In “The Hungry Tide” by Amitav Ghosh, Language is something that goes beyond words. It branches into many different actions and terms that are understood even if they don’t speak the same language. In the novel language is beyond the world of words and is more intimate when Fokir and Piya communicate with their actions. Since Piya cannot speak or understand Bangla despite her heritage and cultural background of it, and Fokir cannot speak or understand English as he was not educated in it. Their drastic different backgrounds and knowledge sets the scene for a very interesting relationship between the two characters.

Piyas disconnect from her heritage and Fokirs connection with his culture makes both characters help each other in a way they didn’t know they needed. The way they communicate is through gestures and interests the most. Both of their knowledge in nature and animals is what first connects them as Fokir is the only one that recognized what Piya needed help finding for her research. Their connection with nature and interest in it is something that the other characters in the novel don’t understand, like Kanai for example as he is very modern and has in a way forgotten his roots with nature and the world around him and the state of it. The Sundarbans are a place of greenery and oceans with people still living their lives without the technology advances or new jobs that the economy has forced them into to survive, they’re surviving off of what they already know which are things like fishing and farming and hunting rather than having a desk job or being a laborer in the city.

But there is both a negative as positive as Fokir doesn’t adapt to the changes because his children’s educations are at risk but in the Sundarbans he’s living the life he truly desires even if he makes little to no money from it. One of the ways that Piya and Fokirs conversations are intimate is by the singing.

“She had thought that she had seen a muscular quality of innocence in him, a
likable kind of naïveté, but now, listening to this song, she began to ask
herself whether it was she who was naïve. She would have liked to know
what he was singing about and what the lyrics meant — but she knew too that
a river of words would not be able to tell her exactly what made the song
sound as it did right then, in that place.”(81)

This moment in the novel shows a very intimate moment between Piya and Fokir where the both of them connect with something like music. Music that Piya doesn’t understand but the connection she feels to it is intense and just right. While Fokir is singing to her which is a tradition many people still follow in Bangladesh when they follow the “fokir” lifestyle which is symbolized by Fokirs name in the novel. Music is a very intimate platonic way they connect with each other as it brings them both a sense of being in the right moment at the right time. The American standard that Piya is used to is getting changed while she gets to know Fokir more through the story as he’s a gateway to her learning more about her culture and heritage more, and for Fokir, Piya is a way to explore his connection with nature and have someone to share it with.

Bangladesh also known as “The Tide Country” to many climate activists around the world is more than just that in the present day, its labeled as “The Sinking Country” instead. Over the years since the 1970’s which is when the novel takes place. The Sundarbans which is a dense mangrove forest home to hundreds of species and the critically endangered Bengal Tiger and 7.5 million people. As time goes by the river is getting closer and closer to the inhabitants of the island and little by little everything is disappearing in live time. The ocean and the rivers dictate life in Bangladesh as they heavily rely on agriculture for their economy.

Life as the people in the Sundarbans know it has drastically been changing because of climate change, Every year the sea level rises more and more and with natural disasters being involved it finally caused the governments of India and Bangladesh to acknowledge climate change as an issue. With the increase of floods many people have to relocate or find new occupations as farming or fishing are no longer stable jobs like it was back in the 1900’s. In Ghosh’s novel Fokir’s job is very unstable because of the rivers and the predators in the forest that also put his life at risk if he does want to fish. A job like Fishermen, or Farmer were very important jobs in a country like Bangladesh because of how it is surrounded by water and rich land for farming which caused it to be the base of their economy which has shifted to fast fashion because of labor and exploitation by the world. As fokir’s job displays instability it also shows the people of the olden life being left behind as they cant adapt to the new changes in the world involving jobs and technology as education is becoming essential, Yet it isn’t accessible to everyone still.

As the world continues to benefit off of Bengali labor, they ignore the consequences the country is having to face on its own. As climate change continues the country of Bangladesh will continue to sink year by year till it is no longer here and the people have all been displaced from the place they once knew as their home. Along with the people many wildlife animals are going to face extinction too as their home is going to be underground or mass fishing or hunting will be the end of them.

From the beginning of the planet, we have always been here from the start of it all. Evolving from bacteria to humans was a process that took a long time to happen but as we evolved so did the planet. As time goes by the planet and everything on it develops a bond with each other whether it be the planets, humans, animals, everything is connected to each other. But as everything developed together, some developed at a faster pace than the others which were humans. The constant change and developmental pace for humans caused change in the world as a whole too because of how many advances were being made and because of conflict too.

The definition of kinship is “a sharing of characteristics or origins”(Oxford Dictionary) but can that idea still be held up when humans as a whole are destroying the same origin’s that everything on this planet came from? “what comes after will not be like what came before”(Haraway) The idea of being able to fix what we have done to the planet as humans as a whole is something that is reaching the point of being irreversible as not everything can be brought back to normal or brought back from extinction. From mass hunting to deforestation, humans have done it all, Destroyed the thing that gave it its life. Ruined the forests of the world which provide us with the oxygen to live by processing the carbon dioxide that we let out.

As all the forests in the world are ruined that causes the life in them to be killed too. Many animals and organisms lose their natural habitat and have to go to other places to adapt to them like refuges. “Right now, the earth is full of refugees, human and not, without refuge.”(Haraway) As humans are misplaced and have to seek refuge in other places far from their homes, so do many animals, plants, and insects because of how as the days go by the earth is getting worser and worser to live on. Everything on the planet came from the same origin and have a kinship with each other but humans have strayed away from that path.

As the years go by and humans make more technological advances a part of the planet is always sacrificed for that. The relationship between the planet and us gets worse and worse and harms everything we know. There should be a urgency to fix or try our best to repair the environment to help it but it doesn’t seem like a concern for the masses because of how disconnected we have gotten from the planet and strayed away from our kin, Instead of helping what we came from, we have brought it to almost complete destruction beyond repair.