In conversation with Amitava Ghosh

It was a perfect winter evening outside as I took the bus for the book fair. The wind outside was crisp and somehow it set the mood for an amazing event long before its onset. As the slanting rays of sun fell on my Calvino book colouring a part of it yellow, I looked outside. My music player was humming a soft tune of Bihag in my ears. Bihag, the raga of late evening, somehow sets in me an exuberance. I could sense the feeling of an impending good; as if it was my self-adopted convention for good omen. Amitava Ghosh was in town. I was about to hear him.

The venue was simply decorated and illuminated by white lights of which brightness shimmered out and got scattered all around. There were people everywhere, in their most sprightly behaviour, excited and exhilarated like me. This satisfied me, the presence of literature and its faithful appreciation. I could feel it, could even detect its smell. Somehow that pristine creativity which I have adored all this while, through the words I have read, seemed very tangible today making me happy by ensuring that there was more to this abstract feeling, that there were undiscovered alleys and pastures. The organizers have hung taant sarees of different colours from the roof giving them the shape of a precarious convex. Oddly enough this reminded me of a rural wedding I had attended long time back and had been impressed even then by such modest yet innovative methods of aesthetics. Perhaps it was needed, for all of us to feel like this, to feel our roots, to feel that thought of soil and soft green grasses in the blossoms of which the first poetries of a great race had once grown.

Mr. Ghosh seemed to be a funny man possessing a dry humour to which I was not a stranger owing to all his works I have read. The conversation started with the purpose of discussing his Ibis trilogy which has charmed many. Speaking of his inspiration behind taking this vast threefold journey with the ship Ghosh first defines his interest in the matters of surrounding to be a recluse, segregated and isolated from the mainstream. Funny as it might be appear not many appear, not many writers have been as interested in the subcontinent’s maritime affairs as he is. In introspect, in retrospect and in imagination he had led his ship through swamps and seas, on journeys half factual and half imagined. As he aptly points out, the Indians and Chinese were not great travellers till the beginning of 19^th century. However, as that period decided to bring Renaissance in the lives and culture of its people, thereby changing almost everything, two remarkable features can be deduced from this; features that are interlinked both in circumstance and in outcome. With the advent of 19^th century men not only living in the coasts but also in apparent drylands felt a propensity towards the sea. The sea was no more the abode of unholy perils; the demons there had perished, they thought. And thus began an era of journey, in ships and boats to the mighty sea. Or perhaps the sea became less mighty to them; its vastness was one of the sort that can be overcome. Once the myth had dispelled and bulwark of superstitions had crumbled down to dust, men sailed to lands miles away, often with family and often alone, instilled from within in a newfound courage. The author infers that these journeys to the saline water had set the root of the future Diaspora which had made India today the multilingual society it is. This great event that has led to exchange of people and ideas, that has led to the dispersal of families once living under the same roof appears to be the most fascinating and compelling trait of that time. Realizing this I sat in awe back then, thinking of the innumerable offshoots of countless families of India, rather Calcutta, the city which Ghosh considers to be the primary node of this rumination. Even now I hear and see people discovering unknown links of their fraternity in the most unpredictable of countries. This trait, random as it might seem, being the offspring of the caprices of a sailor living once upon a time provides further evidence for India’s present cosmopolitanism, a though to which we have been accustomed to since our very childhood.

After this dispersion of genes, the time came to discuss about its outcome where the author underlines another significant yet unnoticed part of the history of that time. Sharing his researches with everybody Ghosh remarks how the princely families on India were inebriated by opium back then. Opium economy of that time has received almost no comprehensive study in modern researches. Surprisingly the renowned families like Holkar, or in the states of Malwa, even the veteran Tagores (Robi thakur and his family) had huge stakes running in this business. The aroma of opium had become widespread, reaching most parts of subcontinent with time. Funny as he is Ghosh blames the ruling British government and calls them ‘a drug running cartel’!
This way, through his numerous musings and researches, through imaginations and inferences, I wondered how the good author has portrayed a reality in his books, which remained unseen before his creations, in a responsible and pragmatic manner; how he has explored a perspective so inseparable from the chronology of our nation that it has shaped and defined the so-called globally Indian elements of our mental constitution in the most sublime and unfelt manner. The facts about our timeline that has run before us can be equally real and magical.

 The greatest luxury of a writer, as Amitava Ghosh thinks, is to find oneself at places or times where he could never possibly think of being. Of the little writings I have penned down myself and the liberation I have experienced through them, I for one cannot agree more to him. Writing, in its most charming way, makes you inhabit times, places and families that are probably the subconscious apparitions of one’s mind, or perhaps the numerous things that inflicts insomnia in you at night. Through the evocation of old memories, through those mesmerizing dreams yet to be fulfilled, writing makes one a timeless entity whose existence might not be a continuum always, happy at one time and poignant at others, but never ever uninteresting. Often such characters in a writer or an artist as I would prefer to say, make him bizarre with respect to ordinary calibrations. Like Ghosh mentions, the deeper and deeper he delves into imagination while writing a book, the stranger his activities and daily routines become. He creates a veil around him then and often dissects out of it, unknowingly. He takes random jaywalks while dealing with the many pleasures and pathos that are then running in the world which resides inside his mind.
One of the most enjoyable parts of writing, according to him, is the research that it involves. During his study for ‘River of Smoke’ Ghosh remembers how he discovered Kunming, a Chinese province that is a two hour air travel from Calcutta. Much like a stroke of serendipity the place caught his notice. Thus, packing their bags he and his son left for it and came back with vivid memories of azure sky, colourful flowers, fresh orchards, ‘the tiger-eating gorge’ and many other things. Even now one can sense the juvenile excitement in his voice as he cherishes this happy nostalgia. His findings there, clay idols, figurines and other antiquities dating back to the times of Chenghiz Khan had made him realize not only the infinite possibilities of discovery that lay unchurned in this lesser-known land of the Orient but also explains the intricate connections between the Chinese and the neighbouring Indian regions.

The time seemed to be fleeing rapidly. The session with the ‘quintessential Kolkata nerd’ ended soon and I came out of the Google dome to face my world, the one which I have taken for granted and have abandoned from the possibility of newness. The myriad people around me still seemed to be the same, bored and burdened with responsibilities, carrying on their lives in the most evident manner. But somehow there was a strange sense of subtle enlightenment; now that I have known and seen times I could never know of, otherwise. Knowledge, well true knowledge, one that can enlarge your vistas, one that has the power to astonish you, seems like a perpetually refreshing experience. In that one odd hour I have spent there, my faith in this fact got restored. I came home with a solemn promise, to read, to remember and to write my memories, my imagination, my desires, everything that I have ever known of, everything that has ever surprised me.