Page 72 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Indian Writings in Literature

Notes • The narrator also uses the technique of going back and forth in time which keeps the interest
of the reader built in. Such moments are rare indeed these days when one takes a book in the
hand and is completely captivated by it after reading the first few pages. That happened to
me recently when I started reading “The Shadow Lines” by Amitav Ghosh.
• “The Shadow Lines,” Ghosh’s second novel, was published in 1988, four years after the
sectarian violence that shook New Delhi in the aftermath of the Prime minister, Indira Gandhi’s
assassination. Written when the homes of the Sikhs were still smouldering, some of the most
important questions the novel probes are the various faces of violence and the extent to
which its fiery arms reach under the guise of fighting for freedom. Ghosh’s treatment of
violence in Calcutta and in Dhaka is valid even today, more than ten years after its publication.
What has happened recently in Kosovo and in East Timor show that answers still evade the
questions which Ghosh poses about freedom, about the very real yet non-existing lines
which divide nations, people, and families.
• The Shadow Lines is the story of the family and friends of the nameless narrator who for all
his anonymity comes across as if he is the person looking at you quietly from across the table
by the time the story telling is over and silence descends. Before that stage arrives the reader
is catapulted to different places and times at breath taking tempo. The 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.
• 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.
• Thus the way “violence” is brought into the picture extraordinarily sensitive: The narrator
says, talking of the day riots tore Calcutta apart in 1964, “I opened my mouth to answer and
found I had nothing to say. All I could have told them was of the sound of voices running
past the walls of my 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!
• 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.”
• How apt is the title of the novel “The shadow lines”? Contribution of colonialism in The
shadow line. Comment- ‘Postcolonial perspectives of Amitav Ghosh’s Novels’ Comment on
the title of Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace? What is the significance of mirrors and reflections
in the Shadow Lines? In what form does society appear in shadow lines? Can anyone point
out instances in the book, Shadow Lines, where the author makes references to historical
events character analysis of grandmother.
• How apt is the title of the novel “The shadow lines”? Contribution of colonialism in The
shadow line. Comment- ‘Postcolonial perspectives of Amitav Ghosh’s Novels’ Comment on

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