The focus of my investigation is on the changing relationship between the movement of soil and the movement of people in the Western Sunderbans of the Indian Bengal delta since the early twentieth century. The most urgent concern on Ghoramara island now is that of severe soil erosion which is causing it to disappear slowly but steadily. As the shoreline plays catch with people's homesteads, I think of the mobility of soil and beings as having been curbed at different points in history resulting in the predicament the islanders find themselves in today. My main research questions are: how have the lives of soil/silt and inhabitants of islands in the western Bengal delta coevolved across the twentieth century up to today? What role do state-led development, hydrological engineering, and conservation efforts play in shaping that relationship through time? The corollary to that is, what gets occluded in making the late 1990s and early 2000s' climate change conversation the lens through which we understand Ghoramara erosion? Further, how do islanders go about their daily lives with the knowledge of imminent displacement from their homes due to erosion?