The Hungry Tide

The Hungry Tide is the sixth novel by Indian-born author, Amitav Ghosh. It tells a very contemporary story of adventure and unlikely love, identity and history, set in one of the most fascinating regions on the earth. Off the easternmost coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans. For settlers here, life is extremely precarious. Attacks by deadly tigers are common. Unrest and eviction are constant threats. Without warning, at any time, tidal floods rise and surge over the land, leaving devastation in their wake. In this place of vengeful beauty, the lives of three people from different worlds collide. Piyali Roy is a young marine biologist, of Indian descent but stubbornly American, in search of a rare, endangered river dolphin, "Orcaella brevirostris". Her journey begins with a disaster, when she is thrown from a boat into crocodile-infested waters. Rescue comes in the form of a young, illiterate fisherman, Fokir. Although they have no language between them, Piyali and Fokir are powerfully drawn to each other, sharing an uncanny instinct for the ways of the sea. Piya engages Fokir to help with her research and finds a translator in Kanai Dutt, a businessman from Delhi whose idealistic aunt and uncle are longtime settlers in the Sundarbans. As the three of them launch into the elaborate backwaters, they are drawn unawares into the hidden undercurrents of this isolated world, where political turmoil exacts a personal toll that is every bit as powerful as the ravaging tide. Already an international success, The Hungry Tide is a prophetic novel of remarkable insight, beauty, and humanity.

External links

* [http://www.amitavghosh.com/reviews/view.php?rid=12 Review of the novel by Supriya Chaudhuri]

The Hungry Tide is set in the Sunderbans, a delta made by the river Ganges in the eastern coast of India. The river separates into small strands and channels as it approaches the sea, making the Sundarbans a tide country where water reaches inlands everyday only to disappear later. Teeming with crocodiles, snakes and man-eating tigers, it is a place where nature’s beauty is harsh and vengeful, making the struggle for human existence an intense task.

A very unlikely event occurs here: Piyali Roy, an American scientist, meets Kanai, a suave Delhiite. Piya is in the area on a research grant to study dolphins, while Kanai is visiting his aunt Nilima, popularly called Mashima or local aunt. Nilima and her husband, Nirmal Bose, have lived in the Sunderbans since 1950, Nirmal working as teacher while Nilima heads the Badabon Trust, a welfare organization devoted to community development on the islands. After Nirmal’s death, Nilima discovers a packet of papers written by her late husband to Kanai, her favorite nephew. Expecting these to be poems or writings of some literary value, she summons Kanai to Lusibari in the Sunderbans, where she lives. Piya, in the meantime, takes the help of Fokir, a young illiterate fisherman, for her research on dolphins.

Intertwined in the plot are the characters of Kusum, Horen and Moyna. Together these characters weave several parallel plots: the plight of the displaced people (highlighted in the Morichjhapi incident), the struggle for land, the constant fight for survival in a dangerous and fragile ecosystem, and all those interactions that strengthen human bonds, understanding and emotion. Through Nirmal-Kusum-Horen, and later Piya-Fokir-Kanai, Ghosh also explores the sense of connection between people that transcends class, cultures, language and gender.

In this brilliant piece of work, Ghosh not only succeeds in telling a great story that is woven into the local community, customs and environment; he also makes dexterous use of the local words and incorporates it into the text. Through such works, Ghosh is also creating spaces within the English literary world for expression of the multilayered and multicultural complexities of indigenous peoples. May his tribe increase.