Resumo de The Hungry Tide

In an interview published in Outlook in 2002, Amitav Ghosh had this to
say about his fiction: ?My fiction has always been about communities coming
unmade or remaking themselves? (Writing through
Turmoil. Sheela Reddy, Outlook, New Delhi, India, Aug. 19, 2002).

The Hungry Tide is about one such community who live on the
peripheries of the Indian subconscious?out in the untamed areas where India?s
mighty rivers drain out into the sea, where sweet and saline water have no
boundaries, and where the tiger and snake, crocodile and fishes roam free. This
is where islands are submerged and where they reemerge, where people eke out a
living from the bountiful yet threatened forest produce, where animal and
human, myth and reality merge and overlap each other in the ritual survival for
existence.

Amitav Ghosh locates the characters and events of The Hungry Tide amidst the shifting lives of this place. Two
narratives make up the structure of this novel. The narrative space is taken up
by a handful of characters, each on a personal quest, a personal search through
life and its hidden aspects. The setting is geographically limited, yet vast in
its implications of a larger global concern. The narrative of the past contains
the seeds of the present narrative.

This older narrative brings alive a character who is actually dead:
Nirmal Bose, school teacher, erstwhile revolutionary, and an idealist. We learn
about the Sundarbans through his perspective and social consciousness, his
knowledge of history, geography, and geology. His diary jottings about the
revolution that sweeps across the island of Morichjhapi are rooted in a real
uprising among a dispossessed people trying to give themselves a life, world,
and an existence beyond that of the mainland Indian?s. But the revolution does
not succeed. And the dispossessed remain so. Their quest to reinvent themselves
is futile. So is Nirmal?s lifelong quest for a pure revolution.

Nirmal leaves his diary to his nephew, Kanai Dutt. Kanai is a
translator and interpreter who lives in his own world of superciliousness,
practical idealism, languages, and creativity. His world view is narrow, yet
he shows an openness to knowledge and the thoughts of other people, especially
those of his uncle and aunt, Nirmal and Nilima Bose. He learns about the
Sundarbans through his association with these two elderly relatives. It is his
aunt, Nilima, who requests him to visit the islands for the sake of Nirmal?s
diary that he had bequeathed to Kanai. Now it is up to Kanai to decipher the
contents and ideas of this diary. In the process of doing so, his path crosses that
of Piya?s, the all-American scientist of Indian origin, who travels to the tide
country in search of the Gangetic dolphin.

Piya is the reticent, practical, knowledge oriented researcher, keen
on only her work, yet is sensitive to people and their environment. She is on a
different quest?to study the rare river dolphins found in these areas. Her
quest takes her along the meandering and labyrinthine waterways of this
estuarine locale, to Fokir, and to the people of Sundarban. Her quest, like
that of Fokir?s mother (in the diary) Kusum, ends in tragedy, yet ultimately
bodes well for the area and its inhabitants. Her relationship with the quiet
and knowledgeable fisherman Fokir is dream like beyond the pale of ordinary human
understanding. (Kanai has to go through an ordeal buy fire to understand and
appreciate the hidden nature of this relationship.) And it is Fokir who saves
her from the final storm, with his body and mind. Piya?s dedication to Fokir?s
memory and his family is her work and the material benefits it brings in its
wake. Piya's findings about the dolphins' activity is a stunning piece of research and deductive reasoning. The nature of the tides and the nature of thlphins' travel to and from the tidal pools captures the essence of the the tidal country in this narrative.

But Piya?s work cannot be completed without the help of Nilima, the pragmatic,
diligent, and hardworking social worker who runs an NGO in the heart of tiger
country. Her work has benefited the island?s people, brought them a semblance
of respectability and financial independence, and created a bulwark against the
vagaries of nature and life. It is here that Piya and Kanai find their refuge
after being buffeted by their adventures and experiences, their pain and
realizations. It is here, with Nilima and her Badabon trust, that Piya will
fulfill her life?s quest, studying and documenting the riverine dolphins.

The two narratives?that of the diary and that of the immediate
experiences of Kanai, Fokir, Piya, and Nilima?move parallel to each other, the
former heightens the appreciation of the latter. Each reaches towards the
climax almost simultaneously, wreaking havoc with the characters? minds, lives,
ambitions, ideals, and emotions. Each evokes latent feelings and aspects of
human nature and strife; each plays a part in the larger scheme of things that
the island symbolizes. Finally, it is Amitav Ghosh?s erudition,
researched sensibilities, and his eye on the larger meaning of all human
activity that makes this book, its language, and its images so riveting, that
make the mind reel and rethink the realities of our environment and its various
facets?human activity, human predisposition to ignore the other, and our
environment. These are the facets we take for granted. But can we afford to?

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