Death is a Name Spelled in Stripes

If, right before your death, you had the chance to see the face of your god, would you? Sundarban residents ask themselves this every day as the sun rises over their estuaries.

The Sundarbans is the largest drainage basin in the world. The inter-braiding of the Ganges river network and the Brahmaputra river network meet the Bay of Bengal, whose saline waters leach up to nearly 200 feet inland. In this land of merging waters and mysterious coastlines (hidden, revealed, and eroded by whatever the tide wills that day), the land is held together, with varying success, by networks of mangroves. Here, dualities dance their waltzes closely: the India border and the Bangladesh border, the Islamic faith and Hindu rituals of idol worship, the daily reckoning of death between humans and the only man-eating tiger species in the world. This landscape inspired Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and the tiger as a creature of folk myth.

On the Indian side of the Sundarban delta, there are 102 unique islands spanning 1,114 square miles, surrounded by waters that leave a saline residue if you touch them, a shifting waterline silty enough for an estuary yet blue enough to be oceanic. The territory is divided almost evenly: 54 islands are regulated for human settlement and 48 are exclusively tiger territory, cordoned off by metal perimeters and nylon netting over the waters. The only people who say the words tiger (“baagh” in the local Bengali/ “sher” in the local Hindi) are forest guides, each of whom carries a permit for not just themselves but for everyone who may visit the island’s administrative office for data collection or tiger-sighting tours.

For everyone else, to even hint at a euphemism is to summon the beast. They will point at pawprints large enough to serve as spawning pools for mudskippers. They will simply hold you in a sort of silence, a sort of knowing that comes from accepting the mystery and the presence of death in all of its avatars. When a tiger is attacking a particular village or establishment, they will simply say, “It’s happening.”

Most other tiger species rarely attack humans, an abnormal response to human encroachment. But the humans who live there are descendants of some of the poorest refugees and migrants, displaced since the Partition, forced to make a life in a hostile terrain. The waters may suddenly drown you, so tigers swim between canals only during low tide and are rarely spotted in the waters around full moons. The mangroves cast long striped shadows, which may or may not be housing a pair of beautiful feline eyes. The fact that the Royal Bengal tiger not only adapted to, but maintained a taste for human meat, speaks in a way to the deeper incorporation of human presence in the environment. Can you still be an outsider if your lives are so closely intertwined? 

The people of the Sundarbans worship a being called Dokkhin Ray, a malicious shapeless monster who takes the form of a tiger. He is prayed to in earnest that he may never be sighted. The wives of crab fishermen, of honey foragers, of even the forest protection staff have a ritual where every call to the forest is marked by a period of funerary rites. They pre-mourn their husbands knowing it might be the last time they may see them alive.

The tiger is an ambush predator, snapping its prey’s neck from behind. Because of the tiger’s roar, the prey is usually stunned into shock before teeth sink in. Humans usually experience no more than two seconds of pain as they die. This is a better truth to make peace with than the attack of the saltwater crocodile, who will wait to drown its thrashing prey. The humans do not know which avatar of the monster will claim their loved ones that day. They only hope any encounter ends quickly. 

Dokkhin Ray, like most mythological forces of evil, is balanced out by Bon Bibi, a woman who, abandoned in the forest and nursed by deer, became a forest deity. Bon Bibi (“Forest Lady”) is a human figure in the realm of mystical Islam, a protector of all who are helpless and lost in the forest. Every day, thousands of the village settlers make offerings, genuflections as they cross the invisible boundary in the water asking for her protection as they enter the territory of her enemy. Unlike the hordes of tourists, wildlife photographers, poachers, and even forest personnel, they pray that they never see a tiger. Those who do are usually forced to kill it if it refuses to leave the territory, and those horrors (through conflagrations, shootings, the sharpening of bamboo spears) remain imprinted even on children who witness such a day. 

Yet, to witness a tiger is a sacred event. The moment of myth is realized in presence, even if it results in hospitalization and scars that take years to heal. Those who have seen a tiger and emerged unscathed are considered blessed. Their judgment day came, and yet some invisible accounting of luck, good will, or faith permits them to be released that day. Perhaps it is the effort of speed. Perhaps the tiger is disinterested. Perhaps the creature could only be smelled but did not manifest. Nobody wants to die, even if it is before a majestic beast. 

There are many speculations as to why this particular species of tiger developed a taste for human meat. Perhaps because of religion: the Ganges river network is a sacred religious lifeline, bringing many of its dead downstream to be stranded in the estuarine sandbars. Perhaps because of politics: refugees massacred upstream for “illegally settling” are dumped into the canals and rivers, where the shifting tides hide their presence, and where young cubs could practice their first few captures in the water. Perhaps for environmental reasons: human settlements brought cattle, which expanded the tiger palate from indigenous deer, and eventually led to humans being on the menu. 

Who knows why a god chooses what it does? The locals will say if you ask. Their very bodies trained to respond in goosebumps from the smell of the creature, or to even see a pawprint on the freshly replaced silt. All that is known is that the creature is highly intelligent, highly adaptive, and yet highly sought after in the black markets of the world. Yet, the very creatures that threaten their life are still under the benevolence of these humans. Forestry personnel pray to Bon Bibi, and yet mourn when bodies of tigers are found, shot, filled with sedatives, and claimed as trophies in their own home.

Tigers do not understand international borders, and many periodically change their human stewardship across the India-Bangladesh border with a casual swim. They enjoy scratching themselves against trees. They like little treats and have mannerisms that are unmistakable from a domesticated cat. They are not fooled by forest people wearing masks behind their heads to throw off their stalking pursuit. When temples of Bon Bibi and her accompanying tiger are torn asunder by the cyclones and storms, tigers will sometimes pick on the little clay facsimiles of themselves, the paw of the actual god crushing its own little reduced avatar. 

Even if you don’t see the tiger, it can always see you and it always judges. Whether photographed behind mangrove roots, which also cast long striped shadows on the ground, or behind the metal grill of rehabilitation reserves where injured and elderly specimens are kept in containment to live out their days, the creature is always watching.

Piyali Mukherjee is an Indian immigrant in New York, trying to evoke anything besides humour. Her day job includes working in AI research, specifically around the development of clustering models and neural networks. She moonlights as a sketch-writer, comedian, producer, and actor. Since 2020, she has translated her performance skills to writing satire and is unfortunately fueled by the insufferable hubris of tech culture. She’s also interested in learning more about linguistics, mythography, and the audacity of people who write emails opening with “I hope this email finds you well.”

Published July 15 2023