The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh Read Free Book Online

Mej-da owned a launch that was available for hire: he was a seasoned guide who knew the area better than anyone else.
    She asked to see the launch and was told that that would not be possible — it was anchored some distance away and they would have to take a boat to get to it. On inquiring about the price she was quoted a clearly excessive figure. She knew now that this was a setup and she was being cheated. She made a desultory effort to find other boat owners, but the sight of Mej-da and the guard scared them off. No one would approach her.
    At this point she knew she was faced with a choice. She could either go back to lodge a complaint at the Forest Department’s office or she could agree to the proposed arrangement and get started on her survey. After having spent most of the day in that office, she could not bear to think of returning. She gave in and agreed to hire Mej-da’s launch.
    On the way to the launch, remorse set in. Perhaps she was judging these men too harshly? Perhaps they really did possess great funds of local knowledge? In any event, there was no harm in seeing if they could be of help. In one of her backpacks she had a display card she had chosen especially for this survey. It pictured the two species of river dolphin known to inhabit these waters — the Gangetic dolphin and the Irrawaddy dolphin. The drawings were copied from a monograph that dated back to 1878. They were not the best or most lifelike pictures she had ever come across (she knew of innumerable more accurate or more realistic photographs and diagrams), but for some reason she’d always had good luck with these drawings: they seemed to make the animals more recognizable than other, more realistic representations.
    In the past, on other rivers, display cards like these had sometimes been of great help in gathering information. When communication was possible, she would show them to fishermen and boatmen and ask questions about sightings, abundance, behavior, seasonal distribution and so on. When there was no one to translate she would hold up the cards and wait for a response. This often worked; they would recognize the animal and point her to places where they were commonly seen. But as a rule only the most observant and experienced fishermen were able to make the connection between the pictures and the animals they represented. Relatively few had ever seen the whole, living creature, and their view of it was generally restricted to a momentary glimpse of a blowhole or a dorsal fin. This being so, it was not unusual for the cards to elicit unexpected reactions — but never before had this illustration provoked a response as strange as the one she got from Mej-da. First he turned the card around and looked at the picture upside down. Then, pointing to the illustration of the Gangetic dolphin he asked if it was a bird. She understood him because he used the English word: “Bird? Bird?”
    Piya was so startled that she looked at the picture again, with fresh eyes, wondering what he might be thinking of. The mystery was resolved when he stabbed a finger at the animal’s long snout with its twin rows of needle-like teeth. 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. She understood how the mistake might be possible, given the animal’s plump, dove-like body and its spoon-shaped bill, not unlike a heron’s. And of course the Gangetic dolphin had no dorsal fin to speak of. But then the ludicrousness of the notion had hit her — the Gangetic dolphin a bird? She took the card back and put it away quickly, turning her face aside to hide her smile.
    The smile lingered for the rest of the ride, vanishing only when her eyes alighted on Mej-da’s launch — it was a decrepit diesel steamer that had been adapted for the tourist trade, with rows of plastic chairs lined up behind the wheelhouse, under a