Chapter 4 — What Priti Knew

November 7th. On the water. Day 3 of the expedition.The permit covered the non-Reserve zones of the northern Sundarbans and a buffer sector of the Reserve boundary — a substantial area, more than enough for the documentary Samir had proposed to the streaming platform, which was ostensibly about forest communities, traditional knowledge, and the intersection of ecology and belief in one of the world's most complex ecosystems.The streaming platform did not know about Daat Mandir.Samir had not told them, which was the first thing I understood when I reviewed the production plan. He planned to incorporate it as a discovery within the larger documentary — organic, unexpected, found in the field. This was the shape of his best work and also, historically, the shape of the decisions that had caused the most trouble.I had a conversation with him about this on the boat, in the particular privacy of two people at the bow while the others were at the stern with the camera equipment."It should be disclosed," I said."It will be. When we have something to show them." He was watching the river banks — the mangrove root systems rising from the water, the prop roots like fingers, the pneumatophores standing up from the mud like small hands. "If we get to the coordinates and there's nothing there, which is possible, the whole thing becomes a footnote. If we find something, we have a documentary that writes itself.""And if we find something we weren't prepared for?"He looked at me. "We're always prepared. That's what you're for."This was not reassuring in the way he meant it.* * *Priti came to find me that evening, when we had moored for the night at a permitted landing — a raised concrete platform that the Forest Department maintained for approved research vessels.She sat across from me in the small cabin with her notes on her laptop and the particular expression she wore when she was about to say something that required careful framing."I've been doing field research in the Sundarbans since my PhD," she said. "Seven years of documented visits, three extended stays, published work on the folk religion of the honey-collector communities." She paused. "I have never encountered a sustained reference to a structure called Daat Mandir in any published or oral record. It's not in any folklore compilation, any ethnographic survey, any Forest Department heritage notation."