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The passage in ‘The Hungry Tide’ where Piya and the fishermen come across a pod of dolphins displays the harmonic interaction between humans and animals. In this scene, the dolphins are looking for food while the fishermen were also looking for a catch. A fisherman drums against his boat and rattles metal weights to create sounds that catches the dolphins’ attention and they begin to prompt up from the water. The dolphins then begin to circle together to drive a school of fish towards the boat, allowing to fishermen to lower their nets at the perfect time to catch the fish while the dolphins get a meal of their own. Piya was in awe because she had only witnessed a similar interaction once before in all her time of attending expeditions.
This scene is inspiring because in a place such as the Sundarbans where humans are in constant fear of killer animals, such as the tigers and crocodiles, there are also animals which mean no harm. Humans and these animals can actually benefit from each other, like the dolphins driving the fish towards the fishermen’s boat. The people living in these areas are so accustomed to thinking of wild animals as dangerous, that they do not know of the other peaceful animals that exist. People would never have thought that animals and humans can work in harmony because they believe that wild animals have only one thing in mind, which is to kill and eat. They have grown to believe that animals are dangerous and this type of negative impression towards animals have become an imprinted belief, something that will not change unless if they experience it themselves.
Peaceful interactions between humans beings and animals in the wild are remarkable and truly a gift of nature. Animals do approach humans in the wild but usually because they are curious, but working together in harmony is not a common occasion and in this case, “there was truly no limit, it seemed, to the cetacean gift for springing surprises” (140).