Altogether there were around four million people living in the Indian part of the Sundarban.

  This took Shoma by surprise because she, like most mainlanders, had imagined the Sundarban to be a jungle that was inhabited largely by dangerous animals. She could not help asking, ‘Are there any tigers around Lusibari?’

  ‘There are tigers on the island across the river,’ said Nilima with a twinkling smile. ‘But Lusibari itself is mainly just farmland although tigers do cross the river sometimes to hunt cows and goats.’

  ‘Do those tigers ever kill people?’

  ‘Not in Lusibari,’ said Nilima. ‘Most tiger-related deaths happen when foragers go into the forest to collect honey, firewood, palm leaves and things like that.’ She gestured at the women who were seated in the chairs around the dining area. ‘These ladies are all tiger-widows, whose husbands died in the jungle. In certain parts of the Sundarban there are entire villages of tiger-widows.’

  Nilima broke off now to point towards a vast stretch of water whose far shore was barely visible: it was like an inland sea encircled by a smudged green line in the distance. ‘This is what we call a “panchamukhi mohona”,’ she said, ‘a five-mouthed confluence.’

  ‘It’s spectacular,’ Monty shouted over his shoulder as he clicked away with his camera, adjusting his lens this way and that. ‘I hope Abhay won’t miss all of this.’

  As if on cue Abhay appeared too now, his camera at the ready.

  Seeing that Varsha was not with him, Shoma stood up and crossed over to his side. ‘Where’s Varsha? Do you want me to go sit with her in the cabin?’

  ‘No need,’ said Abhay. ‘She’s asleep and her ayah’s with her.’ Then lowering his voice, he added, ‘Varsha knows exactly where we’re going. She was able to name every river that we’ve been on. I wrote the names down and asked Horen about them. He confirmed that they are correct. He was very surprised—apparently it’s pretty rare even for locals to be able to name all these rivers. It’s such a maze that it’s hard to tell one from the other.’ Looking out of the porthole of her cabin, Varsha turned suddenly to face her father. ‘There it is,’ she said, pointing to a barely visible speck of land on the horizon. ‘That’s Lusibari over there.’

  Climbing into her father’s arms, Varsha asked in a shaky voice, ‘Do you think the house is still there, Papa?’

  ‘It should be, baby. Why wouldn’t it be there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Varsha cast another glance at the island, clinging tightly to her father. ‘You won’t leave me alone, will you, Papa?’

  ‘Of course not, Varsha beti,’ murmured Abhay. ‘Of course I won’t leave you alone, not for a minute. But what are you afraid of? Tell me.’

  Varsha stuck her thumb in her mouth. ‘There are some bad people there, Papa.’

  ‘Don’t worry, baby, no one can harm you. We’ll all be with you.’

  ‘You won’t tell anyone who I was, will you, Papa? Not Mashima or anyone else. They mustn’t know.’

  ‘They won’t know, baby,’ said Abhay, in a gentle, soothing voice. ‘I’ll tell you what: we’ll let Mashima and her friends get off the boat first and we won’t step out until they’re gone. That way you won’t cross paths with them at all. How about that?’

  Varsha nodded, her pigtails bobbing up and down. ‘Yes, Papa, let’s do it like that.’

  ‘But are you sure you want to go ashore at all, baby?’ said Abhay. ‘You don’t have to, you know. We could just look at the island from the launch and then return to Canning.’

  ‘No, Papa, no!’ said Varsha. ‘I want to see the house … and the pond. I want to see if they are as I remember.’

  When the launch pulled up to Lusibari there were no jetties or piers along the shore, only a mud-spit that led up to the flat-topped embankment that stretched around the entire island. At low tide the passengers would have to flounder through knee-deep mud to make their way to the top of the embankment, but since it was high tide now the crewmen were able to lower a gangplank directly onto the mud-spit. It came to rest at a steep angle with a drop of a couple of metres below.

  After taking a look at the bank of mud under the gangplank, Abhay said, ‘Varsha, I’m going to carry you across. I don’t think you’ll be able to make it on your own.’

  Varsha said nothing but when Abhay reached down to pick her up she evaded his hands and scampered sure-footedly over the gangplank, pigtails flying. Then she turned to wave, smiling mischievously. ‘Come on. Why are you waiting? Are you scared of falling?’

  Just how much practice it took to be able to run so easily over a narrow length of wood became evident to Shoma when she gingerly stepped on the gangplank: a mere glimpse of the mud-bank below set her head spinning and she quickly retreated to the safety of the deck. It took two crewmen to help her climb down the gangplank, which she did by inching forward sideways while holding on to their hands. As for Bhola’r ma, she flatly refused to leave the launch.

  From the top of the embankment Shoma could see that the settlement of Lusibari was just below, and that it consisted of nothing more than a cluster of thatched mud-brick dwellings and an open-air bazaar. The only pucca cemented building was the school which, along with its playground, occupied the centre of the settlement.

  Pointing at the school, Varsha said, ‘See? Didn’t I tell you? That’s where the children go to study.’

  ‘Would you like to go there to take a look?’ said Shoma.

  ‘No. I want to go to my old house,’ said Varsha, pointing along the embankment, which curved away into the distance. ‘It used to be in that direction.’

  The path that topped the embankment was broad enough for two people to walk side by side. Varsha led the way, holding on to her father’s hand, while Shoma and Monty followed on their heels. They had only gone a few paces when they were stopped by a shout. It was the guide, Horen Naskar.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, that’s all right,’ said Shoma. ‘We aren’t going far.’

  ‘Be very careful,’ said Horen. ‘There’s a breach in the bandh up ahead. Watch out for it, or you could get swept away.’

  The interior of the island looked much like any stretch of farmland in Bengal: thatched, clay-coloured dwellings scattered among rice fields and freshwater ponds with a tree or a coconut palm here and there. On the island across the river, by contrast, there was no trace of habitation at all—only a solid wall of tangled greenery, stretching away into the distance. With the tide running high, the island was mostly submerged and the mangroves seemed to be floating on the river, their trunks barely visible.

  It was evident at a glance that if not for the embankment the island of Lusibari too would have been submerged at high tide since its fields were well below water level. Taking in her surroundings, Shoma realized that it was the island’s raised rim that kept it dry. Suddenly it frightened her to look from the river to the fields: the man-made bank of clay that separated the two elements seemed very fragile, and it was easy to see how a breach in the embankment might result in a disastrous inundation.

  To Varsha neither the rice fields nor the forests across the river appeared to be of any interest: she was single-mindedly focused on walking towards her destination, her excitement mounting with every step. Abhay had to interrupt his picture-taking every now and again to tug at her hand and slow her down.

  ‘Where is the house, Varsha beti?’ said Abhay. ‘Can you point it out?’

  ‘You can’t see it from here,’ said Varsha. ‘It’s just around that corner.’

  But on turning the corner Abhay and Varsha were brought to an abrupt halt: directly ahead of them a thin sheet of water was cascading over the embankment, flooding the land below.

  Varsha clapped a hand over her mouth as she stood staring at the lagoon-like pond that had collected at the foot of the embankment. Then she let out a cry, tugging at her father’s hand. ‘It’s gone! It’s all gone!’

  Abhay immediately stopped clicking pictures and picked her up.

  Placing her head on his shoulder, Varsha began to sob piteously. ‘It’s all gone, Papa! All of it.’

  ‘What’s gone, Varsha baby?’

  ‘The house, the pond, everything. They’re all flooded.’

  ‘That’s very sad, baby,’ said Abhay, stroking her back. ‘But at least you’ve seen the place for yourself, just as you wanted. Now you can put it out of your mind.’

  Shoma was moved to see that Abhay’s own eyes filled with tears as he consoled his daughter: it occurred to her that only he, perhaps, fully understood the complexity of Varsha’s feelings at this moment.

  With Varsha sobbing on his shoulder, Abhay whispered to Shoma, ‘I think I’d better take her back to the launch. She’s really upset. This whole thing has been a big strain on her; she needs to get some sleep.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Shoma. ‘And now that she’s seen the place, maybe she’ll be able to get over those memories of hers.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Abhay. ‘But do you think she was remembering the right place? I couldn’t see any trace of a house over there.’

  ‘Nor could I,’ said Shoma. ‘But it was a mud house so it could just have melted into the flood.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Abhay. ‘I must admit, though, that I’m a bit disappointed that we haven’t been able to find out if there really was someone called Isha who lived here with a mother called Jhorna and a father called Binu.’

  Shoma nodded. ‘You’re right. It would be a pity to leave Lusibari without learning a little more. Maybe I should go and talk to Mashima? She might be able to tell me something, and perhaps Horen too?’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s a good idea,’ said Abhay. ‘But please be careful and do it in a roundabout way, without mentioning Varsha.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All right then. We’ll see you back at the launch. I hope you’ll have the whole story for us then.’

  Twenty One

  Piya called me when it was very early in the morning in Brooklyn. ‘Listen, Dinu, I have some news about that tropical depression. It’s gone through a phase of incredibly rapid intensification, as has been happening more and more often nowadays. It’s now a full-fledged tropical storm; they’re calling it Amphan. They’re not sure of the track yet but it seems to be moving northwards, on a trajectory that looks set to hit Bengal. Your aunt was right after all.’

  ‘You’d better warn Tipu.’

  ‘I’ve already talked to him. He and Rafi are going to shut down the trust’s office and start helping with the evacuation of Lusibari.’

  ‘Is it going to be that bad?’

  ‘As I said, Amphan’s already gone through a phase of very rapid intensification, and it’s still strengthening.’

  ‘I won’t hear from Tipu for a while, I suppose?’

  ‘No, he’s going to be pretty busy.’

  I wasted no time in calling Shoma and to my great relief she came on the phone without a fuss.

  ‘You were right,’ I said. ‘There’s a big storm coming towards Calcutta. It’s called Amphan.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘I told Sumita and Dev yesterday that it was coming.’

  ‘So you did. But how did you know?’

  There was a pause. ‘I saw it—it was like a picture that floated up in front of my eyes. I just knew it was coming.’

  ‘Have you always seen these pictures?’

  ‘No, never. They only started coming to me after I went away … After my heart attack, I mean. But I see them often now. And the visitors too.’

  ‘What visitors?’

  ‘Monty. Your parents. And sometimes there’s your friend Cinta.’

  ‘Her too?’

  ‘Yes. She visits me quite often.’ Shoma made a sound that was somewhere between a wheeze and a laugh. ‘Did you know that Cinta also spends a lot of time with you? She tells me what you’ve been doing.’

  I began to laugh. ‘Oh, come on, Shoma! Is she with me now?’

  ‘No, she’s with me. And she’s trying to tell me something. Wait.’

  A minute went by before I heard her voice again. ‘Cinta says she helped Tipu find my article on disaster premonitions, and she wants you to know that she had one too. Many years ago she had a nightmare in which she saw a great wave of water tearing down from the mountains near Venice, drowning entire villages in a matter of minutes. She tried to warn people, but no one would listen. And then it happened.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Wait.’ She paused, as if she were asking someone a question. And then: ‘In 1963. Look it up.’

  I had barely typed in ‘1963 – Veneto – disaster’, when the internet provided the answer: ‘Vajont’.

  On 9 October 1963, at Vajont, in Italy’s Dolomite mountains, an entire hillside had crashed into the reservoir below that was held in by a massive dam, one of the tallest in the world. The dam had held, but the rocks and debris displaced fifty million cubic metres of water, which leapt over the top and poured into the Piave Valley in a giant tsunami-like wave, flooding several towns and villages and causing some two thousand deaths. The corporation in charge of the dam had been warned repeatedly that the mountainside was geologically unstable but had chosen to ignore or conceal the reports.

  Over the next two days, taking full advantage of the superheated surface of the Bay of Bengal, Amphan changed its original eyewall and replaced it with a bigger, more powerful one, which allowed it to continue to intensify until it became a super cyclone, the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal with wind speeds exceeding those of the great cyclone of 1970. At the same time, Amphan also steadied itself, settling on a track that seemed to be aimed directly at Calcutta.

  With every update on the cyclone I became more and more frantic. Every morning I would call Sumita and Romy to check on the preparations at Tavoy. Had they stocked enough food and water? Did they have enough rope and duct tape to secure the doors and windows? Was the generator functioning properly? The house would almost certainly lose power, so Shoma would need the generator to keep her BiPap machine and oxygen concentrator going.

  Romy told me not to worry. Everything was under control, he said, and the most important thing was that Shoma was holding up very well.

  This was, if anything, an understatement.

  In marked contrast to myself, Shoma seemed to be growing increasingly lighthearted as the storm approached. I called her a few hours before Amphan was scheduled to make landfall, and she seemed almost joyful. ‘You shouldn’t worry so much, Dinu. Nothing bad will happen to me.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I said. ‘Superstorms like this one are giant engines of destruction. If the eye passes directly over Calcutta there could be a huge drop in air pressure which might interfere with your breathing.’

  She chuckled wheezily. ‘Don’t be afraid, Dinu. I’m not. Whatever happens I know my visitors will help me through. And as for myself, I’m ready. My affairs are all in order. I’ve left Tavoy to Dev and his family and I know they’ll take good care of the house. Promise me that if anyone from our family tries to contest my will, you’ll testify on Dev’s behalf.’

  ‘Of course I will, but Shoma—.’

  ‘I’ve left a present for you too. Be sure to ask Dev about it.’

  I found myself choking up. ‘Shoma, why are you talking like this? It’s still too early for you to go.’

  ‘No, it’s not, Dinu. It’s time for you to let go of me. It’s wrong to hold someone back against their will.’

  I began to sob into the phone, so she fell silent for a minute. And then she said, ‘Dinu, do you still think of Durga a lot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve not met anyone else since then?’

  ‘I’ve had relationships, yes, but none that lasted.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you should stop trying.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Dinu, there’s something I should tell you. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You remember U May Oung, the Burmese Sayadaw?’

  ‘The astrologer? Yes, I remember him.’

  ‘Dev had a lot of faith in the Sayadaw, as you know, and many years ago, when you were fifteen or sixteen, he got him to cast your horoscope.’

  ‘What?’ I was so startled that the phone nearly fell out of my hand. ‘Why would Dev do something like that?’

  ‘Because you were his friend, and he wanted it to be a nice surprise, a gift.’

  ‘Since he never told me about it, I’m guessing the surprise wasn’t particularly nice?’

  ‘You’re partly right,’ said Shoma with a sigh. ‘That’s the reason we never told you. The Sayadaw’s reading was kind of sad. Not entirely, but a little.’

  ‘Well, you’d better tell me now.’

  ‘He said that as a young man you would suffer a terrible bereavement and it would leave you heartbroken for a long time.’

  ‘Well, he certainly got that right, didn’t he? What else?’

  ‘He said that you would forge many deep and meaningful friendships with women who had also been bereaved, and that you would end up with one of them at a time when you’d have almost given up hope.’

  ‘Then I guess all is not lost. I do have something to look forward to after all?’

  ‘You most certainly do. You have everything to look forward to. Never forget that.’