Page 71 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Unit 7: Amitav Ghosh: Shadow Lines—Narrative Techniques

stage arrives the reader is catapulted to different places and times at breath taking tempo. The Notes
past, present and future combine and melt together erasing any kind of line of demarcation. Such
lines are present mainly in the shadows they cast. There is no point of reference to hold on to.
Thus the going away - the title of the first section of the novel - becomes coming home - the title
of the second section. These two titles could easily have been exchanged. The narrator is very
much like the chronicler Pimen in Pushkin’s drama Boris Godonow. But unlike Pushkin’s Pimen
this one is not a passive witness to all that happens in his presence, and absence. The very soul of
the happenings, he is the comma which separates yet connects the various clauses of life lived in
Calcutta, London, Dhaka and elsewhere.
The story starts about thirteen years before the birth of the narrator and ends on the night preceding
his departure from London back to Delhi. He spends less than a year in London, researching for
his doctorate work, but it is a London he knew very well even before he puts a step on its
pavements. Two people have made London so very real to him - Tridib, the second son of his
father’s aunt, his real mentor and inspirer, and Ila his beautiful cousin who has travelled all over
the world but has seen little compared to what the narrator has seen through his mental eye.
London is also a very real place because of Tridib’s and Ila’s friends - Mrs. Price, her daughter
May, and son Nick. Like London comes alive due to the stories related by Ila and Tridib, Dhaka
comes alive because of all the stories of her childhood told to him by his incomparable grandmother
who was born there. The tragedy is that though the narrator spends almost a year in London and
thus has ample opportunity to come to terms with its role in his life, it is Dhaka which he never
visits that affects him most by the violent drama that takes place on its roads, taking Tridib away
as one of its most unfortunate victims. Violence has many faces in this novel - it is as much present
in the marriage of Ila to Nick doomed to failure even before the “yes” word was spoken, as it is
present on the riot torn streets of Calcutta or Dhaka. But the speciality of this novel is that this
violence is very subtle till almost the end. When violence is dealt with, the idea is not to describe
it explicitly like a voyeur but to look at it to comprehend its total senselessness.
Self-Assessment
1. Choose the correct options:
(i) The Shadow Lines is the story of the ............... .
(a) War (b) Family and Friend
(c) Politics (d) None of these
(ii) The story starts about ............... .
(a) Fifteen years before the birth of the Narrator
(b) Thirteen years before the birth of the Narrator
(c) After the assassinations of Indira Gandhi
(d) None of these
(iii) Mrs. Price is the daughter of ............... .
(a) May (b) Nick
(c) Tridib (d) None of these.

7.2 Summary

• The story revolves around the narrator’s search to find out about Tridib’s death which the
family wants to forget but the narrator cannot because Tridib was his mentor and had given
him ‘words to travel in’ and ‘eyes to see them with’. Through Tridib, the narrator learns using
his imagination with precision. The novel also gives us the views of the various characters like
Tha’mma, Ila, May, Jethamoshai and Robi and what boundaries mean to each of them.

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