Beach of faith

The drive from Kolkata to 24 South Parganas is tense, edge-of-the-seat stuff. We drive through villages and paddy fields punctuated by hotspots of trade and commerce on a pitted road. The excitement peaks as the road peters out into a thin strip of bridge that connects us from Kakdwip, on the eastern banks of the Hooghly, to the placid and pastoral town of Namkhana. We queue up behind cars, trucks, scooters, an ambulance, men, women and chicken waiting for the vessel that will take us across the Hatania-Doania creek, which is about 100 m wide but deep enough to be used as a shortcut for ships sailing to Bangladesh.

Boarding the ferry is a complex exercise; it challenges one’s driving skills, is a lesson in cooperation and a test of patience as we wait for the traffic that arrives from the other side to disembark. But the reward is sweet — upon crossing, we follow roads that channel through Namkhana across mangroves, fields and canals to an archipelago of deltaic islands, including Bakkhali and Henry.

A sunset in the east is a cheeky little disappearing act. Turn your back for a second and you will miss it — as we do. In Bakkhali, the shops are lit and the streetlights buzzing as early as quarter to six, and although the full moon hangs low, its radiance is outdone by the inflorescence of white floodlights that bleach the landscape. At the beach we are met by a vast expanse of nothing, not even the whisper of a breeze. Where there should have been lazy ocean waves is a flotsam jetsam fortress of Styrofoam and plastic bottles.

The shoreline is dotted with red plastic chairs that seat clusters of families and sets of couples waiting for the tide to come in. Disoriented and perplexed, we turn to a guard who is visibly irritated when we ask him if the water ever comes to the beach. “It’s low tide now,” he smugly explains to the city mice. But it’s not merely the missing tide we are trying to come to terms with, but the seascape — the darkness of the silt and sand, the hardness of the beach, and the absence of waves or water. Our consternation is temporarily interrupted as we plough through luchis by the dozen with spicy ghugni , and fresh batter-fried fish.

As the tide rises thick and fast, those who have come to watch the sea pick up their chairs and move back a little, then again and again as the water draws nearer. We are reminded of the action the following day on Henry Island, when we notice red crabs scuttling by – like the sea watchers, the crabs leave behind signature scratch marks on the sand. The beach is dotted with crabs scurrying as if it is peak hour. They look like they are off, purposefully clacking their claws, clocking their nine to five. They dig holes, carry sand and then bring it back, taking other crabs down with them, as if saying to themselves, “If I can’t have it, neither can you”.

Six km away from Bakkhali, Henry Island is a decimal point in an otherwise contiguous forest spread out over 10,000 sq km. Here, we miss the tide again but the daylight exposes a dramatic ecosystem. The shadows from the previous night take form, revealing an icky-sticky marsh, plovers, sandpipers, mudskippers, and red crabs in the black muck. The view is stunning, to say the least, and we are tempted to venture out to plot the exact point where the water disappears, or perhaps examine the sandbars a bit closer. The best advice is don’t do it. This is no ordinary beach. It is not for frivolities such as putting up beach umbrellas or lounging on deckchairs, building sandcastles or picking up seashells. The surrounding mangrove ecosystem is tenuous and fragile, and in a matter of minutes the tide can reclaim all this vulnerability and staggering beauty.

There is a sense of impending tragedy; the rising sea levels are a major threat and will result in a significant loss of mangroves, forest cover and disappearing islands. Jambudwip, an uninhabitable island that can be accessed by ferry from Henry Island, has already lost around 10 per cent of its forest cover since 1986. The Sunderbans are predicted to be submerged by the end of the century. As a flock of pelagic birds fly past us, the enormity of the world’s largest delta sinks into our bones, paralysing us with sights and sounds that we cannot find the words for. This time we catch the sunset. It enhances the sundari trees with highlights of pink and rose, and the orange-red amber light lingers a while till it dissolved into a purple sky.

We leave the island reluctantly. We stop, sigh as we walk away from what can only be a fantasy; the mangroves swarming with glow worms like constellations in the sky, and the glittering ponds of bhetki, tilapia, cutla (immaculately maintained by Bengal Fisheries) that reflect a red moon in the pitch dark. Visiting the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta is a religious experience, a reason to keep vigil, and to lie prostrate at the feet of the sundari that stitches this delicate coastline, keeping it together for a little while longer.

Catherine Rhea Roy is a writer based in Delhi