Page 29 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

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

or banal. ‘We could never create history’, she feels. But she is blithely ignorant of the enormity of Notes
Indian culture or even the little sense of being an India.
She further avers about the westerners and some western things great in her eyes:
‘At least they knew they were a part of the most important events of their time—the war and
fascism, all the things you read about today in history books, That’s why there’s a kind of heroism
even in their pointless deaths; that’s why they’re remembered and that’s why you’ve led us here.
You wouldn’t understand the exhilaration of events like that—nothing really important ever
happens where you are.’
Tridib in the novel acts as a link between India and England as he invariably figures in one place
or the other. He is a character of a different hue. Blessed though with an impressive personality,
paradoxically he is a carefree man who does a little for a good or proper settlement in life.
Tha’mma is critical of him because of this. But the fact remains that he is a darling of many.
He wins the hand of a foreign Memshaib in his nonsensical, carefree and innocent manner. Though
in one of the letters he gives an erotic description of a couple in a wartime bomb devasted London
theatre, there is no evil growing in his mind.
He remains a powerful factor and is an advocate of the frontier free world where one has as much
of a chance to live in harmony and love as another. And his million-dollar story about a man in
love with the woman across the seas become immortal in the pages of The Shadow Lones.
‘Ah, said Tridib. That’s the trick, you see. It happened everywhere, wherever you wish it. It was
an old story, the best story in Europe, told when Europe was a better place, a place without
borders and countries; it was a German story in what we call Germany, Nordic in the north,
French in France, Welsh in Wales, Cornish in Cornwall: it was the story of a hero called Tristan,
a very sad story, about a man without a country, who fell in love with a woman-across-the-seas....’
History has proved this time and again. Kargil united India after a long lull. The people were
swept by a feeling of nationalism and everybody came forward to help the hardy soldiers in kargil
in any way he could.

The Shadow Lines gets across one fact of life very well that external threat unites
the people. The personal, social and political differences sink in the face of a
national tragedy or when the existence is at stake.

In the past when the tyranny and operation of the British became too much, the mighty empire
was challenged with an outbreak of the revolt of 1857 and partition of Bengal united the whole
India in the same way.
In the novel, Mayadebi experiences the same thing when she goes to London for a brief period
during 1940s on the eve of her husband’s posting there. She narrates her experience. The couple of
months she had spent in London had been so exciting-the atmosphere had changed so dramatically.
People were becoming friendlier, in the shops, on the streets, she couldn’t help noticing. Everyone
had become so much nicer. Often when she and Tridib were out walking, people would pat him
on the head and stop to have a little chat with her; the shopkeepers would ask her where and how
her husband was, and when was to have his operation. But it wasn’t just-everyone was being
friendly with everyone else. There was a kind of exhilaration in the air.
Mayadebi says that she had been lucky. She had been able to watch England coming alive and she
would have missed that fact if she had not been there.
Tresawsen adds saying, ‘People don’t believe me, but it’s the same over there—in Germany though
of course in a much more grotesque way. It was odd coming back here—like stepping through a
looking glass.
The supporters of universal civilization assert that the unification of the earth’s inhabitants is
neither a remote utopian vision nor, ultimately, a matter of choice. It constitutes the next inescapable

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 23