Reading the world and reading the word?

I found myself really struck the other day about our conversation of Kanai and Piya reading the world versus reading the word, and their similarities and differences and interconnections. “Minutes later, she was back in position with her binoculars fixed to her eyes, watching the water with a closeness of attention that reminded Kanai of a textual scholar poring over a yet undeciphered manuscript: it was as though she were puzzling over a codex that had been authored by the earth itself” (222). Kanai as a reader of the word, Piya as a reader of the world: from Kanai’s perspective, Piya as “a language made flesh” (223). But I also want to push against my attachment to this binary of reading the world versus reading the word, as if there were no intersections. Piya doesn’t totally know how to read the tide country as a world yet, and neither does Kanai, as they both trip in the mud. And, as the book progresses and Kanai is faced with challenges and contradictions to his norms and paradigms, he looses his words. When faced with a tiger, words don’t exist anymore, he almost can’t function. Maybe this is sort of a disconnection, but maybe it is more closely tied to his ultra-connected experiences as a translator: “the act of interpretation had given him the momentary sensation of being transported out of his body and into another. In each instance it was as if the instrument of language has metamorphosed—instead of being a barrier, a curtain that divided, it had become a transparent film, a prism that allowed him to look through another set of eyes, to filter the world through a mind other than his own” (270). Did he become the tiger? (Side note: I haven’t read much past Kanai’s tiger encounter alone on the island, but will by tomorrow).

Additionally, I found myself wondering where Fokir fits into this not-binary but interconnected spectrum of reading the world and words. Does he read the world in the same way that Piya does? Is he the world, as a wordless (from our perspective) human representation of tide country? Is his essence, and the essence of tide country truly untranslatable, just as we recognize that language may be less of a clear translation and more of an interpretation? “Kanai turned away from her to say a few words to Fokir, and suddenly, to Piya’s surprise, Fokir began to sing, or rather to chant, in a quick rhythm. ‘What’s he saying?’ Piya said to Kanai. ‘Can you translate?’ ‘I’m sorry, Piya,’ Kanai said. ‘But this is beyond my power. He’s chanting a part of the Bon Bibi legend and the meter is too complicated. I can’t do it’” (255). Nirmal writes about interacting with Fokir as a child, discussing crabs, but more so discussing the ever-changing state of a seemingly frail environ like the tide country, “how long can this frail fence last against these monstrous appetites?” (172). I was really struck by this last bit, but am still working through in my mind how it connects to this all: “’Who indeed, Fokir? Neither angels nor men will hear us, and as for the animals, they won’t hear us either.’ ‘Why not, Saar?’ ‘Because of what the Poet says, Fokir. Because the animals

‘already know by instinct

we’re not comfortably at home

in our translated world’” (172).