Life on the sand bar

Well, I'm back from the Sundarban early. I was there about 24 hours before I began to feel the beginnings of what I now recognize as my body's way of freaking out about climate change, which last time involved general flu-ish symptoms plus the most bizarre sharp pains in random tendons throughout my body (my right shin? Behind my eyes?). Ishitadi, the director of health programming at the Society and now my main contact there, was headed back with the doctor yesterday and when I got sick she insisted on taking me, as I would have been alone (in terms of urbanites, at least)... I had to agree with her. I was hoping I'd be able to tough the first month out without any major illness, but apparently I am feeble.

Friday Ishitadi and two men, Rajitda and (Amar?)da picked me up in a Tata Sumo to go to Rangabelia. It took us about three hours to get to the boat launch point from Kolkata--a time during which I rediscovered my sense of fear. The chaos of driving and pedestrianizing in this city came back to me quickly and hasn't elicited the same excitement as it did 3 years ago. But driving through rural India is a different beast entirely, mostly because the stretches between cows, bicyclists, and crowds of people allow you to reach speeds of 80mph before swerving to avoid hitting an oncoming bus or braking 30 feet in front of an errant goat. One goat, like some sort of goat-idiot, failed to do anything but blink as the driver slammed on the brakes once, twice, three times before the car jolted to a halt so close to the poor thing I was shocked when it stumbled away, alive but plaintively bleating its dismay at what had just happened. I was like, Goat. I know.

This guy is probably the best driver I've ever ridden with--he had a brilliant sense of depth perception, barely slowing his 70-80mph speed as we would pass literally inches between a 5 year old child and an oncoming truck. There is an amazing sense of trust on Indian roads. "Oh, that car seems to be barreling toward me. I'll just keep walking and surely we will miss each other." My mother suggested I rent a car and drive myself from the airport as a solution to my bandh-day transport woes, and I laughed at her, a lot. That is like suggesting that to bypass the cost of airfare I should have hijacked a fighter jet and flown myself to India. Even most urban dwellers in India who privately own cars also privately own (whoopsiegiggles I mean hire) a man to drive it. Drivers here are a different breed of human, birthed directly onto the Nascar track in Bristol, TN and weaned on Valvoline. While people will tell you over and over again that "India is a sort of controlled chaos!" (just about as often as you hear "India is a land of contrasts!" and "the poorest of the poor!" hey thanks big Mama T) it is important to point out that a large number of people die on South Asian roadways every year and those who are excellent drivers are also those who have lived to drive into their 40's. I think the biggest difference is that in India and most other parts of the world, people don't freak out about accidents as much as in America. People die. It's sad and it sucks but it's a part of life. We spend so much time and energy in the U.S. avoiding "risks" and covering up unpleasantness. A friend and native Kolkatan recently said something to me along the lines of the ebb and flow of life being so much more palpable in India. So there's your cultural insight for the day. You're welcome.

And did I mention seatbelts? No seatbelts. There's this risk homeostasis theory in public health (I remember something along these lines from my undergraduate econ classes as well) that if people reduce a risky behavior, they'll make up for it by increasing the risk elsewhere. Something like if you give a slut a box of condoms, he'll/she'll just become a bigger slut. (That's straight from Poor Richard's Almanac, folks. Or the latest book in the If You Give A Mouse A Cookie series.) It's used to explain the failure of seatbelt laws to reduce the rate of auto accident deaths in the States (eat it, Nader!). People were all, hey why not drive drunk or pop a wheelie? I've got this seatbelt on, suckers! But I don't know what effect seatbelts would have on driving habits in India. Remember that scene from Footloose where the chick is straddling the space between two cars while driving down the highway? Maybe we'd see more of that.

Ishita and I, hanging on to our respective handles in the back seat, talked most of the drive. It turns out the Society (I refer to the NGO I'm working with in this way both to convey a false sense of cloak and dagger secrecy and to avoid being google-filtered. I don't intend to write anything libelous but this has happened to a couple of acquaintances recently, with sometimes entertaining, sometimes awkward results) mostly facilitates development projects funded by the national government, since they have far better infrastructure to do so in places as remote as the Sundarban. The project covers something like 100 villages on 9 of the 58 inhabited islands in the delta, where it has a huge integrated development project. I'd read about the erosion problems of the islands, but after having boated through them (drinking tea and feeling positively Victorian, no less) I understand that people were really never meant to live here. It's like swimming out to a sand bar in Lake Michigan and saying yes, this is a great place to build a house. The British Raj divided the land in rural India up and put each parcel in the care of a jamindar (zamindars to you Hindiphones), a type of feudal lord. The Sundarbans comprise several parcels of this land. The islands were formed (are still being formed) by the siltation of three major rivers emptying into the Bay of Bengal, so the geography of these islands continues to change. So the half million people who live in the Sundarban delta today were brought here through various coercive means to clear-cut the vegetation and till the land--before this time no humans lived here.

When we arrived at the boat launch a man started talking to Ishita. I recognized bagh, the Bengali word for tiger, as the man took his hand and grabbed the side of his face. Apparently a fisherman from a nearby village had gone into the jungle that day and was mauled by a tiger, dying later in a hospital. His body was somewhere nearby, waiting to be taken to Kolkata for a post-mortem by the government. Someone at the Society office in Kolkata told me before I left that he'd been to the Sundarban many times but had not yet been lucky enough to see a tiger. Some people hope to see a beautiful, almost mythical endangered animal. Others go fishing to support their families and get tigered in the face. Que sera, sera.