Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Criticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Chapters from the journal are inserted periodically into the narrative. From the journal, we learn the story of the violent confrontations in Morichjhampi – a real incident that occurred in 1979 involving government forces and Bengali refugees. The journal also includes the story of Bon Bibi, the protectress of the island people. I will not forget Fokir for a long time to come. I will be less judgemental of people whom I encounter in my day to day life. The numerous Rilke intertexts in Nirmal’s notebook have the effect of broadening the dispossession (...) Sarah Foster’s parents have been fighting a constant battle with poverty, disease and crime. When her father, Will, is involved in a terrible accident at work, their lives became even harder.

Piya embarks on her study of dolphins but encounters difficulties with her guides. She meets Fokir, an uneducated local fisherman, skilled at reading the tides, with whom she feels a connection. She hires him to help her map the dolphins’ migrations among the islands, where Bengal tigers, crocodiles, snakes, and other wildlife reside. These islands are flooded by the tide twice daily. In the meantime, Kanai reads his uncle’s journal. He reunites with Piya in the role of translator. C resswell , Tim. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Cf. an almost identical reference to visiting journalists [27] and a similar reference to internati (...) So…Talking about the book, Piyali Roy(Piya) is an Indian origin American cetologist. She studies marine mammals. She comes to India near her ancestral place in the hope to get a permit to do a survey of marine mammals of Sunderbans. Nature and literature goes hand in hand. The world of literature throngs with works dealing with beauty and power of nature. However, the concern for ecology and the threat that the continuous misuse of our environment poses on humanity has only recently caught the attention of the writers. This sense of concern has given rise to a new branch of literary theory, namely Eco-criticism. The word eco-criticism first appeared in William Ruekert's essay "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism" in 1978. Yet it remained inactive in critical vocabulary. Literary criticism examines the relations between writers, texts and the world. The world is synonymous with society. Ecocriticism expands the idea of the world to include the entire ecosphere. Ecocriticism takes an earth centered approach to literary criticism.Although the barbaric action of the government forces at Morichjhapi was indefensible, Ghosh makes it clear that the issue involved was not a simple one. To Piya, for example, the claims of the environment should come before the needs of people. She makes her position clear when she comes upon villagers torturing a man-eating tiger they have captured. Realizing that they intend to burn it alive, Piya attempts to intervene, and Fokir has to drag her away, explaining that after all, it had killed human beings. His mother, Kusum, would have seconded his comments, for as a nurse trainee, she had been taught that human life, not nature, is of paramount importance. An ecocritical reading is encouraged by the novel’s carefully researched information concerning the (...) The other sad thing about the novel is its degeneration into chapters containing one-to-one conversations. There are just two many of these chapters. Each character gets to talk to the other. Sometimes they narrate stories of the kind I have mentioned before. At other times, they bore even more. One gets the irritating feeling that this could have been a super-taut novella and that it would have done better then. At other times, you find yourself bemoaning the superficiality it loads the characters with...suddenly the characters lose their inner lives and are just talking. Talking , talking, and talking.

Antoinette Burton takes this sentence from the novel as the epigraph for her article ‘Archive of Bo (...)F oucault , Michel. ‘Space, Knowledge, and Power’, Foucault interviewed by Paul Rabinow, trans. Christian Hubert, The Foucault Reader , ed. Paul Rabinow, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. B akhtin , M.M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays , ed. Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Another reason for concern is the expanding tourism industry in India. Sahara India Parivar's mega tourism project proposes to take over large areas of the Sundarbans to construct floatels, restaurants, shops, business centres, cinemas, and theatres which would disturb the fragile ecosystem and further threaten the already endangered biodiversity of the region. Ghosh vehemently oppose this gigantic hotel project in the name of conservation. In extreme brief, you can summarise the novel’s story like this: Piyali comes to India, Kolkata, to do her research about Irrawaddy Dolphins. She stays at Kanai’s. Kanai, on the other hand, digs out a diary by his uncle that takes readers into the past, during the time of the Morichjhanpi massacre. Fokir, the boatman who takes Piya on her boat into the river, dies trying to save her from an angry storm. As Piya and Kanai explore the Sundarbans, they encounter the third central character, Fokir, a simple yet enigmatic fisherman with an intimate understanding of the region’s rhythms. Fokir’s connection to the land and the sea is profound, as he effortlessly navigates the treacherous terrain, guided by his intuition and deep respect for nature. Piya, as she keeps exploring the river’s length and breadth with Fokir in search of the Irrawaddy dolphins, develops an affection for him. Kanai, on the other hand, wants to make Piya aware of his feelings but cannot confront her. So, there is an implicit love triangle in play throughout the novel.

D as, Veena. “Subaltern as Perspective.” Subaltern Studies VI: Writings on South Asian History and Society. Ed. Ranajit Guha. Delhi: OUP, 1994. 310-24.

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Cf. Ghosh’s comments in his UN Chronicle interview: ‘In The Hungry Tide , Kanai is someone from mode (...) The novel also delves into the complexities of cultural exploration and the clash of different identities. Piya, a woman of Indian origin raised in the United States, grapples with her dual heritage and her place within Indian society. Kanai, on the other hand, is a product of the urban elite, disconnected from his ancestral roots until his visit to the Sundarbans awakens his interest in his family’s past. Fokir’s presence brings a sense of grounding to the story, representing the local inhabitants of the Sundarbans and the timeless wisdom they carry. I learnt to love animals and nature. I became an environmentalist, a zoologist, a thinker. (philosophy still eludes me) Three lives collide on an island off India: “An engrossing tale of caste and culture… introduces readers to a little-known world.”— Entertainment Weekly