Free The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

school his teachers taught him that life’s most important lesson is ‘labor conquers everything,’ even rocks and stones if need be — even mud. As with many of his countrymen, a time came when Daniel Hamilton had to leave his native land to seek his fortune, and what better place to do that than India? He came to Calcutta and joined MacKinnon and McKenzie, a company with which he had a family connection. This company sold tickets for the P and O shipping line, which was then one of the largest in the world. Young Daniel worked hard and sold many, many tickets: first class, second class, third class, steerage. For every ship that sailed from Calcutta there were hundreds of tickets to be sold and only one ticket agent. Soon S’Daniel was the head of the company and master of an immense fortune, one of the richest men in India. He was, in other words, what we call a monopolikapitalist. Another man might have taken his money and left — or spent it all on palaces and luxury. But not S’Daniel.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI’m getting to it. Wait. Look at the picture on the wall and close your eyes. Think of that man, S’Daniel, standing on the prow of a P and O liner as it sails away from Calcutta and makes its way toward the Bay of Bengal. The other shahebs and mems are laughing and drinking, shouting and dancing, but not S’Daniel. He stands on deck, his eyes drinking in these vast rivers, these mudflats, these mangrovecovered islands, and it occurs to him to ask, ‘Why does no one live here? Why are these islands empty of people? Why is this valuable soil allowed to lie fallow?’ A crewman sees him peering into the forest and points out the ruins of an old temple and a mosque. See, he says, people lived here once, but they were driven away by tempests and tides, tigers and crocodiles. ‘ Tai naki? ’ says S’Daniel. Is that so? ‘But if people lived here once, why shouldn’t they again?’ This is, after all, no remote and lonely frontier — this is India’s doormat, the threshold of a teeming subcontinent. Everyone who has ever taken the eastern route into the Gangetic heartland has had to pass through it — the Arakanese, the Khmer, the Javanese, the Dutch, the Malays, the Chinese, the Portuguese, the English. It is common knowledge that almost every island in the tide country has been inhabited at some time or another. But to look at them you would never know: the speciality of mangroves is that they do not merely recolonize land; they erase time. Every generation creates its own population of ghosts.
    â€œOn his return to Calcutta S’Daniel sought out knowledgeable people. He learned that of all the hazards of the Sundarbans none is more dangerous than the Forest Department, which treats the area as its own kingdom. But S’Daniel cared nothing for the Forest Department. In 1903 he bought ten thousand acres of the tide country from the British sarkar. ”
    â€œTen thousand acres! How much land is that?”
    â€œMany islands’ worth, Kanai. Many islands. The British sarkar was happy to let him have them. Gosaba, Rangabelia, Satjelia — these were all his. And to these he later added this island you’re standing on: Lusibari. S’Daniel wanted his newly bought lands to be called Andrewpur, after Saint Andrew of Scotland — a poor man who, having neither silver nor gold, found the money to create it. But that name never took; people grew used to speaking of these islands as Hamilton-abad. And as the population grew, villages sprouted and S’Daniel gave them names. One village became Shobnomoskar, ‘Welcome to All,’ and another became Rajat Jubilee, to mark the silver jubilee of some king or other. And to some he gave the names of his relatives — that’s why we have here a Jamespur, an Annpur and an Emilybari. Lusibari was another such.”
    â€œAnd who lived in those