FICTION
MANDIRA PATTNAIK
What do I tell you, Sundarban Bagh? (1)
What do I tell you Lord of the mangroves, the unrepentant tigress? Do you not know it all? Do you not see the crabs as they claw out of the mangrove’s clutches, just like that day two weeks ago, when you were preparing to pounce? Preparing to pounce because we encroached your fiefdom? Because we ruined your glowing orange sunsets, your shallow gulf waters? Tampered with your lasting sanctuary and toyed with your linage?
See the crabs unfurling and uncoiling like saffron petals in cadence to the lilting lullaby of tide just like that day two weeks ago, when employing his practised hands, their skilled trapping of those crabs, you observed Kartik? Just like you watch me now. Catch closely how I shove the crabs, one after another into the aluminium vessel — it’s called a handi, the weight of my livelihood, that you seem rather inclined to ignore?
Or, do you know feel threatened? Are you tempted to flash a blaze — gesturing a restless paw, a grape-red mouth, a deep agitation between the breastbone and the meat, almost sexual, the instant you spot me among the foliage?
You opt instead to lurch and lurk, as you did on that day two weeks ago. Remember? Stealthily sneaking in behind the crab collectors, close to the Sundari tree’s trunk, unmindful of the boatmen shrieking, ‘Bagh! Bagh!’, you stamped a giant ruthless paw on Kartik’s face (2). Did you not know he was my only brother?
You could, if you like, at this moment, hear the crab-shells banging against each other inside the handi, follow me to the market and hear the coins jingling when they exchange hands, and at dusk, when I turn to go home, hear how my tired feet drag along the muck — srup-srup. And still along if you want, hear the joyous rupture from inside the thatched-and-bamboo hut when I push the rickety door open; catch the sound of my sisters slurping on the broth I serve. Why, do you hate them too?
Instead, you choose to trail me along the mangrove’s slippery ground, and careful of the silence, mark your prey; not a rustle of your yellow-and-black-striped body knowing your turf has been breached, not a murmur as you are close at my heels, breathing heavily down my back, smelling the sweat running down my face, the odor of my only cotton sari, the pungency of a cobra nearby as it wrestles with a catch it can’t swallow. The putrid air of the swamp chooses to look the other way, its heaviness looping around me, distanced from the other crab-collectors, like it wants to taste the delectable saltiness of my poverty.
Do you desire blood today, like you tasted Kartik’s two weeks ago? Or, do you simply crave the thrill of chase, enjoy the impunity, the echo of your roar, the rush of pleasure perhaps, when later, at the end of it, you’re done seeing crimson flooding?
And, tell me this — do you let me go now, only, so you can stalk me tomorrow again?
~~~
Footnotes
(1) Sunderban Bagh is the local name for Royal Bengal tiger found in the Gangetic delta regions of India and Bangladesh. India's national animal, the Royal Bengal Tiger, is an endangered species facing significant threats of poaching and habitat destruction.
(2) An average of 50 people are killed in the Sunderban Mangrove forests each year due to attacks by Royal Bengal tigers, most of them fishermen and crab- collectors who regularly encroach upon tiger territory for reasons of livelihood in extreme poverty conditions.
Mandira Pattnaik is an Indian writer published in The McNeese Review, Penn Review, Quarterly West, Passages North, Timber, and Best Small Fictions Anthology (2021), among others. Visit her at mandirapattnaik.com