Page 70 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Indian Writings in Literature

Notes school, and of a glimpse of a mob in Park Circus.” I have never experienced such a sound, but
God, how these sentences get under the skin, how easy it is to hear that sound, how the heart beats
faster on reading these sentences!
There are many other reasons why “The Shadow Lines” is so special a book. It has many of the
characteristics that elevate a book to the level of unforgettable literature. First of all there is this
simple language. These days when doing acrobatics with words and language has become
equivalent to paving new directions in the literary scene, it is heart warming to read a book in
which straight forward language is used to convey what the author wants to say. And what
messages are conveyed, what new ideas are unearthed! I am one of those readers who likes
reading because of the power inherent in words. Whenever I read a new book, I always hope that
the book contains sentences and words - at least a couple of them - that illuminate the heart and
mind for a long time after reading, sentences which simply make life easier to live. There is a
treasure of such sentences to be discovered in “The Shadow Lines”. For example, look at what
Ghosh says about knowledge and ignorance: “...he knew the clarity of that image in his mind was
merely the seductive clarity of ignorance; an illusion of knowledge created by a deceptive weight
of remembered detail.” And there is this most beautiful of all sentences I have read for a long, long
time - “And yet, when I look at her (the grandmother), lying crumpled in front of me, her white
thinning hair matted with her invalid’s sweat, my heart fills with love for her - love and that other
thing, which is not pity but something else, something the English language knows only in its
absence - ruth - a tenderness which is not merely pity and not only love.” It is this tenderness of
feeling, this feeling of “ruth” of which the novel is so full of, which moves me. For all the violence
that plays the central role in the novel, it is this abundant feeling of tenderness in the novel that
the narrator feels for the people, for Tridib, for Ila, for the grandmother, for May, for Robi, that has
remained with me. Ghosh is also a humorous writer. It is serious humour. Single words hide a
wealth of meaning, for example, the way Tridib’s father is always referred to as Shaheb, Ila’s
mother as Queen Victoria, or the way the grandmother’s sister always remains Mayadebi without
any suffix denoting the relationship. Also look at this passage that describes how the grandmother
reacts on discovering that her old Jethamoshai is living with a Muslim family in Dhaka. “She
exchanged a look of amazement with Mayadebi. Do you know, she whispered to Robi, there was
a time when that old man was so orthodox that he wouldn’t let a Muslim’s shadow pass within
ten feet of his food? And look at him now, paying the price of his sins.” ”Ten feet! Robi explained
to May in hushed whisper, marvelling at the precision of the measurement. How did he measure?
He whispered back at my grandmother. Did he keep a tape in his pocket when he ate?” ”No, no”,
my grandmother said impatiently. “In those days many people followed rules like that; they had
an instinct”. ”Trignometry!”, Robi cried in a triumphant aside to May. “They must have known
Trignometry. They probably worked it out like a sum: if the Muslim is standing under a twenty-
two foot building, how far is his shadow? You see, we’re much cleverer than you: bet your
grandfather couldn’t tell when a German’s shadow was passing within ten feet of his food.” As
I read Robi’s comments, I laughed, at first. Then I had to swallow hard at centuries old injustice these
words were trying to hint at. Finally, another important reason the novel succeeds is because the
main characters are very real, almost perfectly rounded. I specially love the grandmother. She is the
grandmother many of us recognise. In her fierce moral standards, spartan outlook of life, intolerance
of any nonsense - real and imagined, she is as real as any patriarch or matriarch worth the name.
And there is this very loveable character of the narrator. It is that of a boy who warms your heart, it
is that of a man who knows and has lost love - more than once in his life - and thus makes you feel
like hugging him close to your heart. On all scores Amitav Ghosh’s “The Shadow Lines” is a novel
which must be read and re-read, thought about and discussed upon. It is a book that stays with the
reader long after the last page has been turned and the light has been switched off.
How might Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh be considered a post colonial novel? looking at you
quietly from across the table by the time the story telling is over and silence descends. Before that

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