Hello and welcome to the Discourse. The Hungry Tide is a critically acclaimed and compelling novel by Amitav Ghosh published in 2004. The novel highlights climate change and displacement, issues that remain urgent today. Ghosh blends ecological concerns with human drama, making it both a literary and activist work. The novel is frequently studied in postcolonial and environmental literature courses. The novel is set in the Sundarbans, the vast mangrove forest and tidal region between India and Bangladesh. The book weaves together themes of nature, human survival, colonialism, and mythology, exploring the fragile relationship between humans and the environment. The prominent themes in the novel include language, the conflict between humankind and the natural world, the human cost of environmental protections, theory vs. practice, and education vs. experience. The novel is told from two perspectives: that of Piya Roy, an American scientist researching river dolphins, and Kanai Dutt, a New Delhi translator on a trip to see his aunt.
Characters of The Hungry Tide:
Kanai Dutt is a central character of the novel. He is a translator from New Delhi who visited Sundarbans as a child. Now, when he is a wealthy businessman, he revisits Sundarban to meet his aunt, who has a notebook written by her late husband. During his travels, he meets a biologist from America and tries to impress her. Kanai is overconfident and arrogant. Piyali Roy, or Piya, is a marine biologist who travels to the Sundarbans in India to survey the local river dolphins. Though she was born in Kolkata, Piya grew up in the United States and never learned Bengali. Piya is brave and confident, unfazed by the prospect of traveling to a relatively remote area where she does not speak the language. Fokir is an impoverished fisherman who rescues Piya when she falls into a river. He doesn’t understand English, while Piya fails to understand Bengali. Yet, they nonverbally communicate with each other, and Piyali learns the human cost of conservation. Tutul is Fokir’s young son. Nilima Bose is Kanai’s Mashima (maternal aunt). She supports Marxist ideology but prefers to adjust and agree with the governmental policies to improve the conditions of impoverished people and works hard to find and maintain a hospital in the Sundarbans. She disapproves of her husband’s intense Marxism and involvement in Morichjhãpi. Nirmal Bose is Nilima’s late husband. He was a staunch Marxist intellectual who met Nilima when teaching English in Kolkata. Due to governmental pressure, the two relocated to the Sundarbans, where Nirmal does practically nothing for decades, even as Nilima blossoms in the new environment. He is full of regret, which he attempts to assuage through his involvement with the refugees of Morichjhãpi. Kusum was a friend of Kanai's when they were teenagers. She was also close to Nirmal. She was a brave and dedicated person who tried to help the refugees of Morichjhãpi and was killed in the 1979 massacre. Horen is a friend of Nirmal and Nilima, a fisherman romantically involved with Kusum. Moyna is Fokir’s wife, as well as a trainee nurse at the local hospital. Sir Daniel Hamilton is a Scottish man who buys land in Sundarban to create an ideal, equal society. Bon Bibi is the benevolent goddess of the Sundarbans, and along with her brother, Shah Jongoli, she protects the area from evil and from the vicious natural world. Many believe that Bon Bibi will rescue anyone good at heart. Dokkhin Rai is a tiger demon who haunts the people of the Sundarbans.
Summary of The Hungry Tide:
On the train to Canning, Kanai—a well-off translator from New Delhi—crosses paths with Piya, a young marine biologist specializing in cetaceans. Both are traveling to the Sundarbans, though for different reasons: Kanai is returning to Lusibari after thirty years to sort through his late uncle Nirmal’s forgotten writings, while Piya aims to study the local river dolphins. Before arriving in Canning, Kanai extends an invitation for Piya to visit him in Lusibari. Once there, he reunites with his aunt, Nilima, who remains deeply affected by Nirmal’s death decades later. Kanai learns that his childhood friend Kusum was killed in a 1979 massacre. Her son, Fokir, is now a fisherman with a wife, Moyna, and a son of his own, Tutul.
Upon arriving in Lusibari, Kanai revisits familiar places, reminiscing about his uncle Nirmal’s stories of Sir Daniel Hamilton, the visionary who established a cooperative society on the islands in the early 1900s. He is stunned to discover that Kusum—his childhood friend from his 1970 stay—has long since passed away, though her son, Fokir, still lives there, now married to Moyna, a nurse trainee.
In Nirmal’s old study, Kanai opens the mysterious packet, finding only a notebook hastily written in May 1979 during Nirmal’s time on Morichjhãpi. A letter inside, addressed to Kanai, reveals Nirmal’s intent: he wanted to ensure the events he witnessed with Kusum would not be erased from memory. Nilima, hurt by her husband’s secrecy, resents that he left the notebook for Kanai instead of her.
During Kanai's stay in 1970, he befriended Kusum, a young girl under Nilima’s guardianship after her father’s death and her mother’s tragic fate—sold into sexual slavery. The two bonded over performances of The Glory of Bon Bibi, a local folktale about Dukhey, a boy rescued by the goddess Bon Bibi from the demon Dokkhin Rai. The story deeply moved Kanai. One evening after a performance, a fisherman named Horen suddenly took Kusum away, supposedly for her protection. She vanished for years afterward, leaving Kanai with only memories of their brief friendship.
After securing her permits from the Forest Department, Piya sets out on her dolphin survey accompanied by an uncooperative forest guard and a dismissive boat pilot named Mejda. Frustrated by their lack of support, she spots a fishing boat and insists on approaching it to question the fishermen about dolphin sightings. The guard reluctantly agrees—only to harass the fisherman and his son, demanding bribes. The fisherman, communicating through gestures, confirms that dolphins frequent the area.
As the Forest Department boat departs, Piya attempts to hand the fisherman some money but loses her balance and plunges into the river. The fisherman rescues her and pulls her aboard. Unwilling to return with the hostile officials, Piya asks if he can take her to Lusibari instead. He agrees, and surprisingly, the guard lets her go without protest. The fisherman introduces himself as Fokir and his son as Tutul, treating Piya with a warmth and respect she hadn’t expected.
The next day, Fokir guides her to Garjontola, where they encounter a pod of seven Irrawaddy dolphins behaving unusually—Piya suspects they migrate daily rather than seasonally. She spends hours observing them and mapping the riverbed with Fokir, discovering an unexpected synergy: her grid-based research method allows him to fish for crabs efficiently. Despite a close call with a crocodile that nearly costs Piya her hand, they safely row back to Lusibari. There, Nilima offers Piya lodging in the guesthouse alongside Kanai, who volunteers to help her communicate with Fokir the following day.
Over the following days, Kanai immerses himself in Nirmal’s notebook, uncovering the story of his uncle’s late-life involvement with the Morichjhãpi settlement. Once a prominent Marxist intellectual in Calcutta, Nirmal had been forced to abandon the city after his arrest and subsequent mental collapse. He spent the next three decades teaching quietly on Lusibari, never publishing another word—yet his Marxist convictions never wavered, much to Nilima’s frustration.
While Nirmal theorized, Nilima took action. She built the Badabon Trust from the ground up, delivering healthcare and vital services to the islanders. Recognizing the plight of Lusibari’s many widows—left behind when husbands never returned from the sea—she also established a Women’s Union. The notebook reveals how Nirmal, after retiring, finally broke his long silence by documenting the turbulent events on Morichjhãpi—a departure from decades of detachment. Following his retirement, Nirmal—accompanied by the fisherman Horen—began visiting remote island schools. During a storm, they were fortuitously stranded on Morichjhãpi, where they encountered Kusum. Now a resilient community matriarch, she recounted her odyssey: reuniting with her trafficked mother, marriage, motherhood, and leading her people on an epic refugee march from central India to reclaim these Sundarban islands.
Nirmal was electrified to discover the settlers had organized Morichjhãpi along Marxist principles—collective resource sharing and egalitarian decision-making. Defying his thirty-year intellectual dormancy, he began teaching the children. When Nilima discovered his involvement, their ideological rift crystallized: she denounced the refugees as illegal squatters encroaching on protected tiger habitat, cutting off all medical aid through her Badabon Trust.
As police blockades starved the island, Nirmal documented the unfolding humanitarian crisis. The siege reached its climax when authorities planned a violent clearance—prompting Nirmal and Horen to risk a final warning mission. In a single feverish night, Nirmal filled his notebook while Horen smuggled young Fokir to safety. Nirmal chose to remain, entrusting his testament to Kanai. Found weeks later in Canning—disoriented and broken—Nirmal never recovered.
His death months later left unresolved the central tension the notebook exposes: whether ecological preservation justifies violent dispossession and whether Marxist ideals could ever take root in these fluid landscapes.
As dusk settles, Piya and Kanai hear the distressed cries of a water buffalo in labor—soon overtaken by chaotic shouts from a nearby island. Accompanied by Horen and Fokir, they arrive to find a frenzied mob surrounding a storage shed. A man-eating tiger, already responsible for two deaths, has cornered itself inside with the buffalo. Villagers jab bamboo poles through the walls, their fury escalating until someone hurls a lit torch onto the thatched roof. Piya, revolted by the brutality, rushes forward to intervene, but Fokir yanks her back as flames engulf the structure, condemning the tiger to an agonizing death.
The next morning, Piya struggles to reconcile the violence with her conservationist ethics. Kanai, however, frames it as an inevitable backlash: "When you protect tigers more than people, this is what happens." He elaborates with cold precision that government policies prioritize endangered species over marginalized communities, leaving villagers to bear the cost of coexistence. Compensation for attacks is meager or withheld; forest officials often blame victims for "invading" tiger territory. The burning wasn’t just vengeance, Kanai argues, but a grotesque assertion of agency by those abandoned by systemic safeguards. At Garjontola, Piya and Fokir slip into their familiar rhythm—she tracking the dolphins’ movements, he guiding the boat with quiet precision. When Piya shares her lifelong fascination with the creatures, Kanai translates Fokir’s revelation: This place is sacred to him, a site where his mother Kusum’s spirit lingers. As Fokir begins a low chant, Kanai cuts him off, claiming the words are "untranslatable"—a lie that spares Piya from hearing the raw grief in the verses.
By evening, Piya and Kanai’s camaraderie deepens, their shared laughter masking unspoken tensions. The next morning, Kanai joins Fokir’s boat, determined to prove his usefulness. But communication falters; Fokir’s taciturn responses amplify Kanai’s frustration. When they reach Garjontola, Fokir points to fresh tiger prints in the mud and speaks of Bon Bibi’s covenant: The goddess shields those with pure hearts. His challenge is implicit—Shall we test yours?—Kanai, goaded by pride, agrees. The moment Kanai’s boots sink into the sucking mud, his urban confidence shatters. He stumbles, swears, and banishes Fokir like a petulant child—only to realize his peril as the tide retreats. The exposed riverbank crawls with the threat of crocodiles; the forest ahead hums with something worse. Panicked, he plunges inland and freezes: a tiger watches him from a sunlit clearing, its gaze weighing his worth. Stumbling backward, he’s met with disbelief when rescued. Piya scoffs at his "hallucination," Fokir remains silent, and Horen chuckles—City bones scare easy.
Humiliated, Kanai insists on returning to Lusibari. His retreat isn’t just from the tiger but from the truths the forest forces him to confront: his intellectual arrogance, his emotional cowardice, and the unsettling bond between Piya and Fokir that transcends language.
At dawn, Kanai bids Piya and Fokir farewell on their small boat, leaving Piya with a carefully wrapped packet before boarding the Megha with Horen. As they navigate toward Lusibari, news crackles over the radio—a cyclone churns toward the Sundarbans. Horen immediately turns the Megha back, knowing the fragile fishing boat won’t survive the storm’s fury. But when they reach Garjontola, only empty water greets them. With night falling and winds rising, they anchor to wait.
Unaware of the looming danger, Piya and Fokir spend the day following the dolphins’ trail. Their search ends in somber revelation: the pod circles a lifeless calf, its tiny body drifting in the current. As dusk settles, they moor far from Garjontola in a sheltered creek. Piya opens Kanai’s packet and finds his gift—a handwritten translation of The Glory of Bon Bibi. The very chant Fokir had sung the day before now bridges their worlds, its words glowing in the lamplight as the first gusts of wind ripple the water.
At daybreak, Horen reveals to Kanai a buried truth: both he and Nirmal loved Kusum, but she chose Horen. As cyclone winds strengthen, they abandon their wait for Piya and Fokir, battling the tempest back to Lusibari. Kanai stumbles ashore—only to watch Nirmal’s notebook vanish in the churning water.
Sheltering in the guesthouse, Nilima and Kanai weather the storm. She concedes, with bitter irony, that Nirmal’s sole legacy is the hospital’s cyclone shelter. Kanai, grasping for meaning, offers to reconstruct Nirmal’s story from memory. To his surprise, Nilima insists: "Then you’ll record my version too."
Fokir and Piya survive the cyclone lashed to a Garjontola tree, her body wedged between his and the trunk. In the eerie calm of the storm’s eye, a tiger emerges—a silent omen. When the winds shift, debris strikes Fokir, crushing him.
Piya navigates his boat to Lusibari the next day, meeting Kanai and Horen on the Megha. Weeks later, she returns unexpectedly, proposing a fisherman-inclusive conservation program through the Badabon Trust—to be named in Fokir’s memory. Nilima, stunned, recognizes the ghost of Nirmal’s idealism in Piya’s resolve.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English Literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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