Harnessing the Strength of the Octopus

The view from Amtoli Para of Himchhari Beach and the Bay of Bengal.

Amtoli Para, Himchhari.

In the hilltop community of Amtoli Para in Himchhari of Cox’s Bazar, 20 women from the 70 households are gathered on a mat. With sweeping views down to the beach and across the Bay of Bengal the scene is idyllic, suitable for a picnic if it wasn’t quite as hot. Below, along the coast were once their permanent addresses, their homes, shops and gardens. Cows grazed foreshore grasses; goats roamed.

The 1991 cyclone changed all that, proving that a permanent address isn’t always permanent. In one respect the villagers were lucky. Although the nearest cyclone shelter was 1.5 kilometres away nobody died; and the worst of the cyclone was destined to be met elsewhere. But crops were ruined; cattle and houses were swept away. With villages destroyed and land no longer inhabitable they turned from the sea.

There was no choice but to move into the sand-rock hills.

The track to Amtoli Para.

Nurul Haque, 23, outside his home.

Needing new livelihoods the villagers took advantage of the only available resource: the trees of Himchhari National Park. Still today they are primarily wood-cutter families and Nurul Haque, 23, originally of Croalia village, is typical. The father-of-two ventures into the forest four to five days per week, leaving at 9 a.m. to return by mid-afternoon. He walks four kilometres to find trees, hauling fuel wood back to sell in Himchhari that evening or on the following day. He earns a meagre 200 – 400 taka for one day’s efforts.

“Wood cutting is painful,” says Ismat Ara Sultana, 20, who, like most of the area’s women, pursues the same task as her husband for about half his income, given the smaller loads she can carry and her competing home duties.

It’s a livelihood that degrades the national park and has caused the forest to shy away from the coast over the years, exposing the area to even greater erosion risk.

But more recently the village women of Amtoli Para have turned attention back towards an oceanic theme, in the form of crocheting toy octopuses.

The women of Amtoli Para learning to crochet.

It is hoped the women won't need to sell firewood anymore.

From March 2015 the social enterprise Hathay Bunano and the Chittagong-based NGO Community Development Centre, in liaison with relevant government departments and under the auspices of the Climate Resilience Ecosystems and Livelihood project, have begun implementing a new project in the hope of finding sustainable livelihoods for the villagers while better protecting the forest.

Crochet training in Amtoli Para, Himchhari.

The project will teach 28 local women to crochet, with guaranteed buyers of their toy octopuses and other items arranged abroad. Their products will likely find homes in babies’ cots in the UK, USA, Australia and South Korea.

“There will be 28 fewer pairs of hands cutting wood,” says Livelihood Facilitator Ruma Majumder, “and that’s good news for the forest.” With two months’ training, it’s hoped each woman may earn up to 4,000 taka per month if she works full-time.

“I like it,” says Sultana, “Yes, there’ll be some difficulties in learning the new skill but it will be okay.”

Amtoli Para. After the 1991 cyclone there was no choice but to move into the hills of the Himchhari National Park.

The road from Amtoli Para to the beach.

Unfortunately nearby Rohingya households cannot be included for lack of residency rights. They will have no chance to move out of forest harvesting.

With only a non-formal NGO school to rely on, that currently teaches to class 5; in a place where few children study beyond that due to the 25-taka transport cost to the nearest government primary school proving prohibitive, basic entrepreneurial activities come with the hope of improved opportunities, even where the household income rise is modest.

Amtoli Para scenery.

Through crocheting, through harnessing the strength of the toy octopus, Amtoli Para’s women are set to better contribute to finally overcoming the multigenerational consequences of the cyclone, to the benefit of their families and the forest.

A house in Amtoli Para.

New construction in Amtoli Para, Himchhari, Cox's Bazar.

This article is published in The Daily Star, here: Harnessing the Strength of the Octopus in Himchhari

A lone tea shop in Amtoli Para.

Where Santhal Wisdom Shelters

Suddenly in the forest there are faces...

A sal tree in Nawabganj National Park.

Perhaps it’s generally true that shade follows sunshine. Beyond Sitakot in Dinajpur’s Nawabganj the sal trees gather. Though geographically unlikely locals believe Nawabganj National Park might be the last remnants of the forest where Sita of the Hindu epic Ramayana lived in exile.

From field and farmhouse, the cycle van winds along the track into this darker but not-less-beautiful world. Beyond is Ashurer Beel, a picturesque waterhole favoured for picnics and famed for migratory birds.

Into the forest...

And suddenly in the forest are faces… not the middle-class motorcycle-riding ones of picnickers but curious, distinctly non-Bengali faces…

The national park keeps another history. Under its canopy, at its edges, the culture and wisdom of the Santhals finds shelter.

Alekutia village is home to 40 Santhal families.

Peeling jungle potatoes.

In Gabriel Hemrom’s leafy yard a little beyond the park boundary, in Alekuti village along the same track, women sit on the ground preparing date leaves for weaving. Another is busy with jungle potatoes, which are soaked in water for several days and eaten with molasses-like jaggery, known in Bangla as ‘gur’.

A well-constructed mud brick Santhal home.

Alekuti is home to forty Santhal families, Hemrom estimates. “Our ancestors are from a place called Dumka,” says the forty-year-old father of three sons. “But we were all born here.”

House detail.

As in Bangladesh, Santhals are one of the most populous minority peoples in India. Mainly they live in Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Jharkhand. Dumka is a district in the last of these states. There are also a small number in Nepal.

Nearby Ashurer Beel with boat and fish traps.

By tradition Santhals engage in hunting, forest clearing and farming.

The village’s forested location reflects the Santhali tradition of forest clearing and subsistence farming. They are also famed hunters, with bow and arrow. But in Alekuti, along with some small-scale farming, most earn as they can through cycle-van riding or day labour. It isn’t much of a living.

House painting. Santhals capture their history and daily lives in design.

“For the poor, food is always a problem,” says Hemrom.

In contrast to the dire economic reality of Alekuti, in India it’s not uncommon for Santhals to be living in cities and working in areas as diverse as medicine, engineering and the public service.

In Alekuti meanwhile, are traces of the well-developed, unique culture of which any Santhal can be proud. Most visibly it’s in the painted designs on the walls of their well-constructed mud-brick homes. By tradition Santhals present history and daily life in wall paintings, although the Alekuti examples are modest.

“Those who can paint do so,” says Hemrom.

Painting around an internal doorway. 50 - 70% of the villagers in Alekuti are Christian these days.

The forest nearby.

The Austroasiatic Santhali language, of the Munda languages and distantly related to Khasi, Khmer and Vietnamese, is sophisticated and well-studied. Its unique script, called Ol Chiki and invented in 1925 by Pandit Raghunath Murmu in response to deficiencies in representing the range of Santhali sounds in Roman or other Indic alphabets, has thirty letters.

Santhals are famed hunters with bow and arrow.

In general, the Santhals have preserved their language well; but in Alekuti it’s facing difficulties. “Our children used to study Santhali at the mission schools in Dhanjuri and Patarghat,” says Hemrom, “but now they only learn at home. We use our own alphabet but it’s explained in English.” Including Bangla, Alekuti relies on three languages.

The church in Alekuti.

Hemrom estimates that like his family, 50 – 70% of the families in Alekuti converted to Christianity some thirty years ago. The village features a small church attended by visiting clergy.

The remainder observe the old religion, which worships Marang buru or Bonga as supreme deity. It features a court of spirits to regulate aspects of the world, from whom blessings are sought through prayer and offering. There are also evil spirits to be protected from.

An old mango tree on the forest road.

Traditionally, Santhal villages feature a sacred grove on the edge of the settlement where spirits live and sacred festivals occur. In Alekuti neighbours participate in the rituals of both religions.

“We dance and sing in Santhali and in Bangla,” says Hemrom, “The children enjoy the festivals the most.”

In their political history Santhals can also take some pride. In response to land grabbing and enslavement, on 30 June 1855 leaders Sidhu Murmu and Kanu Murmu mobilised 30,000 Santhals to fight the British.

Sal tree trunk.

Caught by surprise, initially the Santhal Rebellion met with some success, but ultimately bows and arrows proved no match for British guns. Battles were akin to massacres. Many Santhals, including the two celebrated leaders, were killed; and subsequently the Nawab of Murshidabad used elephants to trample Santhal huts.

More recently, the Santhal community was instrumental in successfully advocating the creation of Jharkhand state in India, which was carved from southern Bihar in 2000. It was hoped that statehood for Jharkhand would allow better representation for the various minority peoples who account for about 28% of the state population. Santhals are the largest group.

Yet Gabriel Hemrom speaks of his heritage humbly. “Everybody likes his own culture,” he says.

Despite the current hardships of life in Alekuti, it’s not possible to be entirely pessimistic. Santhali culture has survived great hardship before. And, as when leaving the forest, perhaps it’s generally true that sunshine will inevitably come to replace the shade.

Gabriel Hemrom, 40, with his son Remechus Hemrom, 10.

That Forest Feeling

Bark.

A troop of Phayre's leaf monkeys in the distance, moves through the deciduous and semi-evergreen forests of Lawachara National Park in Moulvibazar.

Why do forests inspire?

How is it that a bunch of trees and living things can lift spirits and free souls? What magnificent ingredient or elixir does the forest bring to enchant, inspire and release? Does anybody know?

I’d say it’s a lack of lines – in the sway of the giant bamboo stalks, in the leafy patterns of mulch we tread. Birth is the delicate curl of a new fern frond. Survival is the arch of a leech reaching out. Death is the decay of the forest floor – various stages – a mosaic free of squares, boxes and categories. Even the in-betweens – life’s joy in the sounds of bird and insect are hardly arranged as sheet music. They follow no tested, approved of chord progression. In the forest life is unrestrained. In randomness it finds the perfect circle.

A gorjon tree, Lawachara.

I’d say it’s a lack of lines but it can’t be. It isn’t true. The staunch, towering trunks of the ironbarks and gorjon trees in Moulvibazar’s Lawachara – they’ve thickened but otherwise not moved a millimetre in decades... they beat off the breeze, stretch up to hold the rain clouds. They put paid to that.

The forest has always been one of our best remedies. As the heart pumps to circulate blood to the toes it’s the forest that sends life-giving oxygen to the soul’s extremities. It’s as valuable as water, as soothing as the sea. The forest is in us. The forest is us.

There’s a troop of Phayre’s leaf monkeys, the chosmapora banar, in the distance – one of Lawachara’s four monkey species. The trees are deciduous, there’s a spindly network of branches outlined across an afternoon’s grey sky. The troop’s moving, one by one in bulky silhouette, taking turns out to the last branches. Then, jump! It’s suspenseful. It’s cinema. Into the clutches of a far tree’s green they land. Crash! They’re on the other side. How do they dare rely on those outermost, thin twigs? How do they know those barely-branches will not snap?

A Phayre's leaf monkey, taking a break...

Hours have passed. The monkeys are close. Their spectacled faces – slaty grey with white around the eyes – are looking down. They’re headed for distant flowers at the canopy’s top and this time as they jump it’s easier to observe the systems. The balance of the tail, the planning, the grab of arms and fingers...

The baby monkeys are trailing, frolicking as much as seriously knowing where they go... they trust their mothers will wait for them to safely negotiate the gaps. They’ll climb aboard her stomach, cling on as she jumps. It’s too far for them. Then, when secure, as she looks behind from concern for the next monkey crossing or to see what’s been achieved, the baby hops off to scamper along a new branch free of parental oversight.

Mid-air monkey!

The squirrels are fussing too, flicking their tails – short, sharp flicks – and calling with a chuk-chuk-chuk. They’re looking black from a distance – it’s confusing. They’re too small and the wrong shape for black giant squirrels – and this might be the wrong forest for those. They’re supposed to be orange-bellied Himalayan squirrels. They should be greyish – although their Bangla name, kalo kathbiral, refers to black... But where are their brilliantly bright bellies?

In the night when tranquillity makes impossible any tension – when the forested darkness curls around, threatens to make everyone a novelist, poet or painter, there’s a yellow frog – motionless, a statue, on the brickwork by the bungalow. It’s got those alien fingers with bulbous circular pads. It should be climbing a tree? There’s a mosquito biting its nose – drinking frog’s blood. How does a frog with padded fingers scratch? Why doesn’t the frog eat it? It would have to be the gecho bang, the Asian brown tree frog – nocturnal and crepuscular – common to all Bangladesh. They lay eggs on cream-coloured foam nests just above a water body.

An Asian brown tree frog.

How does a frog scratch?

By morning it’s time for humans. Buses stop, groups move about making too much noise. Md Ahad Miah has arrived. He’s 22, a little late, apologetic... a local guide – we’d arranged to set out at dawn. But he’s a forest resident too. He has fever. I like his attitude. Mahogany, chapalish, dumor – he knows the trees. “The forest is deciduous,” he says, “But after rain, say twenty days, the leaves return; the forest becomes dark.” He’s taken us deep, along leaf-covered deer trails. He dreams of opening a guest house, of knowing more about his wild patch of the Earth. He’s inspired – like me, like the city folk. Even more so – for him, his forest is some heavenly drug. He has a forest addiction.

Md. Ahad Miah, 22, tries the village flute. He has a forest addiction!

A bamboo stand. Lawachara.

There’s a rhesus macaque, incredibly bulky, at the highest heights of a tree. He’s sitting like a gentleman and it looks ridiculous – not at all agile or sleek like yesterday’s monkeys. I’m extremely concerned he’ll fall. Should he really be doing that? He may as well be a dolphin in that tree. It looks that natural.

And the leeches – ten, twenty on my shoes! They’ve made round blood circles on my ankles. There’s a price for wandering the animal domain. I would have spent the next two hours trying to remove them but Ahad is expert – he’s in sandals and not a single leech has caught him – with a stick he’s de-leeched my shoes in short minutes. He does this several times. “Do the leeches only bite foreigners?” I ask him. “Your blood is sweeter,” he says. But I don’t take sugar in my coffee?

Bamboo brings lines.

A forest oasis in a crowded country.

Lawachara: oxygen for the soul.

Butterfly on a railway sleeper.

A teak (shegun) tree.

But wait. Listen? “You’ll never see it,” says Ahad, “They’re extremely shy. Listen!” It was the dog-like bark of the barking deer. And high above – we’re looking for hoolock gibbons – it’s a squirrel of the type that doesn’t seem inclined to fit its taxonomy. And then, by chance, it jumps across a patch of sky. For a very tiny second there’s a flash – yes, a bright orange belly – you can’t see it twice. Ahad is likewise excited. “You know,” he says, “that’s the first time I saw that colour.”

We’re returning – no gibbons – but they’re not hard to find. Gibbons, you see, are incredibly loud and indiscrete. “Kuragao, kuragao” I type into my phone, trying to capture what they’re shouting with high pitched, sing-song voices beside the road. It’s just one of many sounds they make. They’re calling to warn other families not to encroach on their forest patch – in one direction others call back, in the other still more. Ahad explains the colours – males and children are dark while females are blondes. “There are about seventy gibbons in Lawachara,” says Ahad – he’s interested in everything, “from 16 families. And it’s crowded. The park isn’t suited to hosting many more.”

Ahad chooses the less-trodden paths.

Deep Lawachara.

Lawachara treetops.

Hoolock gibbons are endangered. From more than 100,000 individuals across their range from Assam to parts of Myanmar several decades ago there are no more than 5,000 now – in all Bangladesh there are 200. The hoolock gibbon is South Asia’s only ape. Lawachara is the best place to find them.

We move closer – through the trees we see – some are resting on branches, some jumping about, swinging effortlessly tree to tree. It’s true – they have no tails but when they dive into the air, catching a tree with those trusted long arms they own the forest, as though even phayre’s leaf monkeys barely know how to climb. They’re evening and morning watchmen. They’re boisterous and agile. They’re having fun.

Birth is an unfolding fern frond.

The forest excites. The soul is brimming with inspiration. Everyone’s a novelist, an artist, a poet... at least temporarily. Lawachara breathes life and space into this crowded land. We all need a little of that. “I am a part of nature,” says Ahad, “And nature is a part of me.” He’s right of course.

An ironbark tree.

The main entry to Lawachara.

After rain the leaves regrow.

Into the woods...

Lawachara's bounty.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: That Forest Feeling

Me and a forest train.