospital, creating a foundation, transforming a community—is hardly the stuff of epic poetry, but it made a difference. She is not a villain simply because she is practical. There is value in her practicality.

“‘He’d have said, “It’s just social service—not revolution.’”

Here, Nilima refers to the way Nirmal saw the hospital. To him, it was a simple social service, nothing more. And yet, as the storm hits Lusibari, the hospital saves hundreds of lives, the lives of poor people who would have nowhere else to take shelter. Despite Nirmal’s dismissals, Nilima was the true revolutionary, in the end.

“She remembered how she had tried to find the words to remind him of how richly he was loved—and once again, as so often before, he had seemed to understand her, even without words.”

As Fokir dies, his body crushed against Piya’s, protecting her, she knows that she must comfort him. In previous chapters, Piya had grown to feel that her previous connection to Fokir was a mirage, that they couldn’t truly understand each other. But in his dying moments, as he whispers the names of his wife and his son, Piya once again believes that she can speak to him. If not through her words, then through her heart.