Mangrove Chronicles - Part II

There was a sudden lull in the atmosphere, the kind you’d feel in late winter evenings only to be broken by the routine azaan from the nearest mosque. Except for there were no mosques around, not even human beings, only a pin drop silence caused by the sudden outage of the boat’s motor. High tides had just set in as everything around seemed to move in a hurry. The tide carried vegetation, waste, animal corpse and everything frail it found on its way. As nature displayed its might in full fury, the most atheists of people stared out with their mouths wide open.

The wind hitting our faces had just grown colder. I silently thanked the fading lights that concealed the terror on our faces. “Would I have the guts to play the guitar while the titanic sank?” I wondered with a nervous smile. Just as I realized we weren’t carrying along a guitar this time, the boat quivered. Left at nature’s mercy with a dead motor, the boat started playing to the music of the tide. As the boat started moving downstream, we saw the full moon moving to our right and further. The boat was revolving in the middle of nowhere and everyone held on to the wooden railings. The whisky seemed to have evaporated off the gang as they performed the balancing act carefully.

The barely visible gloomy faces revealed that our spirits were sinking faster than the boat. Every single second of the next twenty-odd minutes we breathed a little less, and a lot slower, hoping to prolong the twelve lives hanging on a balance. It was pitch black now and our dark skins glowed under the full moon. A slight movement, a little sneeze or a minor itch could cause the boat to shake violently. Everyone hoped not to be the first one to fall off the boat with the dark creature waiting for its prey right beneath our feet. Was Kashi da waiting for a divine intervention or did his prolonged, dark life turn him into a sadist who enjoyed watching people being dragged, drowned or devoured to death? Would he live another day to tell the horror story of another kin’s loss, this time to the tides?

The kin, his fifteen year old nephew had been his helper since the last monsoons. We hadn’t bothered to talk to this young teenager throughout the journey. He had displayed several attempts to come closer to us, look at our fancy cellphones and music players, perhaps imagining a life outside the confines of the tide country. A bright city life where four legged creatures would be behind the cages, where everyone would wear bright clothes and wide smiles, and the day would start once the sun went down.

It was his time to go down now, right under the boat to investigate the issue. A man of few words, Kashi da asked him to “stay safe” as he prepared to take the plunge. The entire gang that was battling to cope with the fear of losing their lives, now had a new emotion to deal with. The air was suddenly thick with guilt as the young boy looked at us for one last time. He was to risk his life for ten drunken men from the city whose lives were obviously more prized. Before anyone blinked, he had jumped off. The boat shook viciously.