[or, Why We Must Do Proper Environmental Impact Assessments]

[O gentle Reader, I inflict this long, dark, dank and dismal tale upon thee at a time when We the Wee-Wee Pee-Pee People of Inundated India are blaming everyone from Kejriwalbhai and Modibhai to Rahulbeta and Priyankabehn for our flood-related woes…blaming everyone but the real culprits, namely, all of us City-wallahs. You and I. Humlog. Aami.

We are all to blame collectively, and must bear responsibility to differing degrees individually: “not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially,” as Jawaharlal Nehru quoth in a slightly different yet relevant context.

I wrote this story 30 years ago – in 1993. A mangled form was published, in two parts, by The Daily Pioneer in 2002. That fine newspaper added insult to editorial injury by mangling my byline so that my full name Subramanian became Subramonium in Part 1, and then Subramanium in Part 2 (doubtless had there been a Part 3 I would have become Plutonium); and by way of final abuse they paid me the princely sum of zero rupees for my contribution.

I dedicate this slightly revised version to the journalists of The Daily Pioneer…assuming it still exists…and to all my friends, colleagues and other co-swimmers in the Ocean of the Enviro-Socio-Economic Development World.

Warning: do NOT expect political correctness here!

His last bough

He lay on the bough and screamed, but there was no one to hear him.

He was stretched out on his belly, his bare feet lodged in the fork of the trunk behind him. With every gust of wind the branches over his head whipped to and fro, and a hundred sharp twigs scraped painfully against his back and legs, scratching his skin through the sodden kurta-pajamas he wore. The branch upon which he lay was almost horizontal—that is, when it was not being tossed up and down by the demented gale—and as thick as his thigh where his arms encircled its slippery grey bark. Subsidiary branches sprung from it at regular intervals, each in turn dividing into scores of limbs festooned with broad, leathery, pendulous  leaves that hung all about him. Ahead of him the bough tapered off to end, about three metres away, in a tangle of vines and leaves.

All around him stretched the floodwaters: a vast, turbulent plain, disappearing in a haze of moisture that obscured the horizon on every side. Trees stood out of the surface everywhere, silhouetted blackly against the leaden backdrop. Many of them were bent at crazy angles, limbs trailing in the waters; others were so deeply immersed that only their crowns were visible. Thousands of nameless objects moved across the liquid plain; some bobbing up and down or drifting about sluggishly in small circles, others tumbling and crashing through the foaming white rapids that ran about a hundred metres to his right, and still others that coursed through the waters beyond the line of rapids, moving swiftly and purposefully as though borne by powerful, hidden currents.

The swirling brown waters chuckled and slapped at the tree-trunk below, the wind and the rain tore through the canopy of dripping leaves that surrounded him. He lay there and screamed, but his shrill cry was snatched away by the wind and lost in the tumultuous roar that filled the landscape.

Hours had passed since daybreak, but brought little change to the unreal grey light which enveloped the world. Now he raised his head slightly and peered, for the tenth time, at his wristwatch.

4:14, his watch said. His beautiful, 22-carat, waterproof, scratchproof, shock-resistant watch; its dial so pitted, its interior so foggy that the motionless hands were all but invisible.

4:14 was when the dam must have burst.

It had all happened so suddenly. The rain had begun late yesterday morning, and continued through the afternoon into the night. He’d been with Bose and the others inside the inspection tunnel till about eleven, when he’d left them and returned to his little prefab cottage on the hillside overlooking the barrage. But sleep had been impossible, the rain had sounded like ten thousand iron fists beating a frenzied tattoo upon the C.I sheet roof, and it had kept him tossing and turning in his cot till eventually he’d risen, switched on the light and decided to brew himself some tea. While waiting for the water to boil he’d listened to the rain, and to the shrieking wind, and he’d thought to himself: three days, just three more days, and then he could finalize his audit report on the dam (“built to last a thousand years!” Bose had proclaimed last month, damn him!), and then he could get Bose to sign off on the report and pack his bags and get the hell out of this accursed province and return to his beloved city with its lights and its warm nights and his friends and duplex flat and music and movies and car…

And suddenly, the light had gone out. Cursing, he’d stepped to the door, opened it and peered out. Instantly, he’d known something was wrong…for, where the dam’s causeway lights ought to have been blazing, there was only pitch-black darkness. And then the earth had trembled beneath his feet and he’d heard the roar, dear God he could still hear that roar, the triumphant thundering of one hundred and ninety three million cubic metres of water breaking their puny concrete shackles…there’d been no time to run, no time to do anything, he’d just stood there, frozen in horror, listening to that roar.

And suddenly the ground had fallen away beneath his feet and he was under what felt like a million tonnes of ice-cold sub-Himalayan waters; and then he was flying or falling or rolling or tumbling along at an unbelievable speed, and his spectacles were snatched off his nose by a giant hand, and he’d tried to gather his limbs about him but was unable to find them, unable to tell up from down, and his lungs and stomach filled up with water till he was sure he would burst, and even in that madness he remembered thinking, this was what it was like to die. Again and again he’d gone down under; and once when he surfaced briefly he’d had a split-second terrifying vision of jagged, rocky walls streaking past inches from his nose; and a million wasps had stung him repeatedly all over his body and he’d tried to scream but only swallowed more water, and time had stood still for a while thereafter, he could remember only inky darkness, enormous fluid pressure, the burning in his lungs…

And then his buttocks had smashed against something hard, spinning him round and round beneath the waters. He’d felt tentacles brush his body, grabbed despairingly at them and held on to one while the stupendous current dragged his body sideways. He’d dug his fingers into the pliant cord and pulled himself along its length till, all at once, his head emerged from the raging tide. He’d fought his way along the vine towards its parent tree-trunk till finally he reached it, and wrapped his arms around its rough wet bark and drawn breath after shuddering breath into his tortured lungs while his sodden clothes threatened to drag him back into the waters again.

At length, he’d clawed his way up the tree. Inch by inch he’d climbed, while the rain lashed his face and the wind rocked the trunk about, seeing and feeling and hearing nothing, mind filled only with the terrors of the waters beneath. He’d reached the fork of the trunk, collapsed onto the bough, wrapped his arms around it and regurgitated what had felt like a thousand litres of muddy, foul-tasting water before lapsing into unconsciousness.

He’d come to, in the nightmare darkness. With returning awareness had come the tremors of reaction, and for a long time he had lain there, shuddering from head to toe while the fractured memories of his voyage returned to his mind. But at last the trembling had ceased, his teeth stopped chattering, and he was able to consider the miracle of his survival.

Initially, hysteria had taken hold of him; and his shrieks of laughter had rung out in the wild night till a fit of coughing had convulsed his body and nearly thrown him off the bough. A semblance of sanity had returned, then; he’d locked his arms around the branch and willed himself to lie still. He’d muttered fervent thanks to the long-forgotten Gods and Prophets and sundry Angels of his childhood. He’d sworn wild and improbable oaths to them in token of his gratitude for salvation. He would pay them obeisance in a hundred temples, mosques and churches; he would undertake a pilgrimage to the mountains; he would henceforth lead a life of austerity.

He’d read about such things happening, of course. About men being swept away by flash floods and deposited, unharmed, kilometers away from where they’d been. About tsunamis lifting ships over entire islands and down onto the surface of the ocean on the other side without injuring a soul on board. He’d read of many such occurrences, read them and dismissed them as packs of lies! But now it had happened to him, here he was, alive! He was alive!

After a while, he’d tested his limbs, one by one, for possible breakages. He’d found none—although he appeared to have lost several of his fingernails. His skin, however, was a different matter…every square inch of it burned as though on fire. He recalled the stinging pains during his voyage, and with a shudder realized what they must have been due to…a million fragments of stone and sand and concrete and God knew what else, pulverized by the waters and hurled against his rushing body till he was a mass of tiny cuts from head to foot.

His ears were filled with the roar of the tides beneath the bough; over the howling wind came the most alarming creaks and groans from the branches surrounding him; the rain poured down upon him, the rough bark dug painfully into his ribs and stomach.

But he was alive. He was alive! Surely that was all that mattered…surely daybreak would bring hope, and rescue.

But dawn had come, and in its pale, watery light he had beheld his surroundings… and now, many hours later, the bleak and unchanged horror of the landscape had driven hope, and much of his sanity, from his mind.

He had no idea where he was. Shortly after daybreak the curtains of mist had thinned momentarily, and he’d caught a brief glimpse of pale blue hill-slopes in the indeterminate distance before a fresh torrent of rain had erased the view. All that he’d gathered from that view, however, was that he was utterly lost. Having never journeyed downstream below the Command Village—and they’d always driven down to the Command Village—he had absolutely no idea about the lands further downstream. He’d had no reason to, after all…he’d come here merely to compile an interim Safety-cum-Environmental Impact Assessment Report on the hydel project, with the status of an `independent consultant’. It had suited everybody; for, that way, he didn’t get in the way of the project engineers and technicians who were in the process of commissioning the power plant. Besides, the international donor agency which had funded a very large chunk of the project  had made it very clear to him that his Report was to be `positive’ in tone and content. His Report, they’d stressed, was in fact a mere formality…nevertheless, an essential one. It would of course require his spending at least three months on-site, `for the record’. By way of compensation for his hard work and hardships, the donor agency had paid him an extremely fat advance on his fees, in addition to a suitable per diem allowance which he could claim upon his return…

It had all seemed too good to be true.

And, he thought bitterly, so it had turned out to be.

Oh, to be sure he’d had no problems getting the information he needed for his Report: Bose had been only too cooperative on that score. Bose had provided him full access to all project documentation since the first proposal had been put up by the power utility to the state government. He had devoted the first two months to the safety aspects of the dam; a task which had consisted, principally, of taking copious notes from the reports already filed by the engineers of the Electricity Board and independent technical consultancies, and rehashing them with liberal use of copy-and-paste into a form suitable for his own Report.

Bose had caught on mighty fast, of course, the cynical bastard. `You could’ve done all this at home!’ he’d said, with that slightly contemptuous look on his weather-beaten face. Much as he hated to admit it, Bose was right. But all the same, Bose had allowed him access to anything he wanted down at the Command Village Office; and it was Bose who had suggested a visit to one of the Tribal Resettlement Villages…`to enable you to make an on-the-spot assessment of the dam’s impact on the local populace…’ he’d said with a sardonic chuckle.

He would never forget that visit. They’d driven up a dirt road along the western shore of the vast reservoir till the road petered out next to a swift stream. They’d left the jeep there and trudged along a path through thick vegetation till, after about half-a-kilometer, they’d come upon a little clearing in the forest. About twenty huts stood in a rough circle in the clearing; wooden-roofed structures with crude plank walls, identical in all respects. To the right, narrow wooden canoes lay beached upon the banks of the stream. It  was Resettlement Village number 4A; one of 45 such villages built by the Project Authorities for the indigenous people, the tribals, who had been displaced by the project and whose ancestral villages were already deep beneath the reservoir waters.

The tribals had emerged from their huts, every one of them. Dark-brown men with fuzzy hair and high cheekbones, the men clad in loincloths, the women in rough skirts and strips of cloth that barely concealed their breasts, the naked children with their solemn, wide-open eyes…they’d stood around and stared at him, their faces totally devoid of expression even when he’d attempted a shaky smile.

It had been a relief when Bose finally emerged from one of the huts with an ancient man wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. He was the Headman, Bose explained. The Headman would answer all his questions, and he, Bose, would do the translating.

His hands tightened about the bough as he thought back to that interview. It had unnerved him, the whole experience had had a quality of hidden menace normally associated with nightmare. The warm humid air, the reek of damp vegetation and rotting fish; the towering trees all about the clearing, the silent, statue-like brown figures all around him, watching him through impassive eyes; no noise but that of the forest birds, and the constant drip-drip-drip of the morning’s rain from a billion leaves…and the wizened face of the Headman, shadowy beneath the straw hat, as he replied to Bose’s translated queries in a cracked whisper.

He’d asked the Headman: Are you content with your new homes?

And the old man had replied: Nothing has changed.

He’d tried again: Are your people happy with their new location?

The old man had repeated: Nothing has changed.

Feeling more and more unreal, he’d persisted: Was he, were his people, aware of the great changes for the better that would come with the setting up of the Project?

All things would pass away.

But they, the tribals, could look forward to the coming of industry, roads, to employment opportunities and prosperity?

All things would pass away.

But the children would soon have a school to go to, down at the Command Village?

Nothing would change.

Did they not want education, then?

The children would learn to hunt and fish. As their parents did.

Were the tribals resentful that their ancient village, and much of their forest lands, now lay beneath the lake waters?

All things would pass away.

Were they unhappy with the dam?

(Silence.)

Were they unhappy with the dam?

And then the old man had turned away from him, whispered something to Bose, looked back at him again and then limped back towards his hut. Silently, the other villagers had disappeared into their doorways till only he and Bose were left standing there in the open. Bose had roared with laughter upon seeing the expression on his face, and at length they had returned to the jeep.

On the way back, Bose had told him a little more about the tribals. He’d realized, with something of a shock, that Bose actually harboured affectionate feelings towards them,  and felt more than a little sympathy with their lot. The tribals were a small community,  Bose had told him; an ancient people in an ancient land. There were barely two thousand of them distributed sparsely in tiny villages all over the mountainous province. A peaceful enough folk, they lived off the land…jungle-fowl and fish, with maybe the occasional wild boar or antelope. Once in a while they journeyed down to the Town, eighty-seven kilometers away, where they bartered wild honey, snakeskins and bamboo-ware for sugar and coarse rice grain.

And what, he had asked Bose, had the Headman said to Bose before he turned away?

Bose had chuckled and told him.

The old man had said: Tell your foolish friend that the White Water is untameable.

He shivered, now, as he thought back to that remark.

The Headman had been right. The White Water had, indeed, proved to be untameable.

Undoubtedly, Bose and the others were dead. They’d have been in their quarters lower down in the gorge, or worse, in the inspection tunnel deep within the bowels of the dam, when it had disintegrated. He remembered the dank, narrow passage of the inspection tunnel, imagined the concrete cracking and fissuring, steel plates buckling as walls of water plunged through, crushing everything in their path…his mind strove to dispel the vision.

But now a sudden, electrifying thought struck him. He might well be the only surviving witness to the collapse of the dam! None of the power plant engineers would have seen it happen; except, maybe, the two security guards on the causeway—who would have been the first to go. Yes, he must be the sole witness. And that would mean, for sure, a lot of fame. And a lot of money as well, if he played his cards right…

All provided, of course, that he was rescued before he died of thirst or starved to death on the tree.

He stared down at the murky swirl beneath the bough, and then thrust aside the leaves to his right and peered out. The rain poured down upon the seething floodwaters with unabated fury, and the hill-slopes he’d seen earlier were invisible. A sudden gust of wind rocked the bough violently, and he hastily dropped his hand and wrapped his arms round the rough wood once more. Despair welled in him, and in its aftermath rose hatred, the hatred he’d felt all along for this accursed land. With its intolerable humidity and its devastating monsoon; its blood-thirsty leeches, its diabolic mosquitoes, its hideous running-spiders…and the tribals! With their wooden faces and guttural tongue and supreme indifference to all things outside their own world…the hatred bubbled over till he was screaming at the top of his voice, ranting and railing against the land and its creatures.

The elements bore down upon him with renewed strength, and the indifferent waters eddied and foamed about the tree-trunk below.

At length he stopped screaming and lay there, breathing heavily, with his eyes shut. A vision of the old Headman swam up, unbidden, in his mind, and he moaned and shook his head violently. After that one trip, he’d refused Bose’s offers to visit other Resettlement Villages. He’d taken careful notes, of course, of their names and locations. And he’d fabricated brief but informative accounts of his visits to them, including several interviews with their inhabitants. Just last week he’d drafted out the conclusion to his report on the tribals. They were, he had recorded, very happy with their relocation. And they eagerly looked forward to being associated with the great socio-economic development of the region, consequent to the building of the Hydel Project.

After all, he’d reflected, it was a mere formality. Just as the donor agency people had assured him. The dam was a fait accompli. The province was so remote, so wild as to have attracted little or no attention from either the media or the environmental activists. The tribals were so few in number that they didn’t even merit consideration as a vote bank. The state needed power; the donor agency needed to invest its money; everyone was happy.

Or should have been happy, but for the dam burst.

The cramp which had set in on his legs before dawn, had progressed till it was now a white fire, consuming the muscles of his back and neck and spreading down his arms. So far he’d dared not shift to a more comfortable position—the bough was slippery, the waters a good three metres below him. But now he decided to wriggle backwards towards the fork of the tree, so that he might sit back against the trunk and stretch his legs out in front of him, along the bough.

He drew a deep breath, tensed the muscles of his back…and heard a loud splash below him. Startled, he peered myopically at the muddy swirl beneath and saw it an instant later: a great wedge-shaped head arrowing through the waters, faint black coils undulating in its wake just beneath the surface, seeming to go on forever…it disappeared from view beyond the fringe of the surrounding foliage, leaving him trembling from head to toe.

Snake.

And that splash could only mean…his eyes darted about fearfully, examining the leafy boughs above his head and on either side; he was just beginning to relax, convinced that no sinuous terrors lurked in his vicinity, when he saw it.

It was literally in front of his nose, about a metre away from his goggling eyes. A greenish-brown, glistening twist, wrapped about its own coils in a little hollow where a slender branch extended sideways from the bough, blending perfectly with the twisted vines and dark green leaves that surrounded it, its flat head resting upon its coils, a fuzzy white patch barely visible on its neck…

A cobra.

Dear God, a monocled cobra, he knew that was what it was because a couple of weeks ago they’d killed one near Bose’s cottage, he remembered the white patch on its hood, how it had reared its frightful head and lashed out at the sticks with which they’d beaten it to death.

Don’t move, he told himself frantically. DON’T MOVE.

He stared at the snake, fought to control his shaking limbs. It must have been there all along, he thought incoherently. Sought refuge from the floodwaters, just as he had. Lain there while he’d shouted and screamed and laughed, it was a miracle it hadn’t been disturbed by his ravings…unless it was deaf. Yes! Snakes were deaf, weren’t they? He vaguely recalled a reference in some book or the other to a Deaf Adder…

But what about vibrations? Surely snakes were sensitive to vibrations! That meant he had to remain still, perfectly still, even if every muscle in his body was knotted with cramp, ached for relief…

Reason fled his mind for a while. A fit of shuddering overcame him, and he lay there babbling and shrieking with laughter while the storm raged about him. Hr didn’t stop even when the snake’s head rose suddenly from its coils and its yellow-white tongue darted in and out of its mouth while its tiny, stone-grey eyes stared into his own. But after a while the tongue ceased to flicker, the flat head sank back upon the gleaming coils and remained there, though the eyes continued to watch him.

Sanity returned like a freezing wave of water. He lay there gulping for breath, unable to believe his eyes. He counted slowly up to two hundred, but not a flicker of movement was there on the part of the snake. It must be sleeping, he decided, and a giggle escaped his lips. Sleep, Old Man Snake, he thought. You and I are in the same boat. Or rather, on the same bough. He giggled again but the cobra didn’t move, not even when the giggle became a cackle and then a whooping roar of laughter.

At length he subsided into silence, chest heaving, his entire frame shivering in the cold wind and rain. He parted the leaves on either side and beheld the slate-grey sky and the wild waters beneath. The wind howled, the raindrops felt like needles being plunged into his flesh. He dropped his hands back onto the bough and pressed his head against the slimy grey bark, listening to the endless drumming of the raindrops on the broad oval leaves that surrounded him. From time to time he raised his head and cried out; but only the wind and the roaring waters answered his calls.

In a moment of reason, an idea struck him. He peered over the bough till he could see the base of the tree-trunk, where the waters lapped at the iron grey bark. There was a white streak on the trunk, just above the water line, where the bark had been peeled off. All he had to do, he reasoned, was watch that mark and see if the water level fell away from it. He would then know, for sure, whether the floodwaters were receding or not.

He stared at the white mark for a long time, but it was no use. Each time he decided that the water level had indeed fallen off, a fresh wave of water came along and slapped against the trunk, obscuring the mark entirely. For all he knew, the floodwaters might actually be rising. A great rockfall might have occurred in some gorge downstream, forming a natural barrier that blocked the White Water far more effectively than Bose’s glorious dam…his heart sank at the thought.

The hours drew by with no visible sign of their passage. The mad fits that overcame him grew more and more frequent. He recited childhood poems in a shrill falsetto. He sang lullabies to the snake. Sudden, terrible paroxysms of rage seized him, and he showered curses upon the land, its populace and its snakes till sheer exhaustion stilled his voice. But the snake didn’t move a muscle, the deluge from the skies didn’t cease, and the savage roar from the flooded landscape only seemed to grow louder as time passed.

A wild notion struck him. For all he knew, the bough upon which he lay belonged to a very tall tree; one with most of its length submerged in the floodwaters. And so even if the waters receded, he might well find himself trapped upon on of the tree’s uppermost branches, tens of metres above the ground…he went into convulsions of laughter at the thought.

But as the day wore on and the grey light deepened, his manic fits grew less and less frequent till, eventually, they ceased altogether. Slowly but surely, a dreadful idea had taken root in his mind, and grown and grown till he was paralysed by the sheer terror of it.

He was sole witness to the Final Flood, harbinger of Dissolution. Pralayam.

A cry carried across the waters to his left. Ethereal, like the cry of a mountain shepherd.

He did not move.

The cry came again; and this time he stiffened and raised his head slightly. With an effort he parted the dripping foliage to gaze out at the watery expanse; but all he could see were petrified trees, and countless dark shapes floating in between them.

 A bird, he thought dully. But just then came the noise of thumping, hollow and flat, as of wood against wood.

And the snake moved.

With incredible swiftness the flat hood rose; and now he saw for the first time the spear-tip head surmounted by a great hood, with its yellow-white O-shaped pattern like an eye in a mask of death. The snake swayed from side to side, the forked yellow-white tongue flicked in and out of its slash of a mouth, tasting the air; and he moaned in his terror, convinced that his end had come, that after all he’d gone through his end had come…

But the cobra, he soon realized, wasn’t interested in him at all. Its head was turned to the left, from where even now the hollow thumping noise carried again over the waters. And immediately upon the noise came the eerie cry, sounding much closer now.

A wave of hope flooded his mind. He forgot the snake, forgot his aches and pains, forgot everything in the realization that rescue might, at long last, be on hand. He thrust the leaves aside, peered through the rain, and there it was, barely ten metres away. A long black canoe drifting past, the boatman slouched at one end, a black figure against the deepening twilight, wide-brimmed hat on his head…

He opened his mouth and yelled. His voice was hoarse, weak, but he distinctly saw the boatman jerk his hatted head before a noise like steam escaping from a pressure cooker brought him around to face the snake. His eyes bulged in terror. Old Man Snake was looking towards the boat and hissing, the great hood weaving from side to side upon the whipcord tail, he’d never heard a more frightening sound in his life.

He screamed aloud in his fear, and the cobra abruptly stopped hissing. It turned its sharp head, its cold, flint-like eyes looked straight into his own while the monocled hood above remained perfectly still. And in that timeless moment a strange conviction came upon him. Old Man Snake was telling him something.

Old Man Snake was warning him.

Yes, Old Man Snake was warning him against the boatman out there on the waters…he, the boatman, was the real danger, the real terror

But then the guttural cry rose again from nearby, shattering the spell. The cobra turned away and resumed its hissing and weaving. With trembling fingers he parted the foliage once again and saw that the canoe was barely two metres away, bobbing up and down on the murky waters beneath the bough. The boatman was looking up at him, his right hand resting upon the long paddle across his knees. He couldn’t make out the boatman’s face beneath the hat, but there was no mistaking the gestures he made now, bringing his left hand up and down rapidly.

He wants me to jump, he thought. To jump!

He looked down, and his hands tightened their grip on the bough. He was suddenly afraid, the ominous brown swell seemed so far below…

The boatman cried out yet again, the snake redoubled its frenzied hissing, and he shook off his paralysis. He unlocked his hands, fell off the bough and landed in the waters with a tremendous splash. He thrashed about blindly, thinking of gharials and swimming snakes while cold, slimy fingers clutched at him beneath the waters…and then he felt strong sinewy arms grasp him beneath the shoulders and haul him out of the waters. He clutched the side of the canoe, had a brief glimpse of a wizened face beneath the shadowy hat; and then he was over the wooden side and lying on his back, feeling the canoe’s wooden planking press against his spine and shoulder-blades.

For a while he couldn’t move. He just lay there, eyes closed, feeling the cold rain upon his upturned face and the gentle rocking of the boat beneath him. At first in a trickle, and then in a great rush, relief swept over him, flooding his body and mind, washing away even the tingling pains of returning blood circulation. He shifted his legs and groaned with pleasure, revelling in the new-found freedom to stretch out on his back, to straighten his elbows, to twiddle his toes…he wanted to cry out in joy, sing paeans to the gods who had delivered him from certain death. What an experience he’d had, what an experience…

He opened his eyes at last. Just a metre beyond his feet hunched the boatman: dark-limbed, wiry of build, brown arms glistening with moisture as they wielded the paddle. He glanced to his left and right but found his view blocked by the smoked-wood sides of the canoe. Grunting with effort, he rose upon his elbows and sought the tree upon which he’d lain. He found it almost immediately, about ten metres away to the right. There was no mistaking it; for upon its lowermost branch, and clearly silhouetted against the pewter sky, he saw the erect, hooded shape of the monocle cobra…now silent and still, as though carved of stone.

Goodbye, Old Man Snake, he thought. God, what a story he had, to tell his friends. Why, his story might hit the national headlines! He sank back and closed his eyes again, and he imagined telling his story to an admiring circle of friends while TV reporters filmed him and cameras flashed in his face.

“I spent fifteen hours on that narrow branch above the floodwaters, with only a monocled cobra for company,” he’d say. Quietly, in a matter-of-fact way. “And I couldn’t have wished for a better companion.”

And then he’d watch their faces while they cheered. Yes, especially the girls’ faces.

He opened his eyes. The boatman’s hat was lowered; but now it rose and he saw yellow-white teeth flash in the shadows beneath the rim. He smiled back, though his lips were cracked and swollen.

The boatman was a tribal. A stone-age barbarian, like the ones he’d met at that Resettlement Village. Presumably this creature lived in one of the villages scattered about the valley beneath the dam…well, he would find out soon enough.

There was, he thought, no point in trying to communicate with the moron. Neither of them would understand a word of what the other said.

An unpleasant thought struck him. He would almost certainly have to spend the night at this resettlement village, wherever it was. And eat the muck they served as food, and no doubt share his bed with hordes of bedbugs and spiders and other creepy-crawlies. He grimaced at the prospect, and then shrugged it away. He needed some rest, that was certain. And some food, however rotten it might be.

After that…tomorrow, at any cost, he should be able to contact the Command Village, or what was left of it. By tomorrow, surely, the bigwigs would be there. From the state government, the disaster relief people, maybe even the army, the press…he couldn’t wait to see their faces. And as for the donor agency…well, he knew how he could make them fork out a reasonable sum of money. And after doing that he might well go ahead and blame them for the dam collapse anyway, yes…

The rain had eased off to a chill drizzle. He felt the boatman’s eyes upon him, but couldn’t make them out beneath the hat. As he watched, however, the yellow-white teeth flashed again in the shadows, reminding him in a strange way of the snake’s fangs.

Funny, he reflected, how Old Man Snake had looked at him back there, just before he’d slipped off the bough. He frowned at the memory, and then dismissed it from his mind.

He arched his back and wriggled to find a more comfortable position. His neck, which had been resting on a pile of wet sackcloth, came into painful contact with something sharp and hard. He raised his head slightly to look…it was a metal watchstrap, poking out from beneath the sodden hessian.

He rose on his elbow and pushed the sackcloth aside; aware of the boatman’s gaze upon him; aware, too, that the roar of the rapids had steadily grown till now it was almost a thunder…

Beneath the sackcloth lay an untidy pile of objects. His eyes took in half-a-dozen wristwatches, several cheap ballpoint pens, a pair of broken spectacles, soggy wallets, an assortment of shoes…

Realization dawned, but it was too late.

His last thought, before the heavy wooden paddle drove it and everything else from his mind, was tinged with regret.

He wished he’d heeded Old Man Snake’s warning.