Arrival: (June 2009) 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.

Ravaged Beauty : Sunderbans copyright © 2009 Zainab Kakal

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.
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            Make shift road built by volunteers: Sunderbans / copyright © 2009 Zainab Kakal

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.
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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.”

Ever smiling teacher at the local non-formal school /copyright © 2009 Zainab Kakal

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.

Striking a balance: 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.

a woman in her makeshift accommodation. / copyright © 2009 Zainab Kakal

 Sunderbans copyright © 2009 Zainab Kakal

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.
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            copyright © 2009 Madhu Reddy

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 25^th! 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 the 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 provisions 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.”
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     Children walk long distances for clean drinking water if any at all is available. © Zainab Kakal

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.

- Zainab Kakal