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.
