The Arrival

I enter the Sunderbans exhausted. The endless journey jumping from boat to boat through the riverines has taken about 4 hours and I am drenched and extremely skeptical. The Sunderbans, even to a tired eye looks like a marvel. It is close to being called mythical for it could not be real – it is the land of floating green islands.

I am sitting in a boat huddled in cargo and open umbrellas. My umbrella is poked in too many places to offer any protection and my baggage is wet and drippy but I could not care less for I was in the Sunderbans. Yes, there is a wonder of it all - the endless skies, the elegant angler dropping his nets into the birthing seas, the exodus of people traveling back and forth; all in the palette of murky grays and soft blues.

However, in the middle of all that splendor lives a little lurking thought – how long will this romance survive the heartburn? Will the Sunderbans live to see my children?

I arrive at Bali with one of the Jungle Camp staff as my aid. My trolleyed bag is a bad joke for there are no roads to run them on. He is carrying it on his head, but it is my head, which walks bent, in shame for bringing such a presumptuous piece of baggage.

The brick roads have been washed away and all that remains is grey clayey inhospitable mud. We or rather I stagger to the Sunderbans jungle camp. It is three o’ clock and I refuse to acknowledge my dire need for a bed. The jungle camp is so surprisingly breathtaking; I stand at my room in awe at such a glorious example of eco-tourism.

I am tended to like the finest of guests and after a quick coffee; I sleep like a child only waking up to a fine dinner. The Sunderbans development minister is expected to arrive to inspect the devastation caused by Cyclone Aila. This is a hush-hush visit so that he can see the stark face of the damage without the ardent politicization, which would have accompanied a visit as such.

I get back into bed with a wonderful volume of ‘The Sunderbans Inheritance’ by Bittu Sehgal, Sumit Sen and Bikram Grewal revealing to me a land and its people so pristine and raw. I crawl into bed with droopy eyes only to dream of a better tomorrow.

Moyna Di and Bali

The minister is finally here. He came in at 12:30 in the morning and he is asleep in his cottage. Its 6:30 in the morning and I am walking around the camp breathing in a gentle fleeting air making me lighter and more awake.

I was introduced to Moyna Di yesterday. In her limited Hindi and my nonexistent bangla, we made several conversations hoping the other knew of what we were speaking. We spoke of the cyclone, the Sunderbans, her despise for big crowded cities, our families, her work, her new sari, my marriageable age and my unkempt hair.

She introduced me to the most poignant piece of music she called Rabindra Sangeet and it floored me. Every free moment I have asked her sing some more for she is such a marvelously humble singer touching delicate notes like a master.

Moyna Parlah or Moyna Di is the president of the 500 member SGSY groups formed in Bali. She also aids the management of the Jungle Camp. She advocates, liaises, organizes and asserts like any intelligent women leader.

We head out together for the village tour. She headstrong, me clumsy. She has taught me enough Bengali for me to greet people – Bhalo acho? We run into different women who she would introduce name, title, name of SHG and activities performed by the SHG. At the end of the introduction, I would be delighted to see proud women, worn out but proud.

We headed to see Jayanti Patre who was making a small fish, a crab and some pumpkin. This would be her family’s only meal in the day. “Food is very expensive now, ours was washed away with Aila,” she says.

She beckons Suchitra who is now 5 month pregnant with her second child. Moyna Di distastefully whispers into my ear, “We have told the women not to have another child till the first child is of 5 years. But Suchitra has a two year old girl who can hardly walk and now look at her – with the cyclone and all! How will she manage?!”

Suchitra is a young girl of 24 years smiling away with her 2 year old in her left hand and her right hand is nervously trying to hold her sari in place. She says a sweet nomoshkar and runs off. “No matter what the woman says, it is the man who doesn’t understand family planning,” states Moyna Di as we leave.

We meet Shalmoli who is cutting fruit in her new make shift home. Her home like all the others was destroyed by Aila. She is still building herself a home. Her father in law is collecting the straw as she points towards her previous home. All that remains is a dragged down mass of straw and mud.

Meanwhile, Moyna Di is still talking in Bengali educating me on the cyclone. She mentions her mangrove nursery. On our way back, she points out to the areas where the mangroves have failed to take root, as the water is still very saline. Everyone in the village is worried about this issue. We see the dewatering of some small ponds, but predominantly there are thousands of farms, which are still brimming with saline water.

Fortunately, there is enough water to drink. The tube wells are the only source of fresh water. The tube well is the symbol of survival in the village of Bali for without them, it would be one disaster after the other.

Most of the children are still going to school. The non-formal school is destroyed but for a part of the roof. Uprooted trees are everywhere. One sees the men hard at work making brick roads, cutting down branches and barks as the trees and rice rot in the fields.

My last but a fixing vision of the village is a woman clad in a blue sari with her red gamcha steering the wooden boat to the shore. Her face was strong and weathered and as she rowed against the wind. “Women stand up in adversity like no one else,” says Manoj Da, staff at the resort.

We built this city

I am told the situation is too perilous for me to travel to the devastated villages on my own. The roads have been washed away, the rains are unpredictably stormy and I do not know Bengali. Hence, until I get someone local to take me around, I will have to make myself useful in Bali in little way that I can.

So, I helped build a makeshift road today. It gave me bruised fingers and bleeding elbows but the moment I saw children walking to school and women carrying water back to their homes walking on my road, it became a joy. I was part of something purposeful and as insignificant as that may sound considering the full direness of the situation, it felt like something.

We started it – Kaku (another staff), Moyna Di and I. Soon enough, Moyna Di realized that it is not a three-person job and in her own boisterous way, she began to ask passersby to lend a hand. In a matter of minutes, an assembly line was functional with me having the easiest job of all. (“These city girls just do not have the stamina,” Moyna Di said.) The bricks were passed, roads dug, leveled and bricks aligned to form a red brick road that even Dorothy would have been proud of.

It reminded me of those cheesy cement campaigns on TV – is cement mein jaan hai. As silly as they sounded to me, then, holding the grey malleable mud in my hands, it felt living, animate as if waiting to be developed and utilized. So, that’s what farmers and labourers would feel like – the joy of creating something with one’s own hands.

A random moment

I was drawing a map of the world on my feet connecting all the odd 50 mosquito bites and laughing about the bloodbath in my room last night when I took a vengeful resolve of killing every single mosquito that lived. Just the idea of me so possessed and jumping around was roll-the-eyes material and I could not help but laugh at the total absurdity of the situation.

Suddenly, I had Bishaka in my face. Her 7-year-old fingers were lingering on the pink pins in my hair, which were holding the hair back from coming into my face. I remember her from yesterday when Moyna Di had given her mother a long list of medicines for her tummy ache. “A lot of kids have not been keeping well lately and there is not enough medicine for everyone,” Moyna Di had said solemnly. I did not need to ask why for I already knew the answer.

Bishaka and I were sitting in front of the haggard bench in front of the jetty stop. I was staring into the water, flowing away myself in the enchantment of it all. The sunlight was bouncing from mangrove to mangrove, the wind changing direction at whim, the sky blending into colors unknown and waters revealing secrets to anyone who was willing to listen.

It was fascinating to find that if I waited patiently without expectations, something spectacular would happen. That could include a sharing a cherished moment with a passerby, sighting an exotic bird, feeling a refreshing drizzle of rain, seeing a baby smile or watching a tiger swim by.

It does not take a lot to fall in love with the Sunderbans, even in all its ravage beauty.

Hope and a little bit of sugar

“Don’t let their smiles fool you, madam. Two weeks back, if you had seen them, your eyes would have been too pained to cry,” says Manoj Da.

The women from the village are here, cleaning vessels, clothes and their children. Puny children cheekily pulling at the hand pump with their legs in the air and ribs strutting out of their chests are helping their mothers.

I am always greeted by multiple betel-toothed smiles at all my visits to my villages. There is an intrigue, followed by skepticism, which soon turns into wide-mouthed smile saying “Bhalo.”

When I asked Prankrishna the head cook at the lodge that why is it that people in Bali always smile. He tells me that work becomes easier when one is smiling. “Life is so tough for most people in the Sunderbans, we cannot help but smile our troubles away. That is the only way to live.”

He is teaching me how to make fish a la Bengali and I am charmed by the local vegetables and flavor that he adds to the curry. I am appalled by the ridiculous amounts of sugar added to everything. I tell him I like my food jhaal. He smiles and hands me some Bengali chilli. I taste some, my ears ring, my face fumes and eyes water. Then, he hands me some sugar.

Give us some food

A group of women has come from all across Bali to the society asking for help. It is a big crowd of about 40 women. Their handsome faces look grim and I have been asked to be cautious about what I say for I may offend or instigate them. After all, it has been a severely difficult time for them.

The Bali community has been an extremely self-sufficient group of people. They have not known to plead in all their lives. After Aila, it feels undignified and novel to plead for rice, shelter, nets etc. but there is no better option and for many of them, this is the only way.

The headmaster of the local school says, “The government relief is a consolation. An odd two kg of rice and dal is just a token amount. Even this is pouring in too slowly and daily survival is getting difficult.”

The women stare at me approaching them. They seem confused but not forbidding. Suddenly one raises her hand and beckons me. Then she says something in her overexcited Bengali and everyone breaks into giggles.

In the limited legroom, they squeeze in to make space for me. They have lost their houses to Aila. They write their name and requirement on a sheet of paper. The society aims to try and provide whatever may be their need. It is time for them to leave but they are still sitting making jokes about my Bengali. We can understand each other though we don’t speak the others language.

Pratima lost her home and with all stored food and utensils. She is hoping to get some rice to feed her new six-month baby Sawan. Sawan sits in her lap gurgling. Pushpa lost her two cows. “We don’t need water for we have a tube well. However, we do need food and we need the nets. The mosquitoes from the stagnant saline waters collecting in village ponds are causing havoc,” says Pushpa.

They look at my feet and bicker about the mosquito bites. They do not seem to approve. They seem to be possessive of me. They ask me about my journey, where I stay, how I live, whether I plan to marry, whether I like the Sunderbans. They ask me how long I would say and request me to stay longer. Then they call me their daughter, give me their blessing and wish me a great life.

Aila Ghat

We are in the Dayapur where a 36-year-old woman greets us with a smile, which can only be seen in the sunderbans. Dayapur could be any other village or island in the Sunderbans. Dilapidated houses, clothes scattered in mud, broken toys lying around; the entire geography of the village altered.

We are trying to walk through the clayey silt, out legs going deeper into the mud with every passing step. A crowd has gathered to see the girl from Bombay struggling to make her way out of the mud. When I cross to the dry area, they look at me proudly and then apologize for the lack of roads. “Aila,” they say.

I am asking them to stop the apologizing for I am getting a free mud massage but my Bengali is too limited to explain that, so I just smile.

The woman points out to another area from which we could go back to out boat. On our way there, she narrates her bit. When the waves came crashing in, breaking the embankment, with her house and belonging, it took away her seven day old granddaughter. Since that day, that port was renamed Port Aila.

Going to School

We visit the local higher secondary school today. Sukumar Poira is the headmaster and his English is a singsong beautiful. It is a Sunday and the school walls are empty. People are rebuilding the broken walls surrounding the school ground. Women are bathing in the premises using the tube well.

The headmaster rubs his forehead when asked about Aila. He looks at me and says, “May 25th! The day of Aila and the day summer vacations had begun. We were very lucky it was May 25. A day before that and we would have lost too many children.”

He takes us to a recent construction, the new building for the school. We climb the bricked stairs to reach bare corridors with a sharp crack running through it. “This crack has affected the very foundation of the building,” says Poira pointing towards the ceiling tracing the crack to the floor below all the way to the edge of the building. “The water came through then windows with an unexpected force for minutes earlier I was in the room clearing out school records putting them in places where they would be safe. However, we still lost a lot of archived information and most of all, this building is our biggest loss. The construction is clearly in a precarious position and all the classrooms in the building have been abandoned.

The school serves 1600 students and the lack of infrastructure is very apparent. “We have collected Rs. 4 lakh through donations using our contacts at Jadavpur University. We aim to make provisons for books and the necessary stationary to keep the students in school but we desperately need help with the infrastructure. There is just not enough space.”

He looks at me and says, “We need help and we know it. Only more people need to acknowledge it, for help must arrive for the situation only seems to get worse from here.”

Distributing relief

We spent the entire day distributing relief to the most affected islands. Most of the relief was directed towards the islands of Kumirmadi and Mollakhali. We also did a brief visit to Hemnagar. These islands were pre-decided based on previous visits by the team. Relief in the form of rice, wheat, biscuits and jaggery was distributed. This was accompanied by clothes for women, men and children, footwear and gamchas. Hurricane lanterns also formed a part of the relief.

My first thought was - I hope that the relief will be adequately distributed among the very needy. Then, I realize how foolish that thought is considering that villages have been destroyed, livelihoods snatched away and people are hungry and desperate. The relief is little and the people many.

In the misery of it all, people still welcomed me. The madam/student from Bombay was here and she could not leave the house without having taken some coconuts or biscuits or prawns. The generosity shocks me. How can people look beyond their own precarious situation and extend such kind hospitality!

When survival becomes dangerous

This was 4-year-old Komalika Mondol’s first cyclone. She is born in a community, which lives in the fringes of civilization. There is death lingering at every corner. Of course, there are the occupational hazards – tigers during fishing, bites and stings during honey gathering, cyclones and storms during paddy cultivation, but there is always that chance of slipping into death on the alluvial silt of the waters when trying to get back home at seven in the evening during the torrential monsoons.

Life for Komalika was never going to be easy. It was fortunate that the cyclone arrived in the wee hours of the day or the death toll would have been huge and the damage colossal.

Most of the homes were washed away not blown away as expected. The cyclone was not the lone monster. It was just the prelude. For it brought with it two-storey high wave with a current so violent that it washed away everything it touched.

Dead cattle floated away in the water, which refused to ebb down. The saline waters had covered every inch of various villages destroying all the fresh water and the possibility of cultivation. The water slowly grew stagnant resulting in a plethora of diseases. Seven-year-old Prason Mondol has diarrhoea. His family, which does not get even one square meal, is reduced to seeking for relief or begging, a practice, which is alien to the culture.

The desperation had turned into hopelessness with little relief coming through. Drinking water has become the primary and the only point of existence for many in the villages of Shetjallia Lanterns, nets, plastic sheets, rice, medicine and many other forms of relief have arrived although sporadically but never enough.. Well-wishers are worried that the hopelessness will soon turn into anger and then there would be no stopping the arson. Experts are scared that if the situation in the Sunderbans is not helped, there will be massive and irreparable damage to the ecology and the people.

Copyright © all photographs, text 2009 Zainab Kakal.