The Hooghly River

riverWide, brown, opaque, and the reason for everything.

Description

The westernmost mouth of the Ganges and the reason Calcutta exists. Eighty miles of it separate the sand heads from the city, and the Bengal Pilot Service exists because ships die on every one of them. The James and Mary Sands shift with each monsoon and take vessels every season.

There is no bridge. Crossing means a boat, and everything the city does with the outside world it does across this water.

Notable Features

• The pilot takes the ship. A Company pilot boards from a brig at the sand heads and the master hands over without discussion.
• Bodies. Hindu funerary practice commits the dead to the river, and cholera keeps the practice busy. The water carries what it carries. This is Katherine’s first necrophobia exposure with no door in between.
• The fishing community lies downstream of the city.
• Boats at unusual hours near Baranagar are noted in Roy’s 1812 letter.

The Senses

• Smell. Silt, rot, woodsmoke off the banks, and a sweetness underneath that is not pleasant and not identifiable.
• Sound. Nothing much. That is the unsettling part. A river this size should make more noise than it does.
• Colour. Milky brown and completely opaque. You cannot see a hand’s depth into it.

Connections

• Calcutta 1814
• Baranagar upstream, eight miles north of Calcutta on the east bank; Renwick’s works opposite on the western bank
• Garden Reach downstream
• Howrah opposite

In Play

Chapter 4, Session 11 (11 October 1814) — a picnic away from the docks. Adrien and Elizabeth Ashby picnicked on a clean stretch of riverbank away from the fishing docks, shaded by trees. Adrien sketched a massive adjutant stork and a rare blind river dolphin (a “Susu”) in a new sketchbook Elizabeth had given him, and the pair shared a meal of Camembert, cured ham and wine, discussing their pasts before riding back to prepare for the Governor’s Ball. See By Command of His Excellency.

Appearances

Campaign Log

• Session 14 - A Morning of Manners and Monstrosities — in the last mile below Baranagar a pale sheet lay still on the water while the current ran past it, and head-sized globes rose from it with an oily shimmer, each with the suggestion of a mouth, humming through the boat’s planks. The boat went round by the western bank. One boatman began humming the note.