The Hungry Tide Read Free

Seattle, her hometown, but somehow, in the ten days she had spent in India she had developed an unexpected affinity for milky, overboiled tea served in earthenware cups. There were no spices in it for one thing, and this was more to her taste than the chai at home.
    She paid for her tea and was trying to maneuver the cup through the bars of the window when the man in the seat opposite her own suddenly flipped over a page, jolting her hand. She turned her wrist quickly enough to make sure that most of the tea spilled out the window, but she could not prevent a small trickle from shooting over his papers.
    â€œOh, I’m so sorry!” Piya was mortified: of everyone in the compartment, this was the last person she would have chosen to scald with her tea. She had noticed him while waiting on the platform in Kolkata and she had been struck by the self-satisfied tilt of his head and the unabashed way in which he stared at everyone around him, taking them in, sizing them up, sorting them all into their places. She had noticed the casual self-importance with which he had evicted the man who’d been sitting next to the window. She had been put in mind of some of her relatives in Kolkata: they too seemed to share the assumption that they had been granted some kind of entitlement (was it because of their class or their education?) that allowed them to expect that life’s little obstacles and annoyances would always be swept away to suit their convenience.
    â€œHere,” said Piya, producing a handful of tissues. “Let me help you clean up.”
    â€œThere’s nothing to be done,” he said testily. “These pages are ruined anyway.”
    She flinched as he crumpled up the papers he had been reading and tossed them out the window. “I hope they weren’t important,” she said in a small voice.
    â€œNothing irreplaceable — just Xeroxes.”
    For a moment she considered pointing out that it was he who had jogged her hand. But all she could bring herself to say was “I’m very sorry. I hope you’ll excuse me.”
    â€œDo I really have a choice?” he said in a tone more challenging than ironic. “Does anyone have a choice when they’re dealing with Americans these days?”
    Piya had no wish to get into an argument so she let this pass. Instead she opened her eyes wide, feigning admiration, and said, “But how did you guess?”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œAbout my being American? You’re very observant.”
    This seemed to mollify him. His shoulders relaxed as he leaned back in his seat. “I didn’t guess,” he said. “I knew. ”
    â€œAnd how did you know?” she said. “Was it my accent?”
    â€œYes,” he said with a nod. “I’m very rarely wrong about accents. I’m a translator you see, and an interpreter as well, by profession. I like to think that my ears are tuned to the nuances of spoken language.”
    â€œOh really?” She smiled so that her teeth shone brightly in the dark oval of her face. “And how many languages do you know?”
    â€œSix. Not including dialects.”
    â€œWow!” Her admiration was unfeigned now. “I’m afraid English is my only language. And I wouldn’t claim to be much good at it either.”
    A frown of puzzlement appeared on his forehead. “And you’re on your way to Canning you said?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut tell me this,” he said. “If you don’t know any Bengali or Hindi, how are you planning to find your way around over there?”
    â€œI’ll do what I usually do,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll try to wing it. Anyway, in my line of work there’s not much talk needed.”
    â€œAnd what is your line of work, if I may ask?”
    â€œI’m a cetologist,” she said. “That means —” She was beginning, almost apologetically, to expand on this when