The Hungry Tide

Piya is the novel’s other protagonist, a spirited, but secretly insecure, American scientist who travels to the Sundarbans for a research project. Born and raised in Seattle by immigrant parents, Piya is a fully American woman of Indian descent, happy with “the neatly composed androgyny of her appearance” (3). While India is her ancestral home, she is (sometimes blissfully, sometimes not) unaware of cultural attitudes and taboos. She sits in the men’s train compartment, casually speaks of tigers despite a strong taboo, and dismisses local customs when they do not fit with her own Western values.

Piya has a strong sense of justice and injustice and is unafraid to voice her opinions. When the local authorities target Fokir, she immediately jumps to his defense. A more cautious person might have feared angering local authorities, but Piya’s idea of right and wrong supersedes all sense of self preservation. This is again apparent when she fights against the villagers attacking a tiger. As a scientist, she believes that it is wrong to harm an animal simply for being an animal, and though she is far out of her depth, she refuses to stand by. In the end, Fokir has to physically remove her from the situation. Piya is guarded and careful in her relationships though, as she has been burned before. She takes measures to prevent Kanai from getting too close. This makes her close, silent connection with Fokir all the more special.

Nilima is Kanai’s aunt and runs Lusibari’s hospital. Her finding of her dead husband Nirmal’s lost journal is the catalyst that brings Kanai to Lusibari. Nilima is “legendary” in Kanai’s family “for her persistence—her doggedness and tenacity” (16), which she displays in nearly every interaction with Kanai. Unlike other characters, she is frank with Kanai and refuses to let him have his way. She is especially firm with him over his womanizing. Nilima herself experienced pain due to her husband’s mistakes—she will not let Kanai hurt Kusum, Moyna, or Piya on a whim. Nilima is well respected in Lusibari, with the whole town wanting to “be warmed by her gaze” (18). It is her name that allows Piya to make the connection with Fokir and convince him to travel to Lusibari. Piya is shocked that he knows who Nilima is, but the reader is entirely unsurprised, as Nilima is a force in Lusibari.

Fokir is Piya’s river guide and the character who pulls the novel’s many disparate personalities together. He is Kusum’s son, Moyna’s husband, and Kanai’s rival for Piya’s affections. He is Piya’s savior, repeatedly, Kanai’s adversary, and the character with the closest, deepest ties to the Sundarbans themselves. The reader sees Fokir primarily through Piya’s eyes. Though at first she is not sure what to make of this illiterate fisherman who cannot speak her language, Piya soon sees “consideration” in his gestures to her; despite their differences, he is “the first normal contact she had had since stepping on the launch” (39). He is “very lean” with a “narrow and angular” face (39) and Piya finds herself attracted to him. He is respectful of her. Fokir is instantly and endlessly compassionate to Piya, rescuing her from the water and agreeing readily to take her to Lusibari. Even when Piya is a horrible liability to his own survival, such as in the storm, he risks his own life to save hers.

The reader sees Fokir as an almost perfectly compassionate figure—until he and Kanai meet. Fokir sees right through Kanai’s pompousness and bluster. He knows that Kanai sees him as inferior and not good enough for Piya, just as Kanai dismissed Kusum as unfit to be a servant for his city-bred family. In his only real act of meanness, Fokir dumps Kanai at the island shrine, alone and defenseless against tigers and crocodiles. Fokir does not want Kanai to die, but does want him “to be judged” (269). Fokir is powerless in many ways, but he is the most powerful character in the novel. He strips Kanai of his arrogance, saves Piya on multiple occasions, and eventually gives his life for hers.

Kusum is Kanai’s childhood playmate and Fokir’s mother. Prior to the events of the novel, she was killed in the government raid at Morichjhapi. As a child, Kanai remembers her as “strangely self possessed” for an odd looking girl—a front tooth is chipped and her head has been shaved due to a typhoid attack (76). She has no tolerance for Kanai’s city-boy arrogance and makes it her mission to bring him down to earth. With a dead father and a disappeared mother, Kusum has aspirations for herself beyond an orphaned charity case. She asks Kanai to take her to Calcutta with him, but he knows that she would “have no idea at all of how things worked” (84). As an adult, Kusum becomes a forceful leader of the Morichjhapi community, caring fiercely for her son as well as the other members of the island. She is rigidly principled, refusing to take Nirmal’s gift of food even though she is starving—all food must go into a community pot. Kusum’s death, revealed to be extremely brutal, causes Nirmal to mentally deteriorate. Even in her death, Kusum still drives the plot—she was the one to build the secret island shrine Fokir still visits.

Moyna is Fokir’s “ambitious and bright” (106) long-suffering wife. She is a trainee nurse at Nilima’s hospital and is eager to become a full-fledged nurse. While Fokir is drawn to nature and centuries-old methods of making a living, Moyna values education and looks toward the future. She is determined that Tutul, her son, not follow in his father’s footsteps. She is constantly frustrated by Fokir’s tendency to disappear into the rivers, taking Tutul along with him. While Fokir represents ancient ways of life, Moyna represents the turn towards globalization and modernity, for both good and bad. She is relentlessly practical and unsentimental. When Kanai asks her if she’s ever considered what life would have been like had she not married Fokir, she doesn’t care to entertain the question. She did marry him, they did have a child together, and the only way to go is forward.