Storms Like Amphan Have Made A Deal With The Natural World

On May 20, it was the phase of the waning crescent, just one day to the new moon…the time for very high natural tides! So the threat from Amphan was extreme—the tidal surge would have swallowed more and more high ground. And seawater did indeed push 25 km inland. Shrinking high ground would mean no ‘social distancing’. Putting prey within reaching distance of predator, with no escape route, sounds like nature playing a cruel joke on one species. But again, a tiger is not a wanton killer. It only kills when hungry. This writer has seen tigers pass by bait without making any attempt to kill them. Under Amphan, the universe of both predator and prey was equally threatened. No one would have been thinking of just a meal, literally.

Talking of meals, the day after, the fast receding waters of the estuary leave ample fish in the eddies created on the shoreline and on the large cavities on the forest floor left by uprooted trees. It happens in the cities too. In an incident reported to the BBC on May 21, 2020, a unique sight had been spotted near the gates of Presidency University on College Street, Calcutta. A small catfish, marooned as the street waters receded back to the Hooghly, was being preyed on by a street dog. So imagine places where nature is bountiful! Tigers, fishing cats, otters having the time of their life; free meals literally, with no workload on their shoulders. The Amphan holds no bias, like a herd of elephants passing through a forest, and pulling down the high branches to the ground, scattering succulent leaves on the forest floor that would otherwise have been out of reach for the herbivores. As fresh rainwater trickles down the trunks of trees and drips off the tips of cupped palms of leaves, all take turns to sip at the nectar, for they had been drinking saline water till then.

Why should humans be left out of their share of nature’s bounty? The huge cache of freshwater received by coastal river systems offers a chance for a sizeable influx of the dream fish of Bengal, the Hilsa! Wait for it to happen.