:: Amitav Ghosh - Review ::

The Shadow Lines

Anastasia Guha

A circle is the most perfect formation in nature and a straight line, the fastest way to get from one specific point to another. If you employ these rules to navigate your world, then this book is either going to be inscrutable or provide a fresh perspective depending on your frame of reference. It starts with many a description of the narrator/ protagonist's eccentric, ethereal but always brilliant cousin Tridib, who gives him worlds to travel in and eyes to see them with, long before he leaves Calcutta. A wanderlust sets in which leaves him imagining that he is seeing the first pointed arch in Cairo or touching the stones of the great pyramids of Cheops. Ironic then, that for the woman he loves - his beautiful cousin Ila, who would always break his heart - has been all around the world and lived in many places but has not traveled at all. All she remembers of Cairo is the inconvenient location of the `ladies' at airport. But that is part of her irresistible charm.

Ghosh weaves together personal lives of the characters who populate his novel with public events of that time with a rare poignant humor, which evokes, in many cases simultaneously, a smile and a sigh. Written in first person ensures that the reader is carried, not strung along, within the frame of the author's thoughts. A unique position from which to watch the boy growing as he finds himself sucked into history: his old grandmother stuck in a family feud with members in Bengal and the soon to be `liberated' Bangladesh and all the fears and uncertainties that lie within that premise. The relationship with England that took Tridib and his parents to London, and many years later took the author down the same streets and lanes that Tridib's indelible descriptions ensured he knew like the back of his hand. Their English friends daughter May's love for Tridib with its hopeless spiral into tragedy, ultimately provides the author with a glimpse of the final redemptive mystery.

Out of an intricate web of memories, relationships and images Ghosh builds his narrative. And while it never quite takes the form of a story that a reader can recount, its greatest achievement is perhaps best bought out by the distinguished poet A.K Ramanujan, who says ``He evokes things Indian with an inwardness which is lit and darkened by an intimacy with Elsewhere.'' Stream of consciousness, is a genre which has housed some of literatures most remarkable minds. With it constant forward and backward movement between different times and realities, used to express associations that the author tends to make in different situations at different points, Ghosh has paid his dues to join that club. I liked the book for not trying to explain its eccentricities by being profound. For putting into words what, for most of us, remains a nebulous knot of understanding or a half-idea. For being focused but without the distressful need to tie loose threads up into a neat bow on the last page. In short for not being a tired potboiler.

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