THE GOOD COMES WITH THE BAD

(first published) February 17, 2012

Living cheek by jowl with the big cats, Sundarban villagers revere and fear tigers in equal measure. So they should. On average, tigers kill one person every 48 hours in this delta region sandwiched between India and Bangladesh. Suryatapa Bhattacharya, Foreign Correspondent, reports

GOSABA ISLAND, INDIA // In the boat back from the Sundarbans in the vast Bay of Bengal to civilisation, all I can think of is a tiger hiding in the dark water.
Waiting to pull me in.
If a tiger wants me, there is no escape - if I'm quick, maybe I can throw a chicken coop, a bicycle, maybe even a motorcycle - my travelling companions on the boat - between myself and the hungry tiger.
But if the stories of tiger attacks from the villagers of the Sundarbans were anything to go by, probably not.
This is one of the most beautiful and most dangerous parts of the world. The delta where India's main rivers, including the Ganges, spill into the sea between India and Bangladesh. The world's largest mangroves.
It is not unusual to feel terrified in the Sundarbans, a name which translates to "beautiful forest" in Bengali.
The term forest is something of a misnomer. The region is a delta made up of a series of islands and mangrove swamps.
An old villager told me to fall in love with the place is to be terrified by it.
It is a place that carries deep meaning for Indians and Bangladeshis.
It is beautiful, but it is terrifying to live so close to the tiger. That pretty much sums the Sundarbans for me.
When I arrive at a village on one of the damp islands, locals have just finished their daily prayers to Bono Devi, the goddess who protects them from the tiger.
Tigers, on average, kill one person every two days in the jungles, swamps and islands here.
As I land on Gosaba island, trying not to fall into its sticky grey clay banks, I immediately feel how the tiger dominates life in the Sundarbans.
In village tradition, I don't even dare speak its name. People here simply mumble and say: "You can't say that word."
The Sundarbans are woefully underdeveloped. There are dirt tracks that run across the embankments built to keep the islands from flooding during the monsoon. None is wide enough even for a three-wheeled rickshaw.
The only way around is to take a boat between the islands and walk or bicycle or, as I had the money, the luxury of a motorcycle.
Most people here walk for up to three hours to reach the nearest market, hospital or government office, each way.
The villagers have a hundred stories of someone who accidentally poisoned themselves, or cut themselves chopping wood dying needlessly because the hospital was too far away.
To even call it a hospital is a stretch. There is one doctor, so they say. He is rarely ever there.
The villagers are bitter that the tigers receive more attention than they do.
"Beast above man," says one villager, bitterly.
Some take out their frustrations on tourists.
A village head confronts me when I land.
"Are you here to take pictures, sell it to the world and make lots of money?" he snarls. "Does the world even know what the Sundarbans are?"
I am just here to talk and to listen to this man and others like him.
But for the villagers, the world cares more about the few dozen tigers in the thousands of hectares here than it does about them.
There is a saying that if you throw a seed on the ground in the Sundarbans, it will sprout into a tree.
Life is strong here. The fertile ground makes farming easy.
There are bright green rice paddies everywhere. Date palm trees bursting with fruit dot the edges of ponds. The vegetable gardens surrounding every hut in the village were heaving with cauliflower, kohlrabi eggplant and pumpkins.
One of the oldest professions in the Sundarbans is gathering wild honey.
They need permits to go into the jungle. The tiger's territory. "To go hunting is to be hunted by the tiger," a villager tells me
But the risk is worth it. The honey they bring home is some of the best I have tasted.
It has a hint of orange. It's more runny than normal. And it's not cloyingly sweet as some of honey you buy in the stores.
Before I climb back into that rickety machine, an excuse of a boat, the community elders - now welcoming - decide I should take home a souvenir.
They take me to a shop selling the special honey.
The storekeeper kindly brings out the best from the back and I stuff a couple of bottles into my bag.
Of course, when I open my bag in Delhi, my clothes, already caked in dried clay were now covered in a sticky, honey mess.

That is the Sundarbans.

Published in The National

THE CONSTANT STRESS OF BEING

NEW DELHI // Every woman in Delhi and, I am sure, across India, has a story about harassment, intimidation or, as it is known in India, "eve teasing."
I know I do.
I have been groped, harassed, and threatened by men as I do my job as a journalist.
It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens often enough that I have come to shrug off many of the instances.
As a journalist, I give my mobile number out to many people, who, in turn, give it to others. There are at least 10 numbers in my phone labelled: Do Not Answer. They are phone numbers belonging to people who make obscene, anonymous calls to me, several times a day, for days at a time.
One of the callers, by coincidence, even rang on the day of my wedding. At first, I would try to shame them by telling them it was improper behavior and threatening to call the police.
It did not work. Threats to turn their number over to the police were met with laughter because I would have to explain to officers how the caller received my business card. And dealing with the police is a lengthy process, with documents, questioning and wasted time. It is often easier to ignore the calls.
Every time I step outside the house, I have to put aside a litany of advice drilled into me over the years growing up in India and Canada. Do not talk to strangers, especially men. They get the wrong idea that you are interested in them. Do not get into a quarrel with a man you don't know, keep your head down and walk away. Do not eat food offered by strangers, they will drug you and rob you, or worse. Do not accept a ride with someone you do not know. Try not to take public transportation if you can help it. Come home before dark.
As a journalist, I break all the rules. Once, my breaking those rules almost made me a statistic.
It was in July 2011, not long after I had arrived back in India after more than a decade away. One night, in Delhi, I took an auto rickshaw home.
I noticed we were headed in the wrong direction only when I did not recognise the bus-stop signs. I began to panic as we hit a lonely, dark stretch of road that I have since come to learn is infamous for being the site of rapes.
The driver began telling me lewd stories and trying to touch me on the thigh. There was little I could do.
Luckily, the police were out that night. I flagged down a policeman at a checkpoint and explained my predicament. Once the three officers at the checkpoint learnt I was a journalist, they questioned the driver, deemed him intoxicated and high on drugs, and took his details.
I was told to get out of the rickshaw, and wait with them for another taxi to drive by. The problem was, however that I was in the middle of nowhere.
I was left with a terrible choice. Get out of the rickshaw on a dark road or hope that, if the police had the driver's details, it would be security against his unwanted advances. I chose to return to the rickshaw.
As he drove, I called two friends who began tracking me using Google maps. As I passed a bus stop or street sign, I told them where I was and they used the maps to give me directions home.
As I neared my home after 45 minutes - double the usual time - the driver, fuming at his humiliation, said that he would teach me a lesson and sped up, racing past my house. I lied and told him there was another police checkpoint ahead. He hesitated, the rickshaw slowed and I jumped out. During the past year, I have interviewed dozens of activists and lawyers who offer a variety of reasons for sexual violence against women. Two months before the gang-rape incident in Delhi, Jagmati Sangwan, a professor of women's studies at Maharshi Dayanand College in Haryana, talked about a troubling trend of gang rapes. Women are often filmed during the attack in attempt to blackmail them into silence.
Kirti Singh, a lawyer and activist in Delhi told me that Indian laws, in theory, offer the strictest of punishments: 10 years minimum to life imprisonment for a gang-rape conviction. Police attitudes and drawn-out court cases, however, make it hard to get convictions as investigations often go stale.
There are helplines to report stalkers and obscene calls, and special units for women and children, but they are rarely used by victims who blame the insensitive attitudes of police and a society that is quick to judge, and dishonour a woman, who reports any kind of sexual violence.
Like me, millions of women across India step outside their homes every day to work, to get an education, to go to the markets, to visit friends, to watch a movie. Most of us take the bus. Chances are, we will be groped, stared at, and harassed.
That 23-year-old physiotherapy student, returning from the movies, who rode a private bus on a Sunday evening, represents what we all fear. She was raped repeatedly and brutalised so badly with an iron rod that doctors had to remove her intestines to prevent the gangrene from spreading to other organs.
If this incident is not a tipping point, I dread to think what will be.
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