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Unit 1: Amitav Ghosh; Shadow Lines: Introduction to the Text

(and if these addresses can be seen as personal narratives) outdoing a public one. Specific addresses Notes
in the novel subvert the idea of the nation in the novel.
The narrator’s eccentric cousin Tridib is an unconventional character who does not fit into the
genteel society of his family. He is conducting research into the ancient Sena dynasty of Bengal
and is repeatedly shown engrossed in his study. Tridib does not merely happen to be a scholar of
Ancient history writing a thesis on the lost Sena Empire, his’ is indeed a voice that bears the
burden of a historical vision. Right from the beginning of the novel there is in him a deep
consciousness about the enterprise of knowledge. He not only collects esoteric bits of knowledge,
the range of which stretches from East European Jazz to the intricate sociological patterning of the
Incas religiously but also shapes his own and the narrator’s orientation towards it. Tridib is a
stock character Bengali literature and folklore is replete with. Images of such figures abound, so
whether it is the distant uncle in Satyajeet Ray’s film Agantuk or as Meenakshi Mukherjee in the
essay ‘Maps and Mirrors: Coordinates of Meaning in The Shadow Lines’ points out the ‘traveller/
imaginist reminding the Bengali reader occasionally of the Ghana –da stories by Premananda Mitra
and …Pheluda stories by Satyajeet Ray in both of which a boy is held spell bound by a somewhat
older person’s encyclopedic knowledge of other lands and civilizations.’
The narrator gets his first lessons on the business of scholarship from Tridib-he is presented with
a Bartholomew’s Atlas as a childhood gift which remains a symbol of this transference and which
resurfaces years later in the author’s hostel room in Delhi-thus signifying a lasting influence that
Tridib has on the narrator and the uncle’s symbolic gift of the worlds to travel in and the eyes to see
them with. That he receives Tridib’s gift of this knowledge thereafter becomes a kind of etanarrative
that the author will subsequently want to break out of and interrogate. However there is another
aspect of Tridib that the author shows- that of a glib talker. Tridib, the eccentric uncle of the
narrator has an audience in the people of the addas in the Calcutta neighbourhood of Gole Park.
Nivedita Bagchi in the essay ‘The Process of Validation In Relation To Materiality and Historical
Reconstruction in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines ’ defines the Bengali word adda which is seen
as the place of dissemination of the historian’s (Tridib’s) discourse. According to Bagchi the Bengali
word describes ‘long, leisurely conversations within a group of people which characterises a
Bengali day.’ She further states that the acknowledgement of the Bengali community within the
narrative is a feature of the oral narrative where the narrative is the secret of the community which
further links to the idea that narratives are connected to an identifiable group. He takes on the
center stage in these public street corners where people pour over chai and talk quotidian concerns.
He is more of a performer than historian in these spaces. The Tridib of the addas exaggerates and
manipulates information for an audience that listens to him in rapt attention with their mouths
gaped in awe of his knowledge. There is another space that Tridib occupies, that of his book lined
quiet room in his family house in Calcutta. The narrator confesses ‘it was that Tridib that I liked
the best: I was a bit unsure of the Tridib of the street corners.’ Tha’mma, too thinks this behaviour
at the addas as totally abominable and a way of making his time stink. What is it about Tridib of the
addas that is distrustful? The book in describing Tridib of the addas and his behavioural pattern
there and by ascribing to him certain statements (he lies to the audience about his just concluded
trip to London) only highlights a very important issue that the book deals with: that of the seat of
the Historian and how he occupies it in disseminating knowledge. It is also significant to note
that here we come into contact with two facets of a historian: the diligent, quiet fact-finder and the
powerful, loud mouthed one in public sphere and through the latter the book goes on to throw
some questions about the political role of history.
The narrator gets a lesson in combining precision and imagination as a strategy of gaining
knowledge from Tridib. The employment of imagination being necessary because a historian does
not and cannot possibly has an access to all the relevant sites of the event all the time. The time
and space of a historically important event may be removed many throws from the historian in
which case the quality of his mastery on the event becomes dependent on his own imagination or
either the imagination of historians before him. The compound word precise-imagination also becomes
a paradox in bringing the limiting, exacting precision to bear upon the soaring, sky kissing
imagination. The perspicuity of vision that the narrator cultivates thereafter by this lesson is

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