Page 19 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

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

as a desert in a flash flood. It is this that sets apart the thousand million people who inhabit the Notes
subcontinent from the rest of the world-not language, not food, not music-it is the special quality
of loneliness that grows out of the fear of the war between oneself and one’s image in the mirror.
Perhaps this oblivion on Tha’mma’s part is tantamount to a deliberate non-admission of facts
that are deeply disturbing. The oblivion of Tha’mma therefore becomes her survival strategy..
Nationalism too gets redefined in various ways through experience. Whereas the great historical
project of nationalism first undermines community (here the Bengali Community that is common
between the East and the West Bengal.) to formulate nation, it then ‘narrates the nation.’ The
theorist Bhaba sees this project as comprising of the creation of ‘the narratives … that signify
a sense of ‘nationness’: the…pleasures of one’s hearth and the… terror of the space of the
other.’ This idea however in the context of the Indian subcontinent gets problematised because
the otherness being talked of has to be created rather than merely alluded to. People in the
newly formed nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh are prompted through narration ‘language,
signifiers, textuality, rhetoric’ to create a difference where none exists. Therefore what the book
looks at is the createion of artificial difference between two nations that are inherently one.
Another subtle manner in which the author exposes this strategy is by describing the experience
of an Indian (Ila) outside India (London). While in London, she inhabits that space where the
India-Pakistan-Bangladesh differentiation melts down. During their visit to London she takes
Robi and the narrator out for dinner ‘at my (Ila’s) favourite Indian restaurant.’ As it turns out
the ‘Indian place’ that she has been talking about is a small Bangladeshi place in Clapham! A
seemingly insignificant incident ridicules the intense feeling of difference that these two countries
otherwise harbour and how these differences are reduced to a naught if viewed from a space
that is outside the two. So these boundaries that are created due to political reasons seem
tangible enough to be called lines but if analysed closely, fade away like shadows.
3. Structure of the Novel
Everyone lives in a story...because stories are all there are to live in. The structure of The Shadow
Lines comprises of two important characteristics:
That of a non-linear structure and a digressive narrative. The Shadow Lines is a novel without a
defined Beginning, Middle and an End, instead it relies on a loop-structure of a story- within
a –story. This is in turn linked to the second characteristic of digressive narrative. This interferes
with what is called the ‘unity of theme and action’ as a hallmark of good writing as perceived
by the Western poetics. This novel is essentially told through stories. It is due to this fact that
we can say that the narrator is more of a listener than speaker. His method of narration is in
‘bringing together’ available versions rather than telling new stories. Out of this coming together
of varied and contradictory versions emerges a better version that is more representative and
inclusive. It is without one definable speaker (see the note on history). Both these elements of
an unnamed narrator and a non-linear progression are more characteristic of Indian than
Western poetics. Indian works have also traditionally not used the Western cause-effect
structures, the links in the stories are non-linear and so is their progression. The western ideal
of a palpable beginnings, middle and end is not present in the Indian works. A story as seen in
this novel is a form that is not moving towards a preconceived culmination but as being
constituted of several voices, all of which serve to make it richer. The narrator tells the story
from various vantage points in time and space. Most of the stories begin like jigsaw puzzles
with a limited meaning but conclude with an intelligible pattern. The various parts of a jigsaw
puzzle or the incomplete story are supplied by various characters. The narrator is important to
the extent of bringing all of them together a task enormously important and without which in
spite of their existence these versions at best remain partially meaningful. In order to evoke an
insight their coming together is inevitable. The structure of the novel that brings together many
stories is also important in that the ideas that seek a definition through this novel (like
Nationalism, Citizenry, community etc.) are given a fuller representation through this source
than the partial view given by history and the disruptive and radical one of anecdotes.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 13