Language Theme Analysis

The Hungry Tide follows Piya, an American-Indian cetologist (a scientist who studies marine mammals) and Kanai, a Delhi-based translator, as they visit the Sundarbans, an archipelago of islands in the Bay of Bengal. Piya is there to study the endangered Orcaella river dolphin; Kanai is visiting his aunt, Nilima, for the first time in forty years after the unexpected discovery of a packet of what are thought to be writings left to him by his late uncle Nirmal. As Piya and Kanai immerse themselves in their respective pursuits and form relationships with the Sundarbans locals, they both grapple with issues of language and how to form understandings with people who speak an entirely different language (even if in Kanai's case, he also speaks Bengali). Through Piya and Kanai's experiences, the novel ultimately suggests that spoken and written language are insufficient means of communication, especially when compared to a shared visual or emotional language—in this case, the language of fear.

Piya—who speaks no Hindi or Bengali, but works in a remote part of India where few people speak English—must embrace the idea that she doesn't necessarily need a common spoken or written language in order to complete her work. She finds that visual cues are a far more effective means for communicating with others. Though Piya initially begins her work on a Forest Service boat, she abandons the Forest Service as soon as possible—even though she's able to communicate with the forest guard and the boat pilot reasonably well through gestures and mime, they show little interest in listening to her. This is an early example of how sharing a language of some sort doesn't mean that two people can actually communicate effectively. Rather, understanding other people requires respect and a genuine desire to connect—two things that the Forest Service officials clearly don't care about. When Fokir, a local fisherman who doesn't speak English, rescues Piya from the Forest Service, it soon becomes clear to her that she and Fokir don't need to share a language to communicate. She's able to communicate with Fokir using gestures, drawings, and her laminated flashcards with pictures of the dolphins she's looking for, and he's more than willing to help her achieve her research goals despite the language barrier. The flashcards in particular introduce the idea that sight is a communication method that's far more effective than written or spoken language, as it allows individuals to interpret a common sight in their own language.

Kanai undergoes the most notable transformation as he discovers the limits of spoken and written language. He finds that being able to speak six languages doesn't teach him what the locals insist is the real language of the Sundarbans: the emotional language of fear. Several locals, including Fokir, Nilima, and Horen, another fisherman, explain that, according to local wisdom, to even say the word tiger is to call the beast itself—essentially, they suggest that words have the power to create the same kind of visual reality that Piya begins to get at with her flashcards of the dolphins. However, when Kanai does come face to face with a tiger, he confronts a reality that's far more real and terrifying than anything words could ever conjure. He finds that language fails him—both spoken and in his head—and instead, the tiger (which he cannot name at all, even with a euphemism) becomes "an artifact of pure intuition, so real that the thing itself could not have dreamed of existing so intensely." With this experience, Kanai discovers that fear, much like language, is something that one learns, internalizes, and then uses to make sense of one's world.

The novel acknowledges that spoken and written language, while limited, certainly hold an important place in the world—after all, this is how the story is relayed to the reader, how Piya is able to achieve funding to continue her research project after the cyclone, and how Kanai is forced to understand Nirmal's final months of life through reading his notebook. However, the novel also suggests that visual language and emotional language (in this case, the language of fear) are more universal languages, as neither requires the spoken or written word to translate.