The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck, page 17
Slowly Shankar and I develop a perfect cadence, the rhythm of our paddles in harmony with the river. Our wake is imperceptible, barely hinting at our passing. The sun guides us downstream, marking the way with a slender golden path. We paddle on, our movement as fluid as the water itself. The sounds of the Brahmaputra have grown familiar, their clarity and intimacy comforting. As I listen, I begin to decipher pieces of the river’s timeless message.
“Look out!” Shankar yells as Lahey-Lahey clears a bend.
I snap out of my trance to find that we’re on a collision course with another boat. I back-paddle frantically, jabbing the water, trying to swing the bow around. Shankar is poised to fend off. The other crew, just as surprised, dig in their push poles. Lahey-Lahey misses their stern by inches and rounds up smartly, giving us the appearance of expert boatmen. She stops within an arm’s length of their rail.
They’re turtle catchers, and the two 150-pounders in their bilge indicate that they’re good at their jobs. They were tracking a third when we appeared. The captain apologizes, explaining that they were focused on the bubble trail of their submerged prey. Shankar, wetting his lips at the thought of a turtle dinner, asks for the secrets of turtle hunting. The captain explains that there are two ways to catch a turtle: trapping it with a net or wounding it with a trident and roping it by the neck when it surfaces.
Turtles are the basis of his village’s entire economy. The meat close to the shell is a delicacy that commands a high price in the city; the shell is carved into combs or decorative objects. The captain shows us some of his own handiwork, mostly combs, which, he notes, are of no use to me. They give us small amulets made from turtle shell, and in exchange we offer Michael Jackson lighters. Everyone is delighted with the barter.
Following the shifting main current, we cut all the way across the river to the north bank. When the wind is calm, it’s relatively easy to plot the fastest course: ripples point us to the swiftest-running water. However, when it’s blowing hard enough to put whitecaps on the waves, it’s nearly impossible to track the current, and we must rely on luck.
Tonight it’s my turn to cook. When Shankar goes off to collect firewood, I rifle through our supplies hoping for inspiration. By the time he returns, I’ve unpacked everything.
“What are you doing?” he asks, kindling the fire.
“Looking for something different.”
As the fire catches, flames shooting through the top of the mustard oil tin, I can see the grin on his face. He knows we have plenty of food, but it’s all the same. We end up eating rice, dal, onions, and radishes again, our standard menu, which varies only by the amount of curry powder or pepper we add. There was no tinned food for sale in Saikhoa Ghat; Moti explained that people won’t buy food if they can’t smell it or pinch it. Shankar decides to write out a shopping list of items to buy in the next town; he’s still at it when I turn in.
Several uneventful days later, as we paddle between two large islands, Shankar yells, “Look at that.” He’s pointing to starboard, but I can’t see anything. I raise my binoculars and scan the island. “Tiger?” I ask. Yesterday we spent the entire morning following the tracks of a Bengal tiger. We gave up after finding nothing but leeches.
“Forget the tiger. Look at the water. There!”
It’s too late to avoid the whirlpool, so we hang on for the ride. It’s the largest whirlpool we’ve seen, almost twice the length of the boat. Previously we’ve powered right through them, encountering little drag, but not this time. Around and around we go, spinning clockwise, making tighter, faster circles. The horizon becomes a dizzy blur.
“Yahoo!” Shankar exclaims, his paddle shipped, holding on to the painter like a rein. “Ride ’em, cowboy!”
This gleeful feeling is quickly supplanted by terror as the whirlpool starts to suck us down.
“Sheee-ittt. Paddle, paddle!” Shankar now screams.
Both of us thrust our oars into the swirling water as the foam starts lapping the gunwales. The boat lists, her port rail dipping under. The river pours in. We shift our weight to compensate, burying the starboard rail. Lahey-Lahey spins on her nose and threatens to dive. The bilge water surges forward, almost catapulting me from the stern. We stroke like madmen, shouting instructions at each other. Water cascades over the stem. We move aft, straining to regain an even keel. Whap! the stern hits the river. Lahey-Lahey corkscrews, reverses direction, and cuts across the spirals into calm water. We head for the nearest land.
Shankar and I had heard about these giant whirlpools, but we didn’t believe the stories told us by Jodu Das, Hayna, and Moti. In Indian lore whirlpools are regarded as doorways to another life. An angry deity is lying at the bottom, sucking in the water, waiting to gobble some unwitting sailor to appease its wrath. The river gods may not forgive our next mistake.
We reach the right bank without further incident and discover a wide expanse of marshland. In a flash my mood changes.
“This is it, Shankar. We’ve found the perfect nesting ground for the pink-headed duck. Just look at that marsh.”
Shankar is not excited; indeed, he groans as I steer for the wetlands. The air becomes thick with flying, biting insects, as well as a stomach-knotting odor of swamp gas. This doesn’t deter me, for I sense that the duck is near. I jump out, eager to survey the area, but Shankar won’t leave the boat. I point out a few of the highlights of this wonderland, including the thousands of iridescent dragonflies zipping over the stagnant water, flitting from one earthen mound to another, their bodies glistening like sapphires. Birds’ nests are everywhere and the occupants shout their welcome.
“They’re telling us to go away,” Shankar corrects.
I remain undaunted, sure that the white ibis are grunting hello, that the chestnut bitterns are extending a gracious invitation, confident that the flapping widgeons and terns are applauding our arrival.
“I don’t like it here,” Shankar whines.
“Come on,” I urge. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s just a feeling. I don’t know… It’s the kind of place a burru would live in.”
“A what?”
“Burru. My grandmother told me stories about them. They’re bad. Evil.”
According to Shankar’s grandmother, burrus appear in two forms, the most frightening being that of a giant, scaly ogre with the claws of a panther and the head of a frog; the more common variety, I’m told, looks like a brontosaurus. In either case the god-beast regards human beings as tasty hors d’oeuvres.
“She saw one and my cousin did too. I’m telling you the truth… Hey, man, don’t mess with burrus.”
“Ah, come on,” I chide.
“Forget it. I’m not going with you… My grandmother wouldn’t lie about something like that. She was too religious to make up a story about the gods.”
His grandmother once saw a black beast moving swiftly along the edge of the river. At first she had no idea what it was, but when it raised its head above the treetops she knew it was a burru. She ran and hid, saying prayer after prayer. Like a python, the beast eats its dinner, usually an elephant, in one gulp. The earthen mounds in the marsh are its dung heaps, each containing the skeleton of a devoured animal.
“Those mounds are sacred,” Shankar says, pointing into the marsh.
“Holy shit!”
“Cool it! This is no place for jokes. The area is taboo, man, taboo. Let’s split.”
“Give me thirty minutes?” I entreat.
Shankar consents, but he won’t participate in my survey of the flora and fauna. I wade into the ankle-deep water and head for the widgeons. After a couple of yards I slip into a trench and plunge up to my neck in water, so I swim to one of the sacred mounds. The birds are shrieking horrifically. What happened to the sweet, inviting chirping? I leap for the next mound, miss, and fall flat on my face, mouth in the ooze.
“Had enough?” Shankar calls.
I’m about to concede when my legs start disappearing into the soft bottom. I recall this feeling from a trip up the Congo River years ago. Once the muck is over your knees, it’s nearly impossible to get out. I grab frantically for the reeds and slowly inch out on my belly.
“Now I’m ready to go,” I confess, spitting out mud.
“Ugh! Look at you. Leeches, leeches everywhere. Serves you right,” Shankar rejoins.
We use cigarettes to burn them off. Shankar attacks those on my back while I go after the suckers in my armpits and crotch.
“Hold still. Don’t move,” Shankar advises, removing one from my left ear.
A mile farther on, near the mouth of a small tributary, we hear a loud splash. What was that? The answer arcs through the air: it’s a Ganges dolphin. We ship the paddles and wait for it to reappear. The mammal is nearly seven feet long with a snout like a barracuda and dull black skin. Ganges dolphins differ from their saltwater cousins not only in appearance but also in behavior; neither playful nor gregarious, they surface only for air, exposing their tiny eyes and chiseled teeth.
Since leaving Dibrugarh, the turtle catchers are the only people we’ve encountered. But Shankar is quick to remind me that many people are probably watching us. We’re in the middle of the Badlands.
“This is where that boat got robbed, don’t you think? The captain said they were near the mouth of a small tributary,” Shankar recalls, adding that the dacoits attacked him not far from here.
As the sky turns purple, we begin to search for a safe place to camp. We don’t want to sleep on the shore, and the only islands we pass are too wet, barely a foot above water. We keep paddling, hoping to find other boats or a ghat not shown on the maps. After the incident in the whirlpool, we resolved not to travel at night. Yet here we are paddling by the light of a quarter moon, able to see only a few yards off the bow. Every time I’m ready to pitch the tent, Shankar finds something wrong with the place. When he wants to stop, I demand that we push on. We’re both hungry and irritable, but our bickering ends when we sight a campfire. We paddle toward it cautiously, trying to be quiet, picking up speed as we discern the lines of a fishing boat, about fifty feet long, with a bluff bow and a wineglass stern. The massive rudder is made of a latticework of teak boards. On deck a fire dances above the lip of an oil drum hanging by davits. No one appears to be aboard.
“Hell-o… Hell-o. Can we come aboard? Hell-o…”
Silence. I shine my flashlight up the curve of the sheer to the deckhouse. The light catches the eyes of five men huddled in the shadows. I lower the beam and see three knives. I douse the light and we’re about to paddle off when someone shouts in Bengali, “Go away.”
“Phew,” Shankar exhales in relief. He responds, “We’re friends, not robbers. Look! Look at him.” He takes the flashlight and shines it on my face. “A firang. He’s a firang.”
I hear the men gasp. Shankar continues, “We need a place to sleep.”
They confer privately while we stand in our boat, holding on to their rail. One man keeps shaking his head. Finally a decision is made.
“You can come aboard… Leave your knives behind.”
A crewman bends over the side and gives us a hand up. None of them has seen a westerner before, and the man helping me won’t release his grip. Another crewman holds a kerosene lamp to my face, raising and lowering the wick as he moves the light.
“Hmmm,” he muses, adding something Shankar doesn’t understand that causes the crew to explode with laughter. Whatever the joke, it breaks the tension.
“My name is Gopal. Welcome,” says the captain. “We were ready to kill you. We thought you were dacoits.”
I thank him for his restraint and present them with Michael Jackson lighters. The captain, wanting to reciprocate, motions for us to sit down. He scurries into the cabin and returns with a small paper bag.
“Dreams,” he announces.
The fire is lowered from the davits and brought amidships, where we gather to talk. They’re all from Lalgola, a town on the Ganges in West Bengal. Gopal, afflicted with a tubercular cough, is almost thirty years old; the others are in their teens or early twenties. All have thick, calloused hands. There are no winches or motors aboard; their arms alone pull in the 150-foot nets.
“This boat,” Gopal declares proudly, “our home, was built in 1953, and it’s still in good shape. My father helped build her… He was a good fisherman and we worked the Ganges together for years. I grew up on this boat.”
The boat, made of teak, is double-planked below the water line. The mast is a debarked babul tree stepped far forward, like that on a catboat. However, it’s used exclusively as a towing stanchion; no sail has ever been hanked to it. An arched roof of thatch, tin, and bamboo covers the foredeck; all fishing is done from the aft quarter, where the deck is flat and open. The boat’s name is Lucky, but Gopal has often thought of changing it.
“Years ago my father and I were fishing. Just the two of us. I was asleep and when I got up, he was gone… My mother cried and cried. She said that is what happens to all fishermen. He heard the river calling to him.”
Gopal assumed command at the age of seventeen, and for the first few years he was moderately successful. That was when the fish population of the Ganges was still thriving.
“But each year we caught less. Now there is nothing for the nets in the Ganges.”
This is his second season on the Brahmaputra, and it may be his last. As an outsider working the Assamese waterways, he must pay the state a 40 percent tax on his catch. That’s the law, anyway; the actual tariff may vary according to the official on duty.
“If Shiva is kind, the tax man will take only four of ten fish. Sometimes he takes six. We have no one to protect us. We are not Assamese, so no one listens to our complaints.”
Sunal, a lanky man who should wear glasses but doesn’t, recounts an incident from two weeks ago. They were fishing downstream and had brought their catch to Sibsagar market. The tax man took most of their fish.
“We went to the police and they told us to leave if we didn’t like it here. The tax man is Assamese, the police are Assamese, and we are Bengalis. That is not good for us.”
A hush comes over the boat when I ask about the river pirates. The dacoits have left them alone, but the fishermen are superstitious and are afraid that mentioning the dacoits will ruin their luck. Gopal does tell us that spies in the market tip off the dacoits, identifying which boat has delivered a rich load.
We’ve dipped into the dream bag three times, postponing dinner until everyone’s stomach is growling. At Gopal’s command the food is prepared. Lobas, the twelve-year-old cook and apprentice fisherman, takes charge. He greases the pots and reaches into the hold, pulling out five containers of spices: hot chili peppers, green peppers, black peppers, more chili peppers, and curry powder. He takes some of each pepper and pulverizes everything with a porcelain rolling pin.
“The juice,” he confides, “you must get all the juice.”
While the ingredients simmer in mustard oil, Lobas dices some potatoes as a special treat for us. He adds water and drops in seven small fish called bhangnon-mas. After bringing the pot to a boil, he adds two fistfuls of curry powder. A half hour later, when the rice is cooked, we wolf down the food.
“Delicious,” I say to Lobas, who beams.
Slowly at first and then with numbing intensity, the spices release their power. I ask for the water bucket. My insides feel as if they’re melting and dripping out through my pores.
“Ah, you really do like it,” Lobas says, watching me down a quart of water.
In the morning Lahey-Lahey looks woefully small next to the high-sided fishing boat. The crew of the Lucky call our boat Susek, Bengali for dolphin, but Gopal is more critical: “It’s no bigger than a Christian’s coffin! May the gods smile on you… You paddle a toy.”
With this encouragement, we bid farewell and head out into the morning mist, hoping to make Sibsagar before dark. Several hours later we near the spot where the dacoits had attacked Shankar. For the first time he recounts the details of that day.
“I was lost in those islands over there, next to the bank. I took the wrong turn and followed a stream that led to a sandbank. I saw this guy standing on the shore and asked for directions… When I got near him, he started running at me… Two more came out of hiding. Phew, I was lucky. I hit one with my paddle and jumped aboard. Then, man oh man, I rowed like crazy… The next morning I took the bus home.”
The story gives me an idea, and I suggest that we pretend the dacoits are closing in for an attack. “How fast can we go?”
We stroke double-time, thrusting our paddles into the river, pulling as hard as we can. Lahey-Lahey surges forward. We pour it on and pull triple-time. The boat slices cleanly through the water, no longer staggering between strokes. In rapid fire our paddles punch the surface. Whack! Whack! Whack! Shadows barely keep up with us. Everything rushes by—the shoreline is a blur of jungle colors. Faster, I want to go faster. I feel invigorated by every stroke; all that matters is movement. One moment blends into another. Faster! Ever faster into the unknown. I feel the pink duck is nearby, hiding just beyond view.
“Whoa! Look at that!” Shankar exclaims, ending our sprint.
“Keep going. Faster!” I urge.
“Check it out, man. Ahead,” he says, pointing to someone walking along the beach.
I snap back. “Sorry … oh, yeah, I see him.”
Shankar takes the binoculars for a closer look. “Well, dude,” he drawls, watching the lonely figure, “he looks like a genuine fisherman. I can see a net, but we keep going and stay away from the shore, right?”
Not noticing us, the man continues walking toward a giant bamboo wishbone with a net strung across it. The contraption is suspended between a pair of thirty-foot poles. He releases a line, sending the mesh down into the water. A few minutes later he grabs a length of jute and uses his body weight as a cantilever to raise the king-size scoop. As it climbs into the air, the net shimmers like a spider’s web covered in dew. Slowly the thousands of water droplets fall away, each a prism releasing miniature rainbows. The trap is effective; he catches a half dozen fish while we watch.
