Who, indeed, are we? Where do we belong? And as I listened to the sounds of those syllables, it was as if I was hearing the deepest uncertainties of my heart being spoken to the rivers and the tides. Who was I? Where did I belong? In Kolkata or in the tide country? In India or across the border? In prose or poetry? —Nirmal in his notebook
Some version of this question resonates in all our hearts at some level. When we open a novel, we enter a unique territory, a landscape of story, a story not only of those specific characters in their specific setting, but also humanity's story, our story. And who doesn't love a good story? That is the reason why literature in general, and the novel in particular, is wonderful to teach. For one thing, the real teacher is the novel. So why get in the way of a great book and teacher by doing any 'teaching' ourselves? The novel tells its own story of course, and exemplifies, like the dolphins in the book, that to 'see' was to 'speak' and '…simply to exist was to communicate….'
In the spirit of that last sentence, I would like to share my experiences with my Elective English classes and Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide. This is a book of such vast and sweeping landscapes of the human experience, that it feels like a syllabus for life. In my first reading of this novel, several years before I even knew that it was on any syllabus and that I would get the privilege to be teaching it, one of my first responses after completing it was to think to myself—wow, I wish I could teach this book. Actually, it was more like: what couldn't I teach with this book? Imagine my joy at the realization that this was on the syllabus when I joined Sahyadri School.
However, I had got one thing wrong in my earlier response: the role that I had imagined I was going to play as the 'teacher'. It turned out that I was the one being taught and that it was not only the novel that was the teacher, but every one of my students in the Elective English classes.
I believe that the novel needs minimal 'teaching' but students are required to read it thoroughly before they come to class, and then we sit and talk together. We share our responses about each chapter, about each character, about the ideas, and about language. Each year, the same novel, the same putative teacher but a different set of students, and a whole world of responses that reveal not only the connections that the novel is making with every individual. The responses also reveal something new in this story that I am rereading so many times over with different eyes, borrowed eyes.
For instance, I was sharing my response to a particular part of the narrative that I had found beautiful, and commented on the poetic nature of the language. The students looked at the section and with an almost audible gasp, one of the students made a discovery: much of the narration in the section was poetry written as prose, with sentences in rhyming couplets. This was something I hadn't noticed myself! I think this was in year three of my 'teaching' the novel.
Many conversations have happened spontaneously outside class, often with an individual student who has made a sudden discovery that connects the novel to the outside world or is concerned about some aspect of a character's life journey. Connections were made with the characters. They became as real as friends and family members and the aunty-next-door. Sometimes they were identified as people students knew: "Those are my parents!" exclaimed one student. They cared what happened to the people in the novel and why those things were happening. How could people choose to live in this hostile territory? How much suffering there must have been in their previous life, if the tide country with all its dangers feels like home? There was a certain tenderness in some of these conversations about suffering and stoicism.
Then there were the relationships. Did Piya love Fokir? Did Fokir love Piya? Could he love her and his wife? And what about Kanai? Surely, he is too old for Piya, said one student, who was convinced Piya and Fokir were meant for each other. There were some wonderful conversations with a student on the nature of love in my seventh year of teaching. What is love really? Can it be defined by conventions, by romance? Can limits be placed on it?
Most of all, these characters reminded us to look at the multi-layered sections of our diverse society and see people as individuals rather than representatives of a class. One class noticed and cut out a newspaper article headlined: 'Tiger kills crab-catcher in Bengal's Sundarbans'. That could have been Fokir, it wasn't just some anonymous fisherman, somewhere in India anymore.
Other connections were made that resonated with students' own lives. "I felt as though Ghosh had taken a break from translating the minds of others and was talking to me", wrote one of my students in a lyrical exploration of how language was used in the novel. This was a paean to the novel in sixteen and a half pages, and she felt she had not said all she wanted to say. I still cherish a copy of this essay as one of the most beautiful expressions of the relationship between a reader and a novel, and I am humbled by it.
The assigned task had been for each student to pick an element of the novel they connected with or found interesting, and to write about it and present it to the class in any way they liked. However, this stopped being just an assignment and became a work of love. Making a presentation on a theme or character of their choice has been something students in several classes have done and each time I am delighted at the depth and heart of these presentations. Each could be a template for a lesson for next year's class, and perhaps for understanding the human heart.
I wonder what next year's class will teach me?