Sunderban

Sunderban. What images does this word evoke in my mind. Part of the darker consciousness of most city dwellers like me residing in Kolkata, Sunderban mythifies
itself into a land of tigers, snakes and crocodiles, mangroves and little creeks, migrants, floods, hazards and sea swells. It’s amidst this well held inflicted plague of popular imagination that I try to get a map of the place through conversations with people in the city from different walks of life who have been there, worked there, go there. As I try to make sense of things I am told over and over again that ‘It’s a maze and it could take a lifetime to really know Sunderban.’ When I try to insist that there are maps, and couldn’t I use a map, I am told that half the places in Sunderban are not marked on the map, besides those that disappear are not deleted from it. This is the dynamism of the world’s largest delta that one has to contend with, when one accesses it.

I am keen not to give up and search the internet. Here I find some blog experiences of a camera crewman from Kolkata discussing his harrowing journey to the place. It seems like he had quite an adventure, but he does mention a route till Sajnekhali, and I make a mental note, as I tell myself that I need to discuss routes to get there, when I ever write about Sunderban. After a bit more time spent on unfruitful searching I find only two big names that resurface over and over again, Sajnekhali and Gosaba. I finally get the help of a doctor who has lived and worked there for more than a decade who explains the intricate systems of river routes and bridges and the multiple ways in which people’s transport operates in the area, connecting the islands from one place to the next. I decide to take the local train and then use buses and jetties to cross over to the different islands. It is only when one does this, does one realize the arduousness of the journey from one of these islands to the ‘mainland’. As I return from my first pilot trip from Kalitola Panchayat, Hingalganj block, and reach the mainland, that is Hasnabad Station that I leave behind the uncertainties of the turbulent tides of whimsical rivers and waterways onto what at least artificially feels like a ‘firm piece of ground beneath my feet’. In fact this is the truth that Sunderban provides to any Kolkatan, the fragility of our existence, the insidious floating waters beneath our lands, and that we might just be swept away any day.

The memories of the most recent cyclone which haunts every person living in these parts is probably the more recent reminder of Kolkata’s connected fate with Sunderban, but as the sun rises, today, three years later, where people struggle for the third time to grow paddy on the salt ravaged lands swept by Aila, with partial success, and life wheels itself slowly to normalcy, the city and its hinterland slips back into a sense of complacency about nature’s unpredictable actions. I am repeatedly reminded that storms, cyclones, floods and death are embedded in the memories of everyday life here, “It is not just Aila, we have seen this before” is the mindful reminder and warning that the solutions to dealing with ‘disaster’ in the Sunderbans needs informed and experiential thinking rather than top down approaches. However what touches me the most is something seemingly different from what is usually said of disaster landscapes flushed with relief and funds, not a single person I meet forgets his neighbour, a striking similarity in the narrative of those explaining the problems of Aila is ‘that those further south were much worse off than us’ and shockingly at Kalitola which is one of the southern most islands before the forest begins, I am told the same thing, till I read between the lines of a song composed by a folk artist from among this proud community, which talks of the devastation and lack of wherewithal to deal with this destruction, and then deeply thanks the common people of the neighbouring country(Bangladesh) who came across to offer their village help as they remained cut off from the world. Conscious again of the disconnect of these
parts from where I come from, I am reminded of the anger of the activists at Gosaba who strongly criticized relief workers who were ‘more ‘disaster tourists’ than anything else’.

When I repeat this story about relief workers at Kalitola, the boatman from Samsher
Nagar gives a new meaning and restores some faith as he narrates his own experiences as a relief worker navigating the swelling waters to reach each of the islands in these parts, witnessing how a woman’s life was saved by her husband, and then many lives that werenot. As we wipe away a sea of tears, and he steers the boat, skillfully managing it around the eddy currents, almost second nature to him, shining a torch on the pitch black waters once in a while or along the banks sometimes, he asks me if I know of somewhere where he could find work in the city. “I want to leave this place.” he says, “and maintaining a boat is much too expensive”, he explains. “I have studied till class 12, only I cannot type on the computer, all other work I can do.” I sit helplessly wondering whether to convince him that his life in these parts is much better than the currents he will face in the city or not, till he breaks the silence adding, “there are many honest girls here looking for some work in the city, if we go through known contacts like you, we could organize safe domestic work for them, rather than them getting trafficked. Our women are very hardworking he explains, just a little simple and unexposed, if you teach them, they will learnand look forward to earning about Rs. 1000-1500 a month for full time domestic work.I would be happy to keep your number Didi, it is important for us to know someone in
Kolkata, at least we can rest assured that there is someone we can call.”

I am taken back to the thoughts I had traveling on the local train towards Hasnabad. For many a Kolkatan these trains are carriers of teeming numbers of ‘labourers’ who come to work in the city and go back. For those a little more aware, they are also dangerous pathways through which trafficking of women and children takes place. It is the ‘source zone, this Sunderban’, they say. On my ride to Hasnabad when I cast these lenses off I realise that am sitting amongst a group of fellow travelers who had gone on a conducted tour to see the Taj Mahal and were returning home. A young man among them was animatedly narrating an incident about Kamala Mashi, a middle aged woman, plump and big built, who sat chewing paan and laughing sheepishly, while the rest of the group had gone into peals of laughter around her. It seems that Kamala mashi and her poor skills in Hindi, had created quite a stockpile of jokes for the group, as they travelled across North India. One such incident of when Kamala Mashi had managed to adequately create shock and amusement was the story of ‘Kamala Mashi and her Lunch Coupon’. Like most Bengali women of her generation, Kamala Mashi, had the common, judicious and careful habit of stashing all valuable things under her blouse. It so happened that during one of the day trips on the conducted tour of the group, Kamala Mashi had also carefully tucked away that day’s lunch coupons in her blouse. A young man explains, “You see none of us can speak in Hindi, but Kamala Mashi was the worst. When she reached the lunch counter, she realised that she had lost her coupon. In her panic, all Kamala Mashi could remember were two words of Hindi, so gesticulating madly at her bosom, she kept saying ‘Gir gaya, gir gaya’(It’s fallen).” It seems that horrified, the men at the lunch counter gave her, her food, and quickly looked away. The remembering of that incident created an uproar of laughter, as the train came to a halt and the group disassembled out into their own destinations.

At Gosaba we have to negotiate hard with the Union leader to allow us to speak to women in the village. A Sat Sang leader seems to have passed away, and the Union leader a bit drunk with grief is not happy with this ‘urban nuisance’ that has presented itself before him and now wants to start off conversations with women in Sunderban. ‘What for?’ he keeps asking. Finally, we are given a village address and
two men with us, as we head our way. When we reach we meet a couple of school
teachers and then a small group of women begin to gather and start conversing with
us, till we ask them to point out the single most important issue in their village. To
this they say, ‘embankments’. Habitations are now far lower than the sea level, making them prone to flooding. While speaking about it, one of the women explains, ‘As the joar and bhata play in the rivers we keep thinking about what is happening with the sea. We cannot sleep at night in fear of the unpredictability.’ Looking around at the little habitation, and then another across the river, it is almost impossible to tell what is happening. The horizon is immediate, waters interspersed with islands of habitation. Back in Kolkata as I finish penning this piece, there is a clap of thunder in the sky and imminent reminder of the worries of women in Sunderban.