A NOTE ON SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION

Every effort has been made to spell Bengali words and names correctly, but to little avail: the Bengali alphabet does not correspond to the Roman alphabet. Fortunately for me, Bengalis are used to Westerners’ permutations of their words. For instance, the name of one of my chief informants is spelled at least four different ways on books and articles he has written. The cover of one book proclaims its author as Kalyan Chakravarty, while another lists him as Kalyan Chakrabarti. The former is a Hindi-English spelling of the name; the latter a Bengali-English spelling. I have tried to use Bengali-English spellings throughout the text. But there is considerable variation even within Bengali-English spelling. Sajnekhali, site of Sundarbans’ tourist lodge and one of its bird sanctuaries, is variously spelled Sajnekhali, Sajnakali, and Sajnakhali on maps and brochures.

The pronunciation of Bengali-English words can also be slippery. Sunderbans is pronounced “Shunderbun.” (It is variously spelled and sometimes, especially on maps, is prefaced by “the,” although the article is not usually used in conversation.) The name of Sundarbans’ tiger god, Daksin Ray, is pronounced “Dawkin Roy.” A man whose name frequently appears on these pages is Rathin Banerjee. His first name is pronounced “Row-teen.”

How can this be? I asked Rathin how you can get the sound “Row-teen” out of the spelling “Rathin.” He answered, “It is spelled wrong on my birth certificate.”