Post by Manish Sinha

#SundayReflections #MusafirHoonYaaron A Boat on the Bidya, O Majhi Re and Eighty-Odd Kinds of Root Last week, Anirban Dutta took me to the island of Bali. Well, not that Bali. This one sits in the Indian Sundarbans, past Gadkhali, where the road runs out and the boat takes over. Our camp was small, a handful of cottages, sadly very strong wifi, thankfully no schedule, not much to do after dark except listen to the crickets and enjoy an adda of two! We went up the Bidya river by boat, past mudflats where the mangroves stood in rows, roots poking straight up out of the silt like a hundred small periscopes. Anirban told me the Sundarbans are home to some eighty-odd kinds of mangrove and mangrove-adjacent plants, but only a couple of dozen or so are true mangroves, plants that have taught themselves to breathe through mud that would suffocate anything else. The roots don't only dig down for water. They spread out, they climb up, away from the worst of the salt. Now, I have spent my previous working life in advertising and then not-advertising-but-travel, a poet on weekends, always being advised to pick a lane and having little appetite for it. Sitting on that slightly tilted boat, singing O Majhi Re(although the original song was picturised in a water tank in Natraj Studio, Mumbai, not on any river 😂 ), I understood it even better. It was never indecision. Many of us have a root system of a mind. A mind that reaches sideways and upward at once, because straight down is never where our oxygen is. Many of us have a 'Mangrove Mind'. It just took a Sundarbans trip to realise it yet again and say it out loud. To all my fellow Mangrove Minds, a little hat tip this Sunday. May we find one another, preserve our tribe, and never apologise for growing in all directions. *Our venture - Made in Transit is now building two experiences around the Sundarbans - Home in a Village & The Creative Adda. More on that soon, or in your inbox if you're on the List.)