Water/Land: Amitav Ghosh

Abstract

On the southern tip of West Bengal in eastern India, just south of Calcutta, the great river Ganges fans out into many tributaries over a vast delta before ending a journey that began in the distant Himalayan north with a plunge into the Bay of Bengal. The mouth of this delta is made up of about three hundred small islands, spread over an area of about ten thousand square kilometres and straddling India’s border with Bangladesh. It is one of those areas of the world where the lie of the land mocks the absurdity of international treaties, because it is virtually impossible to enforce border laws on a territory that constantly shifts, submerges and resurfaces with the ebb and flow of the tide. Most of these islands support mangrove trees. Bands of hardy impoverished humans inhabit some of them and, officially, they are home to around six hundred ‘Royal Bengal’ tigers — India’s national animal and a desperately endangered species (Jalais 2005, pp. 1759–60). These are the Sundarbans — the forests of beauty.