বাংলাদেশ, বুধবার, ২০ মে ২০২৬
৭ জ্যৈষ্ঠ ১৪৩৩ | সময়:
The Editors
৪ সেপ্টেম্বর ২০২৫, ৮:৩৮ অপরাহ্ণ
অনলাইন সংস্করণ

Songs on the Edge of Silence: Climate Widows and Bonobibi in the Sundarbans

by Sohan Rahat

In the courtyard of a modest house by the river Malancha in Shyamnagar, Satkhira, 42-year-old Ponchi Rani, sits with a damp-stained manuscript (verse-manuscript meant to be sung or recited, not merely read) in her lap. Its fragile pages, written in an old and unusual Bangla tone, hold the story of Bonobibi — the guardian spirit of the world’s largest mangrove forest. Nearly a decade ago, she borrowed the book from her aunt, determined to learn its verses despite the language’s complexity. Since then, year after year, she sat through rituals, repeating the lines until they became her own.

Ponchi, a torchbearer of the Bonobibi’s puthi recitation and singing, is one of the few in her locality who can still recite its verses. In the past, these rituals drew Hindus and Muslims together, invoking Bonobibi’s protection against storms, crocodiles, and tigers. Now, the voices have dwindled. “Only a few continue,” she says. “But I have hope. Someone, someday, will carry it on.” Her words underscore the urgency of preserving the Bonobibi’s puthi tradition before it fades into silence.

Her hope stands against silence. Across the Sundarbans, home to nearly half a million people on the Bangladesh side, those who once carried these traditions have been pushed into new lives by storms, salinity, and migration. And among the most affected are the climate widows — women whose husbands never returned from the forest, their loss tied not only to danger in the forest but also to climate change itself. The stark impact of climate change on the Bonobibi tradition is a cause for concern.

The Origins of a Shared Tradition
The Bonobibi puthi that Ponchi preserves belongs to a centuries-old tradition known as the Bonobibi Jahuranama. Written in Bangla, threaded with Arabic and Persian words, it emerged on the Bengal frontier in the 18th–19th century. The story tells of Bonobibi’s battle with the tiger demon Dokkhin Rai and her rescue of Dukhey, a poor boy offered as sacrifice. It is a myth, but also a moral compass — teaching humility, fairness, and restraint in a fragile landscape.

As Pintu Baulia, a local Sundarbans researcher, explains, Bonobibi’s worship once marked the village calendar. She was honoured three times a year — during Poush Sankranti, Maghi Purnima, and Chaitra Sankranti — with offerings of rice pudding or sweets, and the Puthi was recited aloud. Jungle dwellers believed her protection essential for survival in the forest.
Earlier, week-long fairs grew around these recitations. Today, many have vanished in areas like Bonobibi Tola of Buri Goalini Union. Bonobibi worshiping and Puthing singing didn’t happen in the last 20 years here. In some areas, Pintu says, only a handful of people still take the initiative, and without them, the rituals do not happen.

A Widow’s Faith

In Fishermen’s Village in Munshiganj Bazar, Shyamnagar, lives Buli Dasi (35), one of the many widows of the Sundarbans. Shyamnagar is home to the largest number of such widows in Bangladesh — 1,163 women, according to a 2023 report in The Financial Express citing LEDARS (Local Environment Development and Agricultural Research Society). In neighbouring Koyra, Khulna, the number was 750.

Locally, she is known as a tiger widow, but her story is also that of a climate widow. Rising salinity and declining prey push tigers closer to villages, while storms like Cyclone Aila have destroyed homes, forcing families deeper into risky forest work. Climate change has also altered the Sundarbans’ delicate biodiversity, reducing fish stocks and forest resources near settlements. For the Bonojibi — forest-dependent people — and the fishing folk, this means journeys ever deeper into the mangrove or farther out to sea in search of golpata (Nipa palm), honey, shrimp larvae, snails, and fish. These livelihoods, once sustained closer to home, are now scarce in accessible areas. Very often, men never return: they are killed by a tiger or a crocodile, or swept away in storms. Their widows are left behind to mourn — women like Buli, who turn to the Bonobibi Puthi and its songs as a fragile but vital means of resilience, helping them endure both grief and stigma.

According to Buli, her husband Arun Mondal, went to collect honey in 2002 and never came back. A tiger dragged him away, leaving her with children to raise alone. Widowhood brought not only grief but also stigma. Relatives turned her away, believing she was unlucky. In the village they called her Shami Kheko — “husband eater” — as if she herself were to blame for her husband’s death. She survived by doing housework in others’ homes, often insulted or shunned. With no support from brothers or in-laws, she rebuilt her life on her own.

Even now, before she enters the mangrove to hunt for crabs or fishing in the jungle canals, Buli prays aloud: “Mother Bonobibi, I have come to your jungle. Protect me, keep me safe.” The words steadied her steps as much as they once did for her husband.

Her faith in Bonobibi is entwined with the songs Ponchi struggles to preserve. Rituals give her strength, but she has watched them falter. Hiring singers can cost several thousand taka; in good years, the songs are sung, in hard years, silence replaces them. For Buli, the songs are not abstract heritage — they are survival, a rhythm that allows her to endure poverty and stigma.

Hafezur’s Choice
Not far from Buli’s home lives Hafezur (30), whose father was also killed by a tiger. Once, his Family depended on fishing, but he abandoned the profession after his father’s death. Today, he pulls a rickshaw in Shyamnagar bazar.

“I could not continue what my father did,” he explains. “The forest is too dangerous now, and there is no life in it.”

Hafezur’s story is part of a broader trend. A survey conducted in Shyamnagar’s unions of Gabura, Padmapukur, and Burigoalini in 2023, published in PLOS ONE as “Impact of Salinity: A Case Study in Saline Affected Satkhira District”, found that 62.7% of households had changed their main work due to salinity, with many switching two or three times in a single decade. The most common fallback was day labour and rickshaw pulling. The same study recorded that 11.3% of families had migrated to urban areas to survive. Another study in Satkhira district same year, published on ResearchGate as “Climate Change-induced Salinity Intrusion and Livelihood Nexus: A Study in Southwest Satkhira District of Bangladesh”, showed that 27% of households were forced to change their livelihoods because of salinity intrusion.

For Hafezur, the choice was not between heritage and convenience, but between survival and ruin. And with every step away from fishing or honey collection, the songs tied to those livelihoods fall further into silence.

Vanishing Beyond Bonobibi

The erosion of Bonobibi’s traditions is part of a broader unravelling. Other cultural practices are fading too: the songs of Manik Pir, the devotional Padabali, even Barsha Mangal, the monsoon-welcoming songs. Within just a few years, Pintu says, entire portions of the Bonobibi recitation — such as the Dukhey jatra — have nearly disappeared.

Cyclones and salinity have disrupted village life. Forest restrictions limit access for fishing and honey collection. Rice paddies have been converted to shrimp ponds, forcing people into rickshaw pulling or brick kilns. Livelihoods have shifted; rituals no longer fit the new economy. The elders who know the songs are dwindling, and the young are not stepping in.
As Annu Jalais, author of Forest of Tigers, has shown, the Sundarbans is not only an ecological frontier but also a frontier of memory — where each shift in livelihood erases a cultural practice tied to survival.

Dr. Moeen Jalal Chowdhury, an anthropologist and Assistant Professor at BRAC University, sees Bonobibi’s tradition as a moral structure as much as folklore. It embodies protection, communal identity, and directives for living. It is a living connection between people and their environment.

Climate change, he explains, threatens that connection. Migration and disrupted livelihoods scatter those who carried the songs. Knowledge is forgotten. Policy, meanwhile, counts houses lost but not stories silenced. Cyclone shelters are built, but the indigenous codes that guided coexistence with nature are neglected, Added Dr. Moeen.

UN Women’s Feminist Climate Justice framework highlights this very gap: when policies measure only economic damage, they erase the unpaid cultural labour of women who preserve rituals, stories, and songs. In the Sundarbans, these women are often widows — doubly marginalised by gender and loss.

A Generation Drifting
Among the youth, the disconnect is already clear. Shahin Alom (21), A young climate activist, grew up in Patakhali, where his elders prayed to Bonobibi before entering the forest. Among his peers, few know the songs at all.

He sees climate change at the root of this drift. As forests degrade and fish dwindle, people leave traditional jobs. Disasters make homes unlivable. Migration scatters families, and rituals are not passed down.
For Shahin, this is the essence of non-economic loss. “Some losses can be measured in money,” he says. “But the loss of culture cannot. Once it is gone, no money can bring it back.”
He believes traditions must be retold in new ways — through books, documentaries, and storytelling that can reach his generation. He calls on the government and NGOs to document them, and for cultural ministries to recognise their value. “Losing culture means losing identity,” he warns.

The Silence That Remains
Even now, Ponchi leans over the fading pages of her puthi, reciting lines that once carried through crowded courtyards. Sometimes she forgets a verse, then picks it up again, holding on the best she can.

In Munshiganj’s Fishermen’s Village, Buli still whispers Bonobibi’s name before stepping into the forest. For her, the prayer is both shield and companion — the only certainty left after loss.
And in Shyamnagar bazar, Hafezur pulls his rickshaw through the heat, his father’s profession left behind.

Around them, the gatherings are smaller, the fairs shorter, the songs thinner. What was once a chorus across villages is now carried by a handful of voices, scattered like the people themselves after storms and tides.

The forest still waits at the edge of every life here, as dangerous and necessary as it has always been. What is less certain are the songs that guided people into it, and the memories that gave them strength.

This content was developed and produced under an arrangement with Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

(Sohan is a Bangladeshi freelance visual journalist and environmental storyteller based in Dhaka. He works at the intersection of photography, filmmaking and journalism to document stories of climate injustice, cultural loss, and displacement across Bangladesh. With a focus on the Sundarbans region, his work often amplifies the voices of Indigenous and marginalized communities affected by rising seas, cyclones, and ecological degradation.)

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