Trip to the Sundarbans: Part I

FINALLY....the laziest bum on 360 sits down to write about her trip to the Sundarbans...since all about it will make tooo biig a blog, i'm gonna divide it into parts ...and i wanna put up the pictures i took and that'll take some time...

I went there as a research assisstant to Dr. Sufia Uddin who is Associate Professor of the University of Vermont...Religious Studies is her subject and the research is on the deity called Bonbibi....the goddess is worshipped only in the Sundarbans...more on her later... Mahir, Sufia di's one-and-a-half-year old son, his nurse (Indrani di) and my mom were also with us...

We left in a bus at 7 and reached Gosaba Bazar by 12...from there we proceeded in a launch and reached the resort "Sundarban Tiger Camp" around 2 pm.... a journey of 5 hours from Kolkata.

It's beautiful...and very very peaceful...the large and small rivers wind and twist and when the tide is high, entire trees get covered by the water...

Well, we were then taken to the Sajnekhali Tiger Reserve and i gotta say we were damn lucky...people stay there for weeks and don't get to see any tigers at all...the sundarban is like an untouched area of land...untouched by humans, that is...it is the abode of many rare plants, various species of animals...the most renowned being the Royal Bengal Tiger...it's probably the only place where tigers are in no danger of becoming extinct and thank God for that!!!

We spotted two chitals drinking water from the lake, breeding grounds of olive Ridley turtles, a crocodile in full view (about a metre away) and many Rhesus macaques (the monkeys we see in temples), however the best bit of luck by far was that we had the privilege of seeing three tigers from the watchtower. The first one disappeared into the surrounding mangroves as soon as Indrani di screamed, “Bagh! Bagh!” ("Tiger ! Tiger!") Mr. Raptan, our Guide immediately asked her not to use the word as it was ‘disrespectful’, he said we should instead refer to the tiger as ‘Mama’ (meaning 'uncle'). Mahir then began to say ‘mama’ repeatedly (he was actually saying this to Sufia di) and without stopping and then, to our surprise, two tigers emerged onto the open road! They were about 150 metres away. Our sighting was thus attributed by Niranjan Raptan to Mahir’s saying ‘mama’. I at first thought he was only joking but he was actually saying that in earnest....(btw, i got to see just 2 tigers but i saw them through my binocs...hehe....very very clearly...they were sooo beautiful and majestic... and what's weirder, is that i had seen this in a dream b4 we went there...seeing 2 tigers from a watchtower...)

After that Sufia di and I had a quarrel with Mr. Raptan, coz we had gone there for work, which wasn't getting done. So we were taken to his village, Jamespur, to see some shrines of Bonbibi. Okay so now i write about Bonbibi....

The people living here are poor and the main source of income for most of them is the forest...there are fishermen, woodcutters and honey-collecters...they often go deep into the forest...a very very dangerous thing to do...every villager I met has had someone from their family carried away and eaten by a tiger...yet they venture into the forest....where do they get the courage to do this? From Bonbibi...the "Goddess of the Forest"....they worship her before going into the forest and she protects them....

The best thing here, in my opinion, is that no matter how many communal riots take place in India, the sundarbans will never be affected by any kind of communal violence....that's because here Hindus and Muslims worship the same goddess side-by-side...the same mantras...the same way of worship...a Muslim goddess is offered Ganga jal (water from the holy river Ganga) and Muslims perform idol-worship...

In many ways, Sundarban is a unique place...the tide rises so high it washes the land away.....yet it often leaves new islands that were not there the day before; everyone fears the tiger, yet it is not hated, on the other hand it is respected (called 'Mama') and even worshipped; fish climb trees; and tigers eat humans regularly...no where else in the world do healthy tigers attack and eat humans...

Okay here I gotta admit I was scared to learn about this...coz I even read that often tigers climb into boats and carry away the stoutest person in the party...so well, obviously I was rather uncomfortable...all the time the thought in my head was: 'If a tiger sees me it'll think "Yummm.....what a juicy human that is...will keep my tummy full for days!"' Like Sy Montgomery writes in her book "Spell of the Tiger" (DO try to read it, it's amazing!) the sundarbans is a place where u set foot and realize for the first time "that your body is made of meat"...

more on this next time...