Page 26 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Indian Writings in Literature Gowher Ahmad Naik, Lovely Professional University

Notes
Unit 2: Amitav Ghosh; Shadow Lines:
Detailed Study of Part—I (A Bird’s Eye View)

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
2.1 Shadow Lines—A Bird’s Eye View
2.2 Themes
2.3 Summary
2.4 Key-Words
2.5 Review Questions
2.6 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Have a bird’s eye view of the Shadow Lines.
• Discuss the novel Shadow Line.

Introduction

The Shadow Lines is a stunning novel—amusing, sad, wise and international in scope. It chronicles
the story of two families, one in Calcutta the other in London from the outbreak of World War II
to modern times. Inter-alia, The Shadow Lines is also a book about the prodigious imagination of
its narrator who is the chronicler of the lives around him and presents the events with amazing
insight, sometimes skipping from city to city in the same breath and recreating events that happened
before he was born with marvelous accuracy and about the lines and borders that are being drawn
world over to divide and isolate one man from the other.

2.1 Shadow Lines—A Bird’s Eye View

The Shadow Lines among other things deals with the Narrator’s growth from a tiny world,
reverent of his mentor to a matured and grown up man of the same age as Tridib and in London
too. So great is the influence of Tridib that he warily or unwarily copies him and toes his line. He
does his Ph.D. on the textile trade between India and England in 19th century as Tridib did on
Sena dynasty of Bengal. Their field remains the same viz. history.
Tridib, his guide, fires his imagination and instills a passionate zeal to learn to travel and take a
flight into imagination without actually leaving the ground. Thus before Tridib left him forever he
had nurtured the things taught by him so well that they became the corner stone of his itinerary.
He had imagined everything so well and precisely that the whole world existed in right contours
and forms in corner of his mind so that whenever he needed any information or recollect the past
he just had to strain his brain and things would get going for him.
Traveling in his imagination with seriousness and precision handed him many a gift. He was a
well-traveled and well-read man. The desire to read, analyze and reason had well developed in
him. Whether it was spotting Prices house in London or India House or capturing Nick alive in his
mind and growing with him in his thoughts for 17 long years he would never fail. He had learned
to use his imagination pretty well and differed from Ila and his grandmother who were land-

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