CLOSE READING II
The citizens of the Sundarbans in ‘The Hungry Tide’ sees animals differently than how Piya does. They see animals as spiritual and meaningful beings from their beliefs of the local legend Bon Bibi. In this legend, the tiger is the dangerous villain due to its history of attacking and killing people. The villagers sees tigers as deadly animals that will kill upon first sight. When the villagers have trapped a tiger in a livestock pen, they want to kill the animal right away and take revenge because of the harm and fear it has caused the village. Piya sees this situation in a completely different point of view and wants to protect the tiger because of her passion to protect wildlife in their natural habitat and especially tigers since “there are more tigers living in America, in captivity, than there are in all of India”. To her, she sees the tiger as a trapped and helpless animal while the villagers see it as a monster that has been terrorizing their village and killing their people. Piya not being able to bear seeing the tiger helpless and in pain, she begs Kanai to do something and he tells her there is nothing they can do since the mob is so big and traditional villagers will not listen to an outsider. Because Kanai will not help her, she turns to Fokir, who she thought would understand her view as seeing this animal as a creature that needs to be helped and preserved, but to her surprise, she sees Fokir actually sharpening a bamboo pole and getting ready to attack the animal. This moment completely changed the way Piya saw Fokir. As Fokir is always in the rivers all the time to fish and see other animals along the way, Piya thought that he would have empathy towards animals and would have developed a connection with them just as Piya had with her passion towards marine animals, but she was wrong. Fokir sees animals as just that, they are food to eat or animals to kill if they are terrorizing villages. To Piya, seeing Fokir supporting the villagers’ intent to kill the tiger was just as horrifying as their motive.