Mita Singha’s short stories on people-animal interactions in Sundarbans introduce non-human perspectives

In these tumultous times scathed by the climate crisis, the Arts remain an essential avenue, central and not peripheral, to grasping our ecological challenges. The Arts, especially through their affective turn in the 21st century, provide a unique lens for engaging with the lived experiences of our lands and waters. Through illuminating stories, performances and sounds, the Arts offer experiential and narrative insights that are vital for fully comprehending and addressing ecological crises. 

One form of understanding through the arts is through eco-criticism, which can also be shaped through the lens of eco-horror. Here, I delve into the lived sensory experiences of the fragile Sundarbans mangrove land-waterscape through Mita Singha’s collection of short stories, Marichjhapir Bagh. 

Mita Singha is a Bengali writer whose work is deeply rooted in the landscapes and lives of the Sundarbans. For over three decades, she has lived and worked closely with forest dwellers, beekeepers and fisherfolk, acquiring intimate knowledge of the mangrove forests. She has also started a school for young kids in Jharkhali, where she lives. 

Her acclaimed collections, including Bagh Kumir Sundarban and Marichjhapir Bagh, combine true incidents and local experiences to portray human-animal entanglements, especially highlighting the tiger and crocodile. 

She worked with the community in many ways, including teaching and training young people to understand the complexities of the forest. She has written extensively in newspapers, magazines and books, drawing on her communication with forest dwellers. 

In addition to her writing, Singha is a wildlife conservationist who has participated in tiger censuses and marine surveys. Her documentation of the deep forests, done with her partner researcher Animesh Singha, featured photographs of critters and various small animals, in addition to the larger mammals.

Drawing on this field experience and her extensive ethnographic work, her stories stand out for their authenticity, capturing the coexistence of people and nature in one of the world’s most vulnerable ecosystems.

Marichjhapir Bagh focuses on tiger encounter stories of fishermen, crab and honey-collectors in the Sundarbans waterways. Her writing provides clues to understanding the Sundarbans from a post-humanist perspective. Posthumanism, in this context, involves decentering the human experience and acknowledging both human and non-human agency, treating the experiences of animals and the environment as equally significant as those of people. Singha embraces this view by giving equal attention to both human and non-human animals and depicting their everyday tensions and conflicts. 

In Badaboner dingi, Singha narrates her own experience venturing into the forest with her partner to document crabs and snails in a tidal channel near the Sajnekhali Forest Office. After crossing wide rivers, they enter a dense forest through a narrow creek. She describes the sensory experience of this exploration in detail: “Standing at the edge of the forest, he paused and looked around with a heightened awareness. Reassuring me, he started moving towards the left. Now, my sole task is to observe the jungle deeply. The space is filled with sounds, smells, and bird calls, indicating that this part of the forest is still calm. I now need to detect the slightest change in sound or smell. With heightened attention, I must patiently monitor with both ears and eyes. Moving from one scene to another is done very gradually. The water level has fallen a bit. New saplings growing beneath the trees, small sticks, slight movements of twigs and leaves in the bushes; all these require meticulous attention, and quick analysis of their positions is our only weapon.”

In Marichjhapir Bagh, the human characters Shashadhar and Chandni, a destitute couple, venture into the dark, narrow creeks to catch prawn seeds that they can sell to an arotdar (middleman) to make a living. Deep inside, the wife experiences the monstrosity of the forest. Singha writes, “Chandni wakes up from a quick nap and is taken aback by the vibrations of the place. The space seems so alien and deserted. What kind of death trap is this? It feels like the whole forest is like a wide-open, huge mouth of a monster. Is it their familiar land and waters or is the space infested with the ghosts of the mangrove trees?” These immersive sentences give us a glimpse of the mysteries contained in the Sundarbans. 

Singha’s works shift the focus beyond humans, venturing into the realm of ‘deep ecology’, a philosophy that recognises the independent identites of each living being, beyond its utility in the human society. A critical perspective in this collection is that of the tiger. In Jele dingi, Singha writes from the tiger’s point of view, exploring its despair and hopelessness under precarious survival conditions. She writes, “Tonight, there is no hint of a prey. I am tired now! I have been searching for food since last week. Let me make the roots of the Hetaal tree my home for tonight. I’ll wait for a fishermen’s boat to come this way by camouflaging within the green and yellow of the Hetaal tree. Whenever a group of fisherfolks arrive, I will slowly follow them and attack. Once I pounce on one human, I will tear the jugular vein and then pull the body with me to the interiors of the forest.” 

It is seldom that we find such perspectives in literature on the Sundarbans. This is why Mita Singha’s writing is exceptional. 

In the story Khari Jongoler Bagh, she writes about a young group of fishers who explore uncharted territories for crab. In that way, they encounter the tiger. The tiger’s intelligence deciphers the weakest and most vulnerable person and attacks. She describes the attack in detail, “Upon hearing a sound and then seeing the tiger at arm’s distance, Binoy’s melodious singing abruptly stopped. His entire body fell into a trance-like state. He stood up in the dingi, seemingly driven by some unconscious instruction. Completely out of control, Binoy’s foot hit the edge, and he fell off the dingi as if an unknown force pushed him into the waters. As he fell, the tiger attacked the already unstable Binoy. The others in another boat saw the electric speed of the tiger and in a fraction of a second the jugular vein was torn, and the tiger was on its way with Binoy’s dead body.”

Singha’s stories highlight the lived experiences of people, tigers, and the forest, offering an experiential understanding that scientific knowledge alone cannot provide. This underlines the main argument: Narrative art — particularly through literary works like those of Mita Singha — is indispensable for revealing both human and non-human perspectives on ecological crises. Grounding her stories in real events and sensory detail, Singha not only reimagines our relationship with nature but also demonstrates why the Arts should stand at the heart of ecological conversations, providing insights inaccessible through science alone.

Pratyay Raha is a sound artist and doctoral researcher at RMIT University, Melbourne. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth