Very few authors have a way of threading beautiful narratives with equally awe-inspiring travelling experiences. He is one of the few who merges his love for travelling cultures, climates and communities together, this is the story of Amitav Ghosh. Despite presenting a calm and composed demeanour, the words penned by the small, spectacled, white-haired Ghosh exude anything but tranquillity.
As a child, Ghosh experienced a rapid upbringing due to his father’s diplomatic postings, residing in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Educated at the Doon School in northern Uttarakhand, he crossed paths with Vikram Seth, another celebrated Indian writer. He was briefly involved within the world of Journalism before turning his entire attention to the written word. He pursued anthropology in New Delhi, Oxford, and Alexandria. His debut novel, “The Circle of Reason,” published in 1986, delves into the narrative of a suspected Indian terrorist. He gained great attention and became a household name with his second novel, The Shadow Lines (1988), but it was the Ibis Trilogy which includes Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), and Flood of Fire (2015) which prompted people including academicians view him as a serious author. The books delved in the opium trade of the British and extensively commented upon colonialism.
Ghosh now spends his time actively writing on various complex issues such as personal and national identities, historical fiction/non-fiction, climate change, etc. He divides his time in Brooklyn, New York City, USA and his homes in Calcutta and Goa. Both the homes and environments adds another layer of dimension to his intellect and eventually his writing. He seems more attached to his Calcutta home though, “Calcutta is the place that I have the most connection with of any in the world. My family home is here, my mother, my sister live here. But I find cities increasingly hard to take and Calcutta, especially, has become a very hard place to work. The level of ambient noise is unbelievable,” he says in an interview with David Pilling, Writer with Financial Times Asia. He even got the chance to visit his ancestral home from his mother’s side in Ulpur village of Gopalgunj district last year during his attendance at the Dhaka Lit Festival. His heartwarming post on Instagram told the story of his ancestors. He revealed that his father’s family was from Bangladesh. “Strange to think that this is the only place on earth where I can claim indigeneity (my father’s ancestral village having been swallowed up by the mighty Padma River in the mid 19th century)”, Ghosh wrote.
Ghosh spends months and years researching for his book and travel extensively to the lands on which the books are based on, to provide his writing the tinge of authenticity it needs. Before writing The Hungry Tide, in which the main character is an American scientist studying dolphins, he travelled to the Sundarbans and met with ‘one of the world’s leading cetologists’. His travels to China has further aggravated his adventurous eating habits, for his book “Sea of Poppies”, he travelled to Mauritius and met with the ancestors of the Indian labourers who had years ago gone to the land to work on sugar plantations. In an interview with Harper Collins, he stated that, “These travel encounters enriched my narratives in a number of ways. First, they gave me a deep appreciation for the beauty and diversity of the region. Second, they helped me understand the complex history of the region, including the history of colonialism and indentured labour. Third, they gave me a sense of the human cost of globalisation.”
His work has even garnered appraisal from fellow complex writers such as Salman Rushdie, in his Vintage Book of Indian writing, Rushdie says ‘Amitav Ghosh’s most impressive achievement to date is the non-fiction study of India and Egypt, ‘In An Antique Land’. It may be (or it may not) that his greatest strength will turn out to be as an essayist of this sort’. However, the last part was refuted and Amitav Ghosh turned his essays into full fledged books with complex thematic writings and explorations. Ghosh has established himself as a formidable voice in the realm of novel writing. His fiction has garnered widespread acclaim, encompassing a diverse range of genres. From science fiction with “The Calcutta Chromosome” (1995), to historical narratives like “The Glass Palace” (2000), and explorations of ecology as seen in “The Hungry Tide” (2005), Ghosh’s literary repertoire is multifaceted and rich in depth.
He is a man concerned with his politics, often highlighting the same in his writings. One big example of that is his 2016 work The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable,” Amitav Ghosh explores our collective failure to comprehend the implications of climate change and to respond appropriately, spanning the realms of storytelling, history, and politics. Concluding the book with a tone of cautious optimism and hope, Ghosh highlights the urgent need for action in the face of this global crisis. He comments on the issue again with his books The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis”and “The Hungry Tide”. “Climate change is not just a problem of the future but also of the past”, says Amitav Ghosh, continues to state that “In general, when we think about the climate crisis or the planetary crisis, we always think of it in terms of the future, we think of ourselves as being in a completely new era “But in fact, this era is completely rooted in the past. The continuities are so clear…going back as far as the 17th century. These continuities are completely clear to anyone who takes a good look,” as told to Press Trust of India (PTI) in a Zoom interview. He has now become an influential voice for Climate Change, especially within the literary world, often writing about the issues and merging it with his quintessential ethnographic and even sometimes historical accounts.
The 67 year old Padma Shri awarded was also conferred the 54th Jnanpith Award in 2018, continues to deep dive into new realities, exploring historical regions, new landscapes and commenting on various politics that many often would shy away from. He may look like a quiet man, he is indeed a force to be reckoned with, who in his own words states that he came into writing due to his love for words and his to love to put them together.
References
- https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2024-02-12/q-a-amitav-ghosh-smoke-and-ashes
- https://indianexpress.com/article/books-and-literature/climate-crisis-in-the-making-since-17th-century-says-amitav-ghosh-7591398/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitav_Ghosh
- https://www.outlooktraveller.com/editors-picks/discovering-worlds-in-words
- https://www.ft.com/content/0e63a974-bc14-11e4-b6ec-00144feab7de
- https://www.thedailystar.net/daily-star-books/news/the-promises-and-pitfalls-decolonial-thinking-3555141
- Lauret, Sabine. “Anthropology in the Writing: Amitav Ghosh’s Craft of the Novel.” Pages 137-153.
