The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck, page 15
Off the starboard quarter, bobbing in the water a kilometer away, I notice a flock of brahminy ducks, sacred to Buddhists as symbols of fidelity and devotion. These ducks mate for life; when one dies, the other stays near the corpse until it, too, dies. I have an urge to commandeer the boat for a closer look at the ducks, and Brahma smiles on me—the captain taps me on the shoulder and asks if I would like to take the wheel.
“Hey! Where are you going?… Steer for that island up ahead,” he commands, spinning the wheel in my hands and taking us away from the birds.
There’s a strong weather helm, and I need to feather the rudder constantly to keep us from sideslipping. As we pass into the main channel, the bow swings, caught in the rip. I put the wheel hard over, but the current, surging downstream at five or six knots, is too strong. The skipper pulls a string that runs down through a hole in the deck to a bell in the engine room, alerting the engineer to open the throttle. Slowly we regain control.
Hooked above a chart table littered with bread crumbs and dirty tea cups is a length of cardboard tubing, the ferry’s external communication system. The captain has no use for a radio; the tube is all he has ever needed. “It always works,” he says. “And if I had a radio, who would I talk to?”
There’s a compass aboard, but he’s never had it adjusted. I compare my field compass to it and find an eighteen-degree discrepancy on a northeast heading. It doesn’t matter, his compass is more an ornament than a navigation instrument. The captain steers by eye and instinct, relying on his thirty-odd years of experience and a sailor’s sixth sense. “I can feel danger coming… Something happens inside me.”
In the middle of the river, almost three miles out from Saikhoa Ghat, hard by a cluster of small islands, the captain retakes the helm. He tugs the line twice, and the engine slows. “Shallows,” he warns, staring ahead, surveying every ripple. A bowman takes soundings as we move cautiously through a narrow strait between the barren islands. Using a long pole, the bowman calls out the general conditions: deep, shallow, or shoal. Because it carries almost as much water as two Mississippis, the Brahmaputra is a navigator’s nightmare. Overnight the river may dump hundreds of acres of silt into an area, choking it off and diverting the main stream. Every morning the captain must survey the river anew, paying close attention to the wave patterns, which give clues to the bottom contour; generally, the steeper the wave, the shallower the water. The captain tells me that the Brahmaputra is a moody god whose every whim must be indulged. To make his point, he jerks the rope four times and stamps hard on the deck twice, the signal to clutch the engine. He leads me to the windward rail. “Listen,” he tells me. “Listen to the water and feel its power.”
I stand there motionless, captivated by the sound of the river gnawing at the islands. It’s a deep, ominous drone, interrupted by occasional splashes as pieces of the bank, undermined by erosion, tumble into the river.
“Look, off to starboard!” the captain shouts, and sprints for the wheel. He calls for full power.
From upstream several trees the size of telephone poles are bearing down on us like battering rams. They could easily punch a hole through the ferry, and I shudder at the thought of what they could do to Lahey-Lahey. We successfully avoid them and continue on for Sadiya, the ancient port where Tibetans once came to trade gold dust, musk, and borax for cloth, tobacco, and glass.
We make a perfect landing, the bow gently nudging the bank, and three crewmen jump ashore to handle the mooring lines. The ferry will return in two or three hours, depending on how quickly the cargo of teak is loaded.
“Stay close,” the captain advises. “We leave when we leave.”
I wander about the ghat, which is bustling in comparison to its sister across the river. Several motorized craft are docked along the bank, including another ferry and a trio of barges used to transport logs to the plywood and veneer factories downriver. Like Saikhoa Ghat, Sadiya is populated largely by people from outside Assam, mostly from Bihar and West Bengal. As I sit in a teahouse talking to a group of wharfingers, a tall gentleman wearing khaki pants and a clean white shirt confronts me.
“Who are you?” he butts in.
A man sitting next to me whispers, “Police.” I quickly fish out my papers, and the tall man makes the most of this rare chance to display his authority. He orders me to follow him to his office, but once we’re inside, he graciously offers me a seat and starts boiling water for tea. Finding my papers in order, he asks me to enter my name in his visitors’ log. I drink two cups of tea while he searches for it.
“Would you help me look?” he asks, pointing to a tea crate filled with mildewed paper.
“When did you last use it?”
“Ummm. Let me think. It was before I was married… I have two children now.”
Giving up, he hands me a blank piece of paper to sign. He fills in all the information from my travel permits and tells me I can leave.
Back at the ferry ghat, I climb atop a huge stack of logs to survey the waterfront. Shirtless laborers are hefting sixty-kilo bags of rice off the ferry to waiting bullock carts; rice dust leaking from the sacks has turned the men a ghostly white. Occasionally a worker will step out of line and stare longingly at the herd of water buffalo cooling in the river. Off to my right, near a parked convoy of logging trucks, a platoon of soldiers banters good-naturedly, glad to be heading home on leave. Downstream, fishermen dip hand nets relentlessly, always seeming to come up empty. Directly below me, two dogs bark as if they’ve treed dinner. Using my binoculars, I look for birds. There are no marshes nearby; I see only terns, kingfishers, little egrets, and gulls.
“Can I look?” a voice asks. It’s the policeman again.
As I climb down, he chases away the dogs, throwing rocks with startling accuracy and speed. He says he’s the bowler on the local cricket team. The moment he raises the glasses, all work stops and a line forms. Everyone wants a peek. Happily, the policeman assumes control, allotting each person exactly fifteen seconds with the binoculars. This gives me an opportunity to inquire about the duck; I wave the picture and start asking questions, which are met with vacant stares and frozen smiles. I speak louder and make some changes in my enunciation. Everyone laughs.
“You were right the first time,” the policeman says, correcting my use of a slang word for penis. “What was it you were asking about? A rose … what?”
“The pink-headed duck, gūlāb-sīr.”
“A Mishmi might know about the bird,” he says, and sends a young boy on an errand.
Moments later the boy returns with an old gentleman in tow. His name means “Warrior with the Strength of a Thousand.” I’m told that in his youth, this Mishmi was a great hunter, reputed to have killed a bear with his hands. He looks blankly at the picture.
“Same color,” he says, pointing to his beautiful necklace of polished cowrie shells. “I want one. Does the firang sell these birds?”
“I’m looking for one. Have you ever seen any?”
“Ducks live there,” he says, gesturing downstream, turning on his heel, and heading back to his cook fire. “I am hungry now,” he adds over his shoulder.
The sound of a horn brings my attention back to the ghat. It’s the ferry signaling all aboard. On the way back to Saikhoa Ghat, the captain plots a different course. He lets me steer much of the way, taking the helm only near the shallows. We weave through a series of flat islands, hugging one bank and then the other, always searching for deep water. Even with the engine in gear, throttle two-thirds ahead, I can hear the river devouring chunks of the islands. I head aft for a better listening post. On the fantail a dozen goats hang their heads over the rail as two herders milk them. I’m offered a cup of warm milk, and the children laugh at my chalky mustache. As we approach the ghat, I spot Shankar bailing out Lahey-Lahey. Jodu Das is standing nearby wringing his hands.
“I must tell you something,” Jodu says sheepishly.
“We have a leak,” Shankar interjects.
“We must fix it,” Jodu admits.
Several cracks in the stern have been stuffed with oakum and tarred to look like the rest of the bottom. After inspecting it, I decide it’s not a serious problem, and if it becomes one, we can fix it easily enough. Jodu insists, however, and the three of us tow Lahey-Lahey to an area called the shipyard, a flat stretch of beach littered with boats awaiting repairs. We find the shipwright working on Jodu’s new craft. His name is Hayna. When he’s introduced he snorts and returns to work. His tool box contains a hammer, saw, drawknife, plane, adze, breast drill, and a length of iron bar known as “the persuader.”
“That is all I need to build a boat,” Hayna tells me proudly.
Jodu must speak to him in private before he will agree to sell us a bucket of pitch. Shankar heats the tar over a fire while I cut copper strips to cover the bigger gaps in the planks. The shipwright watches me with a critical eye. He stops grimacing only after he has elbowed me out of the way. To correct my shoddy job, he moves the patches a millimeter and nails them home. Together we swab the hull with pitch, trying to get as even a surface as possible. While the sun bakes the goo, Shankar and Jodu return to the ghat, while I stay to watch Hayna frame his latest creation.
Like most other master builders, Hayna appreciates an audience as long as they stay quiet and out of the way. He builds boats the same way his father and grandfather did. The designs are ancient, and the scantlings are a family secret. He takes his time, studying each piece of wood, feeling the texture and tracing the grain. To him a boat is a living organism with personality and character, both of which he shapes.
“What do you think about boats made of steel?” I ask.
“No good. They sink,” he replies between chops of his adze. “A boat must be made of wood.”
“Why?”
“Can’t drive a nail through steel.”
That night Shankar and I host our own bon voyage party. The entire ghat turns up at Moti’s when they hear I’m paying for the food and supplying the liquor. We down several bottles of scotch, more than enough to have the good spirits of Lord Johnnie Walker bless us all. After tea the next morning, we start loading Lahey-Lahey. Hayna is there to offer advice.
“Never travel in the rain… Giant fish and crocodiles attack during storms… Pray to Ram when you see a whirlpool. He may hear you and save you… Keep your fire bright. Ghosts fear light. Do you have flashlights?… When the moon is up, sleep with your knives…”
He stops, nodding in approval, when I hold out two pieces of fruit. Shankar takes one and we make an offering to Brahma, invoking his spirit to guide us safely to the sea. The oranges splash and bob downstream, carrying our prayer ahead of us. The people of Saikhoa Ghat wave and shout as we climb aboard. The captain blasts the ferry’s whistle as we dip our paddles. We clear the back eddy along the bank and enter the main channel of the god.
11
Down the Brahmaputra
Lahey-Lahey is ten feet at the water line and a little under twelve feet overall. At her beamiest she’s an elbow-bruising thirty inches. There’s little pitch to her and no sheer to speak of; the rails run straight from the bow to the blunt stern. On an even keel our weight drops the gunwale to within inches of the water. There are no thwarts, so Shankar kneels on our tent in the bow, while I steer from the V-shaped transom, my feet in the bilge with our bailing can, an old fruit cocktail tin. The push poles lie fore and aft, hanging over the stern like a swallow’s tail.
Our first day out, we’re lucky to have kind seas and a following wind. We decide to hug the left bank and learn through trial and error how to handle Lahey-Lahey. Hour by hour our incompetence lessens: we’re getting the hang of it.
As Shankar tells me, “It’s rhythm, man. It’s all about rhythm. We’ve just got to hold the beat.”
Early in the afternoon we finally hit our stride, pulling as if linked by a cog, matching strokes, propelling Lahey-Lahey in a smooth, steady motion. I lose myself in this new world gliding past. The splash of the oars cutting the surface captures my attention, drawing me in like a mantra. I feel the energy flowing from the blade into my arms and through my body, bonding me to the river, freeing me from thought.
After a while, Shankar slips his paddle and leans back. Gazing skyward, he lights a cigarette and releases a stream of smoke.
“Wow! This is really far out, isn’t it?” he remarks, instantly dispelling the magic.
I keep pulling, reminded of why I usually travel alone. He says something else, but the splash of my paddle drowns him out. “Hey,” he shouts, turning to confront me. I keep at it, plunging the oar deep into the water, pulling back with all my might.
“Hey, listen to me when I’m talking,” Shankar yells. A moment later, we’re screaming at each other. It’s our first tiff, which is quickly resolved, both of us satisfied that Lahey-Lahey has no captain, just two crewmen ready to mutiny at any sign of authority.
Hundreds of islands dot my chart of the Brahmaputra, but the chart is inaccurate: there are thousands of islands, ranging from giants large enough to support a forest to small, desolate mounds. A river island’s lifespan may be less than a week or more than a century. Only one thing is certain: the river is the sole creator. The process of island making, known as braiding, starts as the Brahmaputra slows and widens across the alluvial plain. After being suspended in the turbid water sluicing down mountain courses, millions of cubic meters of soil and eroded rock begin to settle. Sand bars grow into islands, and as the riverbed recontours around these new land masses, the main channel shifts. During the monsoon season this process accelerates and islands are born in hours, only to disappear in the next thunderclap.
As we shoot down a gut separating the left bank from the nearest islands, the horizon on all sides is a flat vista, not even a dune interrupting the horizontal plane. But rather than an expansive feeling, a sense of emptiness creeps into me, as if I’m slowly draining into the stark landscape. The river surface mirrors the high sun, white-hot and throbbing. The oppressive heat pounds down on my neck, and the hot, sticky breeze is like a dog’s breath.
Several miles downstream, just as we clear a long spit, I see a dull green in the distance, which brightens from olive to boa as we get closer. It’s the jungle, and we paddle hard for it, pulling double time. We race by a reed-covered island and continue stroking until we reach the coolness of the jungle shadow. There’s a twenty-degree temperature drop in the deep, luxurious shade cast by the wild tangle of the rain forest. Cruising contentedly alongside the lush vegetation, we revel in the varying light caused by gaps in the gumhar, kuthan, and gular trees. The arching root systems of the giant teaks, the cathedrals of the jungle, are streaked with red and blue fungi. Yellow-flowered creepers twist around the willows, and the stringy branches of a Persian lilac droop over the bank. Some smaller trees have fallen, and their exposed root balls are now tenanted by sandpipers and redshanks. We can hear insects clicking and monkeys whooping. No doubt word is out about the two men in a boat.
We spot a few tracks in the mud and stop to inspect them. This stretch of river, unpopulated by humans, is home to slow lorises, panthers, leopards, fishing cats, and tigers. The prints are too small for a tiger, but they could be those of a golden cat or a clouded leopard. Shankar carries the slingshot and leads the way.
“What do you think made these?” I ask.
“Big cats, big daddycats… I don’t know. You’re supposed to be Mister Natural, remember? But check this out,” he says heading toward some exotic-looking brown orchids. Each bloom has a wide lip bearded with fine, dark hairs. Flowers, it turns out, are Shankar’s weak spot. He leans over my shoulder as I flip through a field guide trying to identify the two-leaved orchid.
“It’s a Coelogyne ovalis,” I say. “Rare outside of this area.”
He starts to pick one, but I stop him, suggesting he pluck the more common Dendrobium orchids. He fills his buttonholes with these flowers, dismissing the Latin name of the plant and insisting that we call it “heartbeat” because of its crimson spots, which pulse in the slightest breeze.
“Hey, watch your step,” I shout.
In his rush to snip the delicate stems, he doesn’t notice he’s trampling a lady-slipper, a Paphiopedilum fairieanum. We inspect the ballerina grace of this pink flower, first discovered in Assam in 1857. A few specimens were shipped to England, but by 1880, because of poor techniques of propagation, there wasn’t one left in Europe. Attempts to relocate the orchid in India failed and a hefty reward was offered. Thirty-five years passed before an expedition of botanists rediscovered the lady-slipper growing in Bhutan.
“Wouldn’t you know it. We’re a day late and a dollar short,” Shankar says ruefully.
I return to the tracks that brought us here in the first place.
“Let’s go before whatever it is returns,” Shankar says, tossing me the slingshot and climbing aboard Lahey-Lahey.
A few miles farther on, birds crowd the view: kingfishers hover near the water; gray-headed fishing eagles soar effortlessly overhead; mynas, swallows, and plovers, with high-pitched voices and bright colors, dart in and out of the jungle. Cormorants dive for dinner while a flock of pochards bob like corks. From their roost on a tree limb high above the bank, a pair of yellow-backed sunbirds welcome us with their call, “Cheech-a-wee, cheech-a-wee.” At last I’ve found an area in which the pink-headed duck could prosper.
We stop for a late lunch, picking a river island with a good view of the jungle. It’s a treeless mound of sand rising from the water like a humpbacked whale. Hundreds of empty, waterlogged nests are scattered about. This year, a month after the monsoon was thought to have ended, it rained for two weeks straight. The sun would reappear briefly, only to be blotted out again by more rain. The river flooded a second time, inundating this island and more than likely forcing the birds to abandon their nests.
The island’s written history begins with an entry in my log. What I observe gains credibility with each additional sentence and soon acquires a remarkable similarity to fact. I manage to pace off nearly half of its width before getting bored with precision and resorting to estimate, concluding that the island is exactly three square acres, with an elevation of thirty-three inches, precisely matching the inseam of my pants. I dub this grassless place Kojak Island and stake my claim.
