Chapter 7 — First Steps

Lata Bose. Field Journal. November 11th. Afternoon.I am writing this on the boat while Haripada, Samir, and Rohan prepare the equipment for the walk. Priti is reading something. Madan Das has not spoken since we moored and is sitting at the stern looking at the river behind us with the focused attention of a man who has decided where he will be looking when things happen.I want to record what I see and hear and feel before we go in, because I have the specific instinct — the production instinct, the thing that has served me well and led me wrong in equal measure — that what happens in there will be harder to describe accurately afterward.The channel boundary. Looking forward: the mangroves close over the water about forty meters ahead, the canopy meeting above the narrow passage to form something like a tunnel. The light inside that tunnel is green-grey, the light that comes through many layers of leaf, the light that does not know which direction it came from. The roots in there are massive — the pneumatophores standing thick as stakes, the prop roots of the larger trees creating elevated networks above the mud. The mud itself: a specific dark colour, almost black, the Sundarbans mud that is the accumulated biological material of an ecosystem processing itself continuously, very deep, not the kind of mud you want to step in without knowing the bottom.Sound: the forest is louder here than it was twenty minutes ago. Not threatening — just more. More bird calls, more water movement, something rhythmic in the middle distance that I have been trying to identify for ten minutes and cannot.Smell: the same as before but intensified. The active biological smell. The smell of the Sundarbans working.And something else. I noted it but did not write it at first because it sounds — imprecise. But I am trying for accuracy.The feeling of being watched.Not by an animal — I know the feeling of a tiger reserve, the way the hairs respond to the sense of being assessed by something large and predatory. This is different. More diffuse. The sensation of attention, but from no specific direction. From all of them simultaneously.Haripada is calling. We are going.I am going to keep this journal updated from here. If I can.* * *