"O i hothay bhuture dweep ta - Ghoramara", said the boatman to none in particular. ("There lies the ghost island - Ghoramara"). Among his passengers - chickens huddled inside a wet wicker basket, local traders carrying merchandise and myself - only I turned to see what the boatman was pointing at. It had been drizzling since the trawler had set sail from Harwood Point, and all I could make out was the thin, dark line of an island on the horizon (picture). The next moment, it disappeared, enveloped in a sheet of rain, mist and spray. Only then did I realize why the boatman had called the island spectral. None really knows when it appears or goes out of sight.
Ghoramara, a strip of land between the rivers Hooghly and Battala, is one of the sinking islands in the Sundarbans. (Large parts of Lohachura, another such island, had submerged years ago.) Ghoramara has been bobbing up and down in the public consciousness ever since scientific research showed that global warming and its attendant phenomenon - rising seas - are causing catastrophic erosion and would eventually result in the island's disappearance. In 1975, Ghoramara was spread over 20,000 bighas. Today, it has shrunk to 5,000 bighas only. The climate conference in Paris, which ended a few months back, made Ghoramara a blip on our radar, once again. Some of the consequences of global warming, such as a spurt in the number of environmental refugees, crop failure, distress migration, I had read, were unfolding in Ghoramara already. But I was not making my way to the island to ascertain facts that have been in the public domain for a while now. What I was interested in instead were two broad lines of enquiry. I wanted to know how climate change informs the daily rituals, iconography and intimate spaces of a vulnerable people. Also, what are the coping mechanisms of a community threatened with loss and displacement?
On reaching Ghoramara, I could identify, at once, some of the features that the island shares with the other populated parts of the Sundarbans. The roads are brick-lined; most of the ponds hold brackish water; infrastructure is non-existent for industry, health and education. The subcentre lacks medicine for snake venom, while pregnant women have to make the difficult crossing to Kakdweep to get treatment during an emergency. One of the schools on the island has six teachers who look after the needs of over 500 students.
Yet, this is also an island with visible differences. The population density in the Sundarbans' inhabited areas is quite high. But some of Ghoramara's stretches appeared deserted. The 2011 census had found 5,195 people. Several families, I learnt, have been rehabilitated in neighbouring Bankim Nagar, Jibantala and Sagar island. The dwindling manpower and the rise in soil-salinity notwithstanding, agriculture remains a profitable occupation in Ghoramara. The cultivation of betel leaf and paddy are popular, lucrative enterprises. This perhaps explained the presence of quite a few freshly-painted, pucca dwellings. Many of them had solar panels installed on their roofs. Sanitation is an administrative prerogative. I saw numerous posters listing initiatives to keep the village clean. In all, there are four primary schools on the island. The former pradhan said that 14 ICDS centres remain operational.
The chief deficiencies in Ghoramara are in the form of resources in the realms of health and education. But the island is also battling another kind of deprivation: that of time. The knowledge of imminent destruction pervades the daily rituals as well as the inner life of the residents who remain. A college student spoke bitterly of his friends who had stopped visiting after their families bought land in Sagar. The idea of scale too differs between the visitor and the resident. Freed of the oppressive city, I savoured the vastness of the rivers that surround the island. But a young man I met said that he wanted to work elsewhere so that he can escape, what he thinks, is a state of confinement - a siege by water. On my way to Purba para, a stretch that has borne the brunt of erosion, I saw wall graffiti advertising the services of a duburi (picture, right). Divers, I was told, are in great demand for their ability to retrieve household possessions that the rivers swallow after breaching the embankments. Elsewhere, I spotted an ancient tree with deities resting on its branches (picture, left). Even the gods fear a watery grave, chuckled the middle-aged man who stood watching me watch the tide recede. In the afternoon, I met some children at play. They were building a puny levee with pebbles. One of them demanded to be photographed. When I obliged, he grinned and struck the pose of the blue-skinned god and said that he knew how to tame, not a serpent, but a river.
The global inertia towards climate change is often manifest in a fatal form of denial. However, a different kind of sensibility has taken shape in Ghoramara. The residents I spoke to are aware of what awaits them. Yet, their fortitude is not based on denial or self-deception. What the people - the young and the old - have chosen to do instead is assimilate the knowledge of their doomed fate with everyday practices as a means of surviving the time that remains. Thus, one comes across children playing games to keep greedy rivers at bay, or meets adults who speculate, in a matter-of-fact tone, on the length of time separating land from water.
Borrowed time has also led the islanders to alter their relationship with memory. Preserving records on paper is difficult on an island prone to periodic flooding. But the older residents especially have learnt to memorize the momentous and the trivial. For instance, the names and the exact ranks of the two brothers, who had done well in a state-level examination many years ago are still remembered with pride. Births and deaths, minor triumphs or disagreements - everything that constitutes the mundane in other, ordinary societies - are not forgotten in a hurry either. Community memory has been turned into a resourceful weapon to lend a degree of permanence to all that lies in the shadow of untimely oblivion.
But it is the political discourse, and political institutions, that remain afflicted by amnesia. The brittle embankments, the tensions arising from patchy rehabilitation and the absence of healthcare, seldom decide the vote in Ghoramara.
Tides, high and low, are watched closely on the island. This is because at low tide, when the river is too shallow to cross even for the trawlers, the island remains cut off from the mainland. Remarkably, Ghoramara has made use of its abandonment - by the State, by welfare agencies, by the people - as well as its physical seclusion to experiment with the idea of an idyll. Social integration is quite evident. Walking around, I discovered the remnants of a tajia. It had been installed on a wheeled contraption that made it resemble a rath. Muslim residents, who make up almost 35 per cent of Ghoramara's population, help organize Hindu festivals and are welcomed in Hindu homes. Crime, including petty theft, is unheard of. The shrinking landmass has also brought people closer, literally and figuratively. The frequent sharing of resources and shelter during floods has helped ease out the rigid caste hierarchy.
It is perhaps too late to keep Ghoramara afloat. But administrative apathy is not the only reason. The environmental conditions that are threatening the island appear to be irreversible. If Ghoramara were to drown, its residents fear that it would be the turn of Kakdweep and Sagar next. This is because Ghoramara, even in its diminishing state, puts up resistance against the marauding rivers.
It is necessary to stitch together a narrative of Ghoramara's capitulation. This is because the island mirrors not just modern environmental challenges but also the human follies that have aggravated the crises. But the public discourse would remain alienated if the narrative were to be limited to the works of artists - Ghoramara has been the subject of a photography project - journalists and scientists. Visits by tourists - scores of pilgrims flock to Sagar - can sensitize and alter the discourse.
A visit to Ghoramara can be a chastening experience. As evening fell, I waited near the banks for the trawler and the tide to return. The embankment - there is no jetty - was deserted. A couple of plastic chairs, a tape recorder, a loudspeaker and bundles of cloth were strewn on the mud. Presumably, a jalsha had taken place in the village recently. I could see no one, but I was not quite alone. For the recorder, which had not been turned off, continued to play snatches of the performance. A voice, hoarse and terrified, kept repeating that the river is hungry. A strong wind carried the message across the sullen waters.
