The Day AILA Came
Updated: Jul 1
Prologue
Fifty-year-old Mr Basu stretched in his easy chair. The whiff of the coffee beans called out to him as he picked up his newspaper, ‘The Tribune’. Though the aroma of the coffee was ambrosial, it never reached his lips as the coffee mug came crashing down. Mr Monotosh Basu read the deadly headline, “Cyclone AILA Swallows Coastal West Bengal”
That very moment, he understood what it felt like when the heart stopped beating, and the brain stopped thinking.
Part I
11.55 pm
The green waters of the creeks move slowly, aided by a gentle breeze and guided by the pale moonlight. The swampy, marshy land looks darker and greener than ever. Life is almost at a standstill. Time stops in this liquid Eden, in Bhatir-desh, Tide-country, Sundarbans. Even in the seemingly tranquil surroundings, danger lurks in the form of tigers’ green, shining eyes peeping through the mangrove branches and crocodiles gliding through the placid waters.
These omnipresent dangers are nowhere near the dangers the Tide-country is soon to face.
The predators who prey on the bountiful fauna of this fragile ecosystem will soon be preyed upon because, in the face of Nature’s fury, predator and prey are both alike.
If only things remained as peaceful as they are now, if only...
But again destiny had different plans for the Tide-country and its inhabitants - tiger, man, deer and fish. Their lives would never be the same again, come 3 am. It would never be the same ever again...
Not knowing the ordeal that awaited him, not knowing that in the next few days, he would be on the verge of the precipice called LIFE. The only thought that revolved in Siddharth’s mind was that he wasn’t Siddharth Basu anymore. He wasn’t Monotosh Basu’s son. He felt numb, hollow and empty when he learnt that he wasn’t his father’s biological son and not part of his father’s bloodline. He was shocked to learn that he was adopted.
It all began on a fine Wednesday morning, 20th May, in Chandigarh, where he was on vacation at his father’s house. At around 11 o’clock, when the crossword was being solved, the post arrived and slid into the letterbox with an ominous click. Montosh Basu took the wad of letters out and classified them, but when he saw a letter from Lusibari - a place in Bengal, he was shocked. He immediately went to his study place and read the letter. Later, reappearing with bloodshot eyes, he spilt the whole truth out to his son by showing him the letter as he revealed that his beloved Siddharth, whom he had loved as his own, was in fact adopted and that his real mother wanted to see him once, just once, before she left the mortal world.
Siddharth was wounded and heartbroken. He left his father’s house and resolved never to see him again. Pleading with him for the last favour, his father asked him to take the letter with him. He took it and decided to throw it away as soon as possible. He wandered for a while, staying at a friend’s place. But he couldn’t bring himself to throw away that letter. He read and reread it. The letter made him feel very guilty. He was confused, angry, frustrated and lost.
After much contemplation, he went to see his real mother because the void left by his adopted mother, who passed away the previous year, had not been filled and would never be filled, either. But still in the hope that his real mother, whose last words had moved him to tears, wanted to see him, he went…
Part II
He went to Lusibari – a small island among 102, in the Sundarbans, to meet her once, just once… Exactly what he would say to her and how she would react was something he wasn’t very sure about, but one thing was certain: he wanted to see his birth mother and fulfil her last wish.
Siddharth then took the train that went to Canning - the nearest railhead to Lusibari. Siddharth, a would-be professional photographer, was immediately taken in by the dark, damp and dank islands of silt and by the naturalness of the whole environment. At the same time, he was shocked by the town’s squalor, with signs of big-city pollution seeping in. He was taken aback by the size of the nearby river, which looked more like a nullah.
On the ferry to Lusibari, he was the only one who wasn’t engaged in animated chatter about all and sundry. He felt out of place in his Lee Cooper pants (the only pair among the 21) on the ferry, and in his Italian leather shoes, while the people whose town he was visiting were engaged in a basic fight for survival: for two square meals a day, a shelter, and some rags.
In Lusibari, he felt as if he had stepped back into the past where life’s pace was dictated by seasons and climate, where even a drop of water would have echoed everywhere, where life, times and people were almost prehistoric.
He met his ailing mother for the first time at the two-storeyed pucca building in the village, which also served as the hospital and a Cyclone Protection Camp.
His mother, Gauri, was 57 years old with just so many breaths left in her. Seeing her son, her blood, the only proof of her existence on Earth. She said that it was one of the happiest days of her life. She held him in her arms and said, “Bhogowan tumako ashirbad koruk (God bless you).”
Siddharth was happy to see her, but he was filled with questions, desperately waiting for answers. He wanted his mother to tell him his story, the story of his life. He was almost on the verge of tears when he didn’t get any, as the nurses persuaded him that his mother needed rest, and she was given sedatives to help her sleep.
Part III
Mamta, a young nurse, came and led him to the guest house where he was to stay for the next few days. The guest house was surprisingly modern for a place where the only vehicles were cycles. It even had a tap in the bathroom, a study area, a four-poster in the bedroom, and lots of nets everywhere to protect guests from mosquitoes. The house was on stilts to protect it from the Tidewater.
From the window, the Mangroves of Sundarbans - deep, dark and extremely terrifying - could be seen. In these forests lurked those endangered but feared Royal Bengal Tigers. He shuddered at the thought and had nightmares of being killed by a tiger that night. Early next morning, just as the intelligent-looking nurse had forewarned, there was a snake in his room. He slowly left the room as cautiously as possible.
Conversing with the locals, he learned that his real father had been the village headmaster for a decade and that the guest house where he stayed had once been his parents’ home. His mother was a social worker who worked very hard to set up a Health Centre in the land of swamps, scorpions and storms located in the midst of a Mangrove island.
After he got ready, he went to his mother in the hospital to spend more time with her, to talk to her and maybe lift her spirits a little. Just then, Mamta, the nurse, came with her breakfast. It was a simple but well-made meal of potato curry and rice. The nurse, Mamta, who had the most twinkling eyes, offered to show him around town.
The narrow mucky streets, the bright greenery everywhere, with small kids playing around, the whole scene was so surreal for him, he felt that he was in one of Salvador Dali’s paintings.
While showing him around, he learned a great deal about Mamta. He learnt that she was married as suggested by the vermillion smeared on the parting of her hair, and the kohl she applied made her eyes twinkle all the more.
She explained to him the history of Lusibari - that a British Shipping Inspector, Henry Piddington, bought large tracts of the Sunderbans from the Government in the hope of making his utopian vision of a free country, freed from the shackles of caste, religion, creed, language, and ethnicity, a reality. He then built houses for his relatives in most of the large islands. For example, he built Lucy’s house on this island, so this place came to be known as Lusibari (bari meaning “house” in Bengali). Not just that, she also told him about places like Jamespur and Gosaba Island.
A firm believer in God, Mamta prayed to the local deity of the Sundarbans - the Jungle Goddess - Bon Bibi whenever she saw a snake, scorpion or crab in her way. At the same time, she was very ambitious and wanted to scale achievements as tall as mountains. Her marriage to a local fisherman did not in the least affect her dream of studying nursing in the big city. Moreover, her resolve only grew stronger.
At the hospital, he had a heart-to-heart with his mother. She tried to explain to him why she had to give him up for adoption. She asked for forgiveness, for some way to repent for her folly. She explained to him that all she wanted was for him to have a good education and a good life, the kind she had experienced before she came to this primitive Tide-country. She had sworn her service to this little sleepy, swampy town, and when the time came for her to choose between her son and her oath of service, she chose service of this hamlet over him, but not out of hatred towards him, but out of love for him. All she ever wanted was for her son to have a good life away from the troubles and the trials of living in a dead-end town called Lusibari.
She pleaded with him, cried, regretted that she did what she did, begged him to forgive her, asked him to let her die without someone’s wrath hanging over her, which would threaten to disturb the peaceful afterlife that she felt she, at last, deserved, after doing so much work for others, after so much sacrifice. She said she needed peace of mind as her days on Earth drew to a close. She talked of his father sometimes. She told him about his father, his real father, a father who didn’t know that he still existed, the one who was led to believe that his son had died in the crib.
All the while, he listened as his mother, wrinkled and old, told her story. He didn’t think that there were still people who would sacrifice their dearest for the greater good. He thought about his father - how he must have been... how he must have looked... how he must have taught his students…
Part IV
The more he thought, the more confused he became. He was slowly sinking into a quagmire of thoughts of different generations of time. He felt called by both the past and the present, but he truly belonged to neither. He wished it would just be a dream, a dream that would soon end.
Despite everything going on in his mind, he observed Lusibari and her people. After seeing the expressions on people’s faces when the word HOSPITAL was mentioned, or even when they saw the building, their eyes lit up. He saw that it gave them hope, hope for their home and its inhabitants, hope that they could at least dream of a safe and secure life. He then realised that his mother had done what she did to make their shared dream a reality and that she had succeeded. He felt that he was beginning to understand his mother’s actions. What he thought would be just a touch-and-go trip to Tide-country turned out to be a long one, as he couldn’t make himself leave his mother, nor could he stay put there.
Day in and day out, he spent his time with his mother or wandering through the lush paddy fields, lost in thoughts of his own. They didn’t do much talking, but maybe his mere presence had acted as a catalyst and made her want to live again. After four days of staying, a place that at once attracted and repelled him — attracted by the tranquillity that seemed to be and repelled by the dangers that lurked behind the dark curtain of tranquillity, even he began to notice that his mother was tilting towards the path of life.
He needed to talk to someone who knew him, someone he could trust. He even hoped that his father, whom he loved very much, would call, but, being a man of his word, didn’t try to contact him. Siddharth, on the other hand, couldn’t use his phone because it had no network. And he became so desperate to communicate with his father that he wrote a letter to him and decided to go to Canning to post it himself, when anyone at the hospital could have done that small errand for him.
And thus he wrote to his father, the father who had raised him and had been there for him. He wrote to apologise for his extremely rude behaviour and for causing so much grief to the man who had loved him all his life, the man who had cared for him, who had given him shelter, food and clothes, and, most importantly, unconditional love. In other words, the man who had given him a second chance at life. He finished by hoping that his father would forgive him and accept him back.
With the letter in hand and hope in his heart, he went to his mother. His mother, thinking that he was leaving her forever, gave away his real father’s letter to him, the letter of a father who knew of his existence just a few hours before his death.
With his voice choking, he took his mother’s blessings and went to the quay where all the boats were anchored. Lusibari, being a large town compared to the other islands, had hundreds of boats, from rickety old ones to diesel-powered motorboats, Bhotbhoti (due to the sound they made), and small, fragile-looking oar boats.
Along with him, to see that he was safely on a boat, came Mamta. She brought along her daughter Kusum, a sweet little girl in a red frock and kohl-lined eyes just like her mother. Then, taking him to the far end of the mucky and muddy quay, she brought them to her husband, Fawad, who readily agreed to take him to Canning for free, because being the long-lost son of Gauriji, he was almost royalty for them.
After he balanced himself on the narrow plank provided for sitting, he wondered where Fawad would sit because the whole boat was already occupied. Now Fawad tied his Gamchcha – the checked towel that every Bengali man believes to be his lucky charm and considers very sacred. Then he rowed slowly, and they made slow, steady progress westward, with the harsh sunlight beating down on their backs and burning them.
Fawad rowed bare-chested with salty sweat glistening on his body. He wasn’t very strong, but he could keep rowing for hours on end. As he monotonously rowed towards Canning, it grew hotter by the minute. At the same time, the mangrove roots became darker, and Siddharth’s mind started wandering — he imagined even a benign flash of sunlight to be a tiger’s gilded stripe. When they reached a narrow, meandering creek, he imagined seeing a crocodile, but it turned out to be only a stray piece of deadwood creating ripples on the sometimes placid, sometimes bustling water.
To help Fawad, he also took a pair of oars and started rowing. As he adapted to this new action, he began doing it mechanically, letting his mind wander. He began to think of the power of tides in the Sunderbans. The relentless tides could and would swallow and regurgitate the whole islands. He wondered how Fawad managed to do such a treacherous job to earn a living. This place could turn even a workplace into a no-return zone. It seemed that in tide-country, the minute of life and death was danced out daily.
Sunderbans – the place where he is – is where the word “CYCLONE” was first created to describe the un-walled rage unleashed on the wild and which exposed the tide-country. Siddharth felt he could observe the Sunderbans forever and still not understand them. He learnt that the tides here rise and fall 18 times in a day. This was a place where tranquillity and threat were constantly interchangeable. He dared not wonder what it would be like if a cyclone attacked now.
His thoughts ran back and forth like an eddy, swirling and flowing. He observed Fawad carefully. It had been maybe 3 hours since they had left, and he hadn’t uttered a single word. Every time he looked at Fawad, he thought of Kusum because they had the same thin and prime mouth, small and closed, only Kusum smiled a lot, and Fawad didn’t.
The thought of Kusum made him realise that had he been here with his real mother, after passing the 6th std from the school, he would have been just like Fawad, maybe fishing, catching crabs, hisla, and lobsters, and rowing away.
He now fully understood why his mother had given him up. Although he could not forgive her, he started to understand her. This thought filled him with the sweet feeling of satisfaction that had been evading him for a long time. He at last felt at peace with the world.
Part V
Again, he checked on the physical reminders that this wasn’t just a dream but reality – those two letters, one which his real father had meant for him and left with his mother, and the other which he had written for his father, the letter which he hoped would set things right between him and his father.
In this happy mood, the would-be professional photographer started taking pictures of this unseemingly beautiful and different Bhatir Desh. He wasn’t interested in the dark green canopy formed by the mangroves. What attracted him the most was the marshy land, the huge roots, the ones which were so convoluted that it was difficult for Fawad to row them to the land.
As they got nearer, in his eagerness, he kept his letters on the plank itself and clicked away. Just then, the tide began decreasing, and the stern hit an unforeseen mound of silt. The letters kept on the edge of the plank fell into the water and were carried away by the undercurrents.
Thankfully, Siddharth had noticed the pale yellow shining plastic of the envelopes before they were carried away, and he hurried to help row the boat towards the letters. The letters were now turning at a corner and going into a small creek that ran through an uninhabited island. They rowed faster than ever, but the letters seemed far away. He knew that even if they got a little late, he would never be able to read his real father’s letter.
He finally reached it in a dark creek and held the letters, appreciating how the plastic covering did its work. He heaved a sigh of relief, of gratitude to the Gods above, to Nature and to life. Only then did he realise that they were in the middle of nowhere and were completely lost. For a few seconds, nothing moved; a blanket of darkness had settled upon them.
The sounds of the forest made by the hoots of disturbed owls, the scratching of a tiger’s tail against a bark, the swish, and the sudden jump of a kingfisher catching its prey terrified him all the more. Fawad didn’t want Siddharth to get panicky, and so tried moving the boat, but then again, they were stuck in the mud because all the water drained away due to the low tide. Now they had to wait till high tide to move the boat.
They dared not make a sound or get down, in case a tiger or a crocodile lurked by. Fawad prayed to the Goddess of the Jungle — Bon Bibi for safety and for their lives. He prayed to her and promised not to be in Dokhin Rai - the forest demon’s territory - ever again, even if its territory had all the fish in the world.
But slowly, as the water began to refill the creek, they noticed other changes too: the leaves rustled, the birds grew restless; it was as if the whole forest was agitated by something.
In just 10 minutes, all of the nearby mangroves became devoid of living organisms. Sensing that something was wrong and was dreading the worst, Fawad got down, pulled and dragged the boat out of the creek. Slowly, in the main channel, they began experiencing high, wild winds that burned their eyes. At the same time, dark clouds gathered and the sky darkened. Suddenly, it began pouring so hard that it felt like bullets falling from heaven.
They rowed faster and faster, but the gale force pushed back, and they were stopped. Knowing that they were now stranded in a fast-approaching cyclone storm that was expected a week later and that they were doomed to die on what was supposed to be a short trip to Canning, they did what seemed the best thing to do. They stopped at a dense, sturdy mangrove tree and climbed it. Siddharth even tripped at a couple of places but was caught just in time by Fawad.
They climbed onto a branch and tied themselves to the tree with the help of the Gamchcha. They now wait for the cyclone to exert its full force, then hope it abates as quickly as possible. Siddharth checked again that the plastic-covered letters were safely kept in his shirt. He hoped that they would survive the night.
As the cyclone raged at its full strength, Siddharth realised that Fawad was acting like a barrier from branches, splinters and twigs and was saving him from injury. He was risking his own life for him. The cyclone didn’t show any sign of abating. It didn’t even falter but grew stronger by the minute. The pounding rain and the sound of the gale made him lose consciousness repeatedly. Siddharth had only one prayer on his lips, and it was that he wanted to live not just for himself but for his mother, who was emotionally depending on him for her survival. Lightning, thunder and continuous torrents of rain went on and on. They stared into each other’s eyes and saw nothing but fear - the primordial fear that is there in everyone’s eyes when they are facing an enemy far more powerful than they are.
Part VI
Just then, branches with sharp and jagged ends started flying around, and one just brushed past Siddharth’s arm. Within a second, another sharp branch came directly towards them — all that was blurred became clear in an instant — the sharp branch pierced Fawad in the back, and he died with his eyes wide open in shock and his small mouth closed and thin, just like his daughter’s.
Tears started falling out of Siddharth’s eyes, and he cried uncontrollably. Just after this shocking death, the storm passed ahead.
After the storm abated, a sudden calmness descended over the area. Siddharth got down from the mangrove trunk, found the boat and whatever remained after the cyclone had made its way. However, thankfully, it was still in working order.
With some difficulty, he put the corpse of Fawad on the boat and started rowing towards the West, the direction he was supposed to go. With his mind still blurred, he rowed on and on. Finally, he reached what appeared to be an inhabited island.
There with the corpse of his lifesaver in his arms and the letters in his shirt, he walked into the destroyed remains of a town. Most of the people were in the Cyclone Protection camp building. There, he kept the body of the person who had died to save his life. In his dazed state, he took a Bhotbhoti to Lusibari, where the devastation was said to be the worst.
There, he understood fully, the power of the cyclone. There were no paddy fields, no houses, nothing left apart from the guest house. The school and hospital survived, but many died. Kusum, too, was carried away by the current and was never seen again. Mamta was inconsolable. Her whole world had fallen apart, and she wasn’t the only one who lost her bangles and the vermillion in her parting that day.
Lusibari was devastated. There was not much food, drinking water or anything for that matter. All that was left was the basic survival instinct. Siddharth then understood what survival meant and that, in times of crisis, neither education, caste, religion, nor intelligence matters. If there’s anything that matters, it is the basic instinct for survival, the instinct to breathe again, to see, to feel, to smell, to touch and hear the sights and sounds of the world again.
Epilogue
The cyclone storm was Aila, which means ‘Coming’ in Bengali. The cyclone-storm came. The cyclone-storm went as swiftly as it had come, though the amount of destruction was no less.
The cyclone-storm hit the Sunderbans on 25 May 2009 at 03:05 hrs. It has affected Kolkata, the Sunderbans, and the coasts of West Bengal and Odisha. Along the way, it killed 82 people in all of West Bengal, 14 in Kolkata alone, and 17 were killed in the Sunderbans. And not just humans, many tigers, boars, spotted deer, and crocodiles died in this Nature’s act of fury.
A few days after the storm, when life seemed to return to Lusibari, Siddharth went to Kolkata and sold his pictures of the mangroves and the destruction around them, thereby raising funds for the rehabilitation of the Bhatir-desh people. He mobilised people online, raised funds, and signed petitions to improve the lives of people in the Tide-country.
Siddharth Basu went on to become a renowned nature photographer and also a permanent resident of Lusibari. He renamed the school he later became headmaster of as Fawad Primary School. He educated Mamta and made her the first qualified nurse at the Lusibari hospital. His father, Monotosh Basu, settled in Lusibari with him. Siddharth never got to read what his real father had written to him because it was lost in the storm that changed his life. That unknown island where he laid rest to his lifesaver, Fawad, turned out to be Gosaba Island. His real mother died happily in her sleep, knowing that her only son had forgiven her, and as for Siddharth, he continued his attempt to unravel the veiled mysteries of nature in Bhatir-desh, Tide-country, the Sunderbans, his home.
Credits
This story was written by Manognya Bethapudi, edited by Edlyn D’souza, & Tarun Chintam, and photographed by Ravindra Patoju.
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