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CHAPTER-VI

THE THEME OF DISLOCATION IN THE GLASS PALACE AND

THE HUNGRY TIDE

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Introduction

Amitav Ghosh’s novels reflect his engagement with some of the

serious issues faced by contemporary ex-colonies in Asia and Africa. His

novels The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide are rich with several ideas

such as displacement or dislocation, blurring of boundaries, colonization,

migration, unhousedness, conflict of cultures and rootlessness. In this

chapter an attempt is made to explore of impact of dislocation on the

political, social, psychological and cultural lives of colonized.

Dislocation is a critical term that refers to the occasion of

displacement that occurs as a result of imperial occupation and the

experiences associated with this event. In such context a valid and active

sense of self may be eroded. The phenomenon of displacement may be the

result of transportation from one country to another by slavery or

imprisonment, by invasion and settlement or a consequence of willing or

unwilling movement from a known to unknown location. The sense of self

may also have been destroyed by cultural denigration, the conscious and

unconscious oppression of the indigenous personality and culture by a

supposedly superior racial or cultural model. The term dislocation is used to

describe the experience of those who have willingly moved from ‘home’ to

the colonial margin, but it affects all those who, as a result of colonialism,

have been placed in a location that, because of colonial hegemonic practices,

needs, in a sense to be reinvented in language, in narrative and in myth.

Dislocation results in hybridity. Heidegger’s term unheimlich or

unheimlichkeit, literal meaning being ‘unhousedness’ or ‘not-at- homeness’,

is also used to describe the experience of dislocation. Dislocation becomes

most obvious in the attempt to convert the uncolonized ‘space’ into

colonized ‘place’. The alienation of vision and the crisis in self-image which

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displacement produces are phenomena common to all post colonial

literatures in English.

Dislocation may act as a curse for some and a boon in disguise for

others. It may help to exploit one’s generative power. Therefore, some

Caribbean critics such as Wilson Harris and Edouad Glissant suggest:

“dislocation is the key to a release of a distinctive form of cultural energy”

(Ashcroft et al Key Concepts 74). Dislocation may lead to evolution of

language also. Because the words to describe the new place adequately

cannot be found in the language brought with the early settlers, new terms

must necessarily be invented. The resulting restructuring generates new and

powerful forms of culture. Disasporic communities formed by forced or

voluntary migration may all be affected by the process of dislocation and

regeneration too. Finally, dislocation in a different sense, is also a feature of

all invaded colonies where indigenous or original cultures are, if not

annihilated, often literally dislocated i.e. moved off what was their territory.

They are metaphorically dislocated, placed into a hierarchy that sets their

culture aside and ignores its institutions and values in favour of the values

and practices of the colonizing culture. Many postcolonial texts

acknowledge the psychological and personal dislocations that result from

this cultural denigration and it is against this dislocating process that many

modern decolonizing struggles are instituted. Dislocation, in the sense of

willing movement from one place to another, is not an altogether new

phenomenon. The story of Ben Yiju and his slave Bomma in In an Antique

Land exemplifies this. The dislocation, before the arrival of colonial rule,

was progressive, synchretic, and mutual. But the dislocation resulted from

the imperial occupation has more devastating impact on the psychological,

political and cultural lives of the colonies. This chapter aims at exploring the

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impact of dislocation on political, social, religious, and cultural life of the

individuals, families and nation.

The Theme of Dislocation in The Glass Palace

The theme of dislocation is one of the major themes in The Glass

Palace. Rukmini Bhaya Nair says, “The Glass Palace is a narrative of

colonial displacement” (162). So also, Shubha Tiwari writes “It is a novel

about many places, war and displacement, exile and rootlesseness” (103).

The Glass Palace brings together history, fiction, autobiographical records

and memories and thereby dislocates the genres also. In this novel a

historical event leads to a series of connected dislocations. Ghosh has stated

that the issue of how the past is to be remembered lies at the heart of The

Glass Palace. Ghosh seeks an understanding of the past to have a bearing

upon the present. The past is remembered not as a dead, remote period, but

as flowing on into the present postcolonial situations of multi ethnic,

pluralist societies, and complex cultural diversities of a persistent political

struggle for democratic and egalitarian system. Therefore study is

undertaken to explore in detail, the physical, political, psychological social

and cultural dislocations in The Glass Palace.

The Glass Palace is a saga of many families, their lives and their

connection with one another with a sweeping historical background. It

begins with the introduction of an Indian orphan who is transported to

Burma by accident. The name of this character is Rajkumar. As a child,

Rajkumar is remarkable for his exploring spirit, keen perception and his

ability to take calculated risks. Rajkumar works in a tea stall of a matronly

lady Ma Cho. Once he lands in Mandalay, his lifelong search for places and

people begins. He is a complete destitute in an alien city with absolutely no

acquaintances. Because of his skill in the art of survival in a difficult world

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Rajukumar gradually succeeds in becoming, with the loyal help of his

friends Doh Say, Saya John and others, a rich and powerful member of the

Indian community in Burma. Thereafter, he tracks down Dolly, the devoted

maid servant of queen Supalayat, with whom he had fallen in love at first

sight as a boy during the British takeover of Mandalay. Dolly now lives in

the distant Indian city of Ratnagiri with the exiled king Thebaw, queen

Supalyat and the princesses. There Dolly has made a lifelong friend of Uma,

the wife of an Indian District Commissioner assigned to look after the king

Thebaw and his family. Through Uma’s contact, Rajukumar finally marries

Dolly. Then the rest of the chapters of the Glass Palace account the

interaction between three families: of Dolly and Rajkumar in Burma, of

Uma and her brother in India and Saya John- Rajkumar’s mentor and his son

Mathew in Malaysia. Interspersed in the story is the harrowing experience of

war between Japan and Britain with its implications. After the introduction

of Rajkumar, the readers are introduced to the invasion of British army.

Their invasion proceeds so smoothly as to surprise even its planners. The

imperial fleet crossed the border of Burma. The Burmese army surrendered

to that of British without much resistance within a few a days. In The Glass

Palace, the repercussions of this war are tracked. The novel ends with a

snapshot of Aung San Suu Kyi in 1996, the sixth year of her house arrest

under the generals and revelation of Uma’s and Rajkumar’s nature of

relationship or living arrangement by Jaya, Uma’s grand niece.

The novel opens with the echoing sound of canon along the silver

curve of the river Irrawddy. The British cast eyes on the wealth of the golden

land, Burma. They started transporting teak wood, oil, and gems illegally.

When they were informed to pay the fine, they refused it and put pressure to

yield to the British ultimatum. When the Queen Supayalat opposed the

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Birtish they decided to invade Burma and exploit the wealth of the country.

The imperial fleet crossed the border on 14th Nov, 1885. As the Burmese

army could not match the British army, without informing the king Thebaw,

it surrendered. The war lasted for just fourteen days. Consequently, the

Mandalay fort with long roads, canals, gardens, rooms with gilded pillars,

polished floors, illuminating vast hall, and mirrored ceilings and with all the

richness in Burma was looted by the soldiers and public. “Everywhere

people were intently at work, men and women, armed with axes and das;

they were hacking at gem studded Ook offering boxes; digging patterned

gemstones from the marble floor; using fish hooks to pry the ivory inlays

from lacquered sadaik chests” (The Glass Palace 33). The Queen was

witnessing this horrifying scene blindly “A day before, she could have had a

commoner imprisoned for so much as looking her directly in the face”(33).

Thus, the dethroned King, the Queen, the Princesses and entourage

were exiled to Madras, then finally to Ratnagiri. After the dethronement the

King experienced a lot of humiliation. The King was asked to move in

bullockcarts, yethas, the commonest vehicles on Mandalay’s streets. When

the king was about to step in, he noticed that the canopy set to the carriage

“had seven tiers, the number allotted to a nobleman, not the nine due to a

king” (43).

In Ratnagiri the king and his entourage were accommodated in

Outram House, on a hilltop. It was quite away from the centers of

population. The Outram house found itself besieged by neglect. “The

bungalow had no sewerage and no water supply. The toilets had to be

emptied daily of night soil, by sweepers; water had to be carried up in

buckets from a nearby stream” (81). Due to the outbreak of plague the

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sweepers had stopped coming. Even if some came, Dolly found it very

difficult to persuade them to stay:

The trouble was that there was never enough money to pay their

salaries. The King and Queen had sold almost everything they had

brought over from Mandalay; their treasure was gone, all except for a

few keep sakes and mementos (81).

Thus, struck by the shock the King never went out of the Outram

House throughout the exile. The King recollects how his ancestors were

feared and respected and laments over the current position. The Queen

harshly criticizes the colonial mentality by stating that “We who ruled the

richest land in Asia are now reduced to this. This is what they have done to

us; this is what they will do to all of Burma” (88). The Queen says that the

imperial powers had not only dislocated them but they would dislocate the

entire Burma also. The Queen expresses anger: “they took our kingdom,

promising roads and railways and ports, this is how it will end. In a few

decades the wealth will be gone- all the gems, the timber and oil and then

they too will leave” (88).

The Queen forecasts that because of colonial occupation and their

dethronement only destitution and ignorance, famine and despair will remain

in golden Burma. In the course of twenty year exile the King’s First Princess

marries Sawant, a coachman and the Second Princess elopes with a Burmese

commoner. The King sends a note of bringing back his second daughter,

when she does not return, “he fell to the floor, clutching his left arm” (205).

The doctors arrived diagnosed and announced he had suffered a heart attack.

Ten days later the King died in 1916 in India. The colonial rule did not

transport the King’s body to Burma with the fear that the body might

become a rallying point in Burma. The saddest part is that even Her Majesty

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flatly refused to attend the King’s funeral. The First Princess in a letter

written to Dolly writes that “no one could believe that this was the funeral of

Burma’s last King!” (205). After the death of the King, the Queen returns to

Rangoon. She spends last years of her life spending money on charities and

feeding monks. The Queen died in 1925 six years after her return from

Ratnagiri. Thus the colonial occupation dislocated the Royal Family from

political power never to retrieve it again.

The dislocation is not confined to the Royal family and its entourage.

People from colonized India were transported to Burma to work in oil camps

and other menial works. On the way to the exiled places the King spotted

several Indian faces along the water front. He wondered:

What vast, what an comprehensible power, to move people in such

large numbers from one place to another- emperors, kings, farmers,

dock workers, soldiers, coolies, policemen why? Why this furious

movement- people taken from one place to another, to pull rickshaws,

to sit blind in exile? (50)

The colonial rule was not solely responsible for all the displacement

and exploitation. The greedy native people like Baburao from Guntur and

Rajkumar supplied work force to the British. These labourers were

contracted for cheap rate. Many of them died on the way itself. On the

voyage the women were sexually exploited. For instance, Ilongo’s mother

was sexually used by Rajakumar on the voyage from Madras to Rangoon.

These indentured labours were living in the teak camps, oil camps and

rubber plantation with all the hazards. The opinion of Mathew, son of John

Saya, exemplifies the hardship faced by the plantation workers. Uma went to

meet her friend Dolly at Morningside Estate, in Malaya. When she went

with Mathew to have a look at rubber plantation she was struck to see

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similarity, size, height and branching off at the same height of rubber plants.

So she asked Mathew how it was possible. Mathew replied that different

people express different opinions. “But the tappers know better. They have a

saying you know every rubber tree in Malaya was paid for with an Indian

life” (233). This opinion of people throws light on the cruel, exploitative

nature of colonizers and neo-colonizers. It seems Ghosh questions here how

can the colonizers represent themselves as civilized and rational. Another

pervasive element that runs through the novel is how the colonized people

and soldiers were used to colonize and exploit other free countries. Uma, an

active political member fighting for the independence of India, knew this

fact, therefore while returning to Calcutta from Rangoon, she tells

Rajkumar: “it is people like you who are responsible for this tragedy. Did

you ever think of the consequences when you were transporting people here?

What you and your kind have done is far worse than the worst deeds of the

Europeans” (247).

The dislocation which resulted from colonial occupation may help

some people to migrate, to form their personality using their skills, and to

prosper in their lives. Ghosh doesn’t squarely say that dislocation causes

only disadvantages. He vividly represents the other side of dislocation. For

instance, Rajukumar, the protagonist, lands in Mandalay. He is from

Chittagong. He develops the sense of belonging at the new place. He

overcomes the challenging barriers. In fact, barriers cause progress in his

case. When he views the fort of Mandalay, instinctively he knows that

orphans like him cannot go there. Yet “no matter what Ma Cho said, he

decided, he would cross the moat, before he left Mandalay, he would find a

way in” (7). This is the spark that sets Rajkumar apart for a life of success,

adventure and prosperity. Rajkumar comes in contact with Saya John who

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shapes his life, a mentor and fatherly figure. Rajkumar matures fast. When

the Birtish dispossessed the King of Burma, Rajkumar is told that the British

wished to control Burma’s territory for wood. From this point he starts

shaping his future plans. He senses wealth in teak. He earns his job at Saya’s

company with his integrity and personality. His professional rise is

impressive. When he decides to take a loan from Saya and establish his

separate timber yard Saya is full of doubts. Now it is Rajkumar’s turn to give

a few tips to Saya. He remarks, “if am ever going to make this business grow

I will have to take a few risks” (130). He has got the tender of supplying teak

sleepers to railway department. With risks he has grown very well. After

achieving success he starts tracking Dolly. With the help of a Bengali in

Rangoon Rajkumar sends a letter to Uma. Uma receives the letter from her

uncle in Rangoon. The letter displays the growth and personality of

Rajkumar. Uma’s uncle writes:

Indeed many members of our Bengali community in Rangoon have

benefitted from his (Rajkumar’s) assistance in one way or another…

He had several other successes and had risen to eminence within the

business community, all this at the age of thirty even before the

marriage. Rajkumar is capable of speaking several languages fluently,

including English and Burmese. He is for all practical purposes, an

illiterate, barely able to sign his own name (134).

In the same letter he further writes. In India a man like Rajkumar

babu would have little chance of gaining acceptance in the society. But it is

possible in Burma. Some of the richest people in the city are Indians and

most of them began with nothing more than a bundle of clothes and a tin

box. Thus, Rajkumar has become a successful and respected businessman.

At this stage he thinks of meeting and marrying Dolly whom he had seen

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when the King Thebaw was exiled. Being a practical businessman Rajkumar

brings a letter for the collector of Ratnagiri from a relative of Uma Dey, the

collector’s wife. Uma who is a good friend of Dolly arranges meeting

between Dolly and Rajkumar. Dolly’s meeting with Rajukumar is of great

value in understanding the kind of a person she is. She is so clear in her

perceptions when Uma coaxes to marry Rajkumar and says that he loves her,

Dolly’s reply is remarkably correct. “He is in love with what he remembers.

That is not me” (161). She tells Rajkumar about her past relationship with

Sawant. Finally Rajkumar and Dolly are married. Dolly returns to Rangoon

with Rajkumar. They are blessed with two sons namely Neeladhri and Dinu.

Rajkumar gets the share in the Morningside Rubber Estate and offers his

children good education in the city’s reputed colleges. Up to this part,

dislocation proves to be advantageous to Rajkumar’s family. After this,

dislocation proves detrimental to Rajkumar and his family.

“Because of racial clash resulted from colonial rule things have

changed in Burma, there is a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, much of it

aimed at Indians” (240). Dolly tells Uma “it is wrong for Burmese to marry

foreigners- that women like me who are married to Indians, are traitors to

their own people” (240). Uma also experiences that every where there are

signs of a widening rift between Indians and their Burmese neighbours.

Students and nationalists agitated to separate Burma’s administration from

that of British India. The root cause for this racial and communal hatred was

the dislocation, the pattern of imperial rule and its policy of dividing its

subjects.

In the meanwhile Rajkumar’s elder son Neeladhari marries Manju,

Umas’s niece. They are blessed with a girl by name Jaya. Rajkumar takes

the risk of staying back in Burma, though Dolly has insisted upon to return

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to India. He gets the tender of supplying teakwood for the construction of

Burma-China road. Rajkumar has accumulated a lot of teakwood in his yard.

Because of Japanese air-raid sound the elephants begin to run in panic. The

piles of logs stumble down on Neel. When Rajkumar reaches the yard, tries

to find his sons body, “the body was almost unrecognizable, crushed by an

immense weight, despite the terrible disfigurement Rajkumar knew that this

was his son and that he was dead” (463). Manju, Dolly and Rajkumar

become very nervous. Manju, Neel’s wife, becomes hysteric, doesn’t care

for her child Jaya. They leave through jungle for India along with thousands

of people. By this time on the other hand Dinu has gone to Malaya to sell off

Mormingside Rubber Estate and he has not informed of his where abouts for

several months. When Manju, Dolly and Rajkumar come to river bank there

are already some thirty thousand refugees waiting and thousands of people

had already gone through wilderness. On their journey they face many

harships and travel without proper food and water. Rajkumar collects some

firewood and sells it for food. “It was their capital, their only asset. At the

end of each day it was this wood Rajkumar bartered for food... wood

brought food more easily than money or valuables” (470). It was the plight

of several thousand refugees. A Nepali woman fell down; her face was

caught in mud. No one was there to help her. Therefore “she died where she

lay, held fast by the mud with her child tied to her back. The baby had

starved to death” (470). A rich woman, who was also going, stripped her silk

sari off and tried to get some food, when she didn’t get anything she put it in

the fire. These are some of the moving incidents. There are several such

episodes.

Rajkumar and Dolly ask Manju to breast feed Jaya when she cries but

“there was nothing in her body- Manju was certain of this but somehow the

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baby would find way of squeezing a few drops from her sore, chafing

breasts” (471). One day Manju fell asleep sitting up with the baby in her

arms. Dolly heard the buzz of insects, flying around her head. They were

vultures they were always seen on people who were too weak to go on or

who were near death. In hysteric and frustrated mood Manju tells Rajkumar,

“Look at you; you have gone on and on and on and on and what has it

brought you?”(472) this remark clearly evokes the consequence of migration

caused by dislocation. When Manju heard that still she had to go a long way

to reach India she jumped into the river and died.When the air raid planes

were flying high up in the sky people “longed for them to come closer (466).

Such is the plight of displaced people.

Rajkumar’s younger son Dinu who had gone to sell off Morningside

Rubber Estate does not return. He stays in Rangoon. Thus, though the

displacement changed Rajkumar’s life initially and helped him to climb the

ladder of social hierarchy, the end result of it is pitiable. Rajkumar’s wife

Dolly returns to Burma again and she joins nunnery and dies there.

Like Rajukumar his mentor Saya John too prospers because of

dislocation but ultimately his life also ends tragically. Saya John is also an

orphan brought up by catholic priests in Malacca. As those priests spoke

many languages Saya John learnt many languages. He married a Chinese

woman in Singapore and has a son by name Mathew. Saya John with his

knowledge and spirit succeeded in teakwood business and later it is who

persuaded Rajkumar to have share in the Morningside Rubber Estate. His

son Mathew was in America for his study. There he fell in love with Elsa

and married her. Due to Uma’s persuasion he came to Malaya. They also got

two children Alison, daughter and Tithmy, son. Till the outbreak of Japanese

and British war their life was happier and more meaningful. After that

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Mathew and Elsa died in an accident. Saya John spent his last days with his

grand daughter Alison in the Morningside. Because of Japanese

advancement into Burma they were leaving for Singapore, Saya John was

caught by the Japanese soldiers. Alison shot herself before she was caught

and killed by the soldiers. Thus, the colourful life of Saya John came to a

tragic end.

Dislocation has resulted in the cultural transformation. When the King

Thebaw and his family were exiled to Ratnagiri, initially the family could

retain Burmese culture. But because of long stay their culture changed:

In their early years in India the Princesses usually dressed in Burmese

clothes- aingyis and htameins. But as the years passed their garments

changed. One day, they appeared in saris- not expensive or sumptuous

saris but the simple green and red cottons of the district. They began

to wear their hair braided and oiled like Ratnagiri school girls (76-77).

The Princesses learnt to speak Marathi and Hindustani as fluently as

any of the town’s folk. The Princesses and Dolly were liked by Ratnagiri

people very much. While they were in Burma the Royal family members

rarely came out and mixed with common people but here in Ratnagiri the

Princesses were playing with their servants’ children. When they were

hungry they would run into their friends’ shacks and ask for something to

eat. When it was too hot to play outside they would fall asleep on the mud

floors of the palm thatched shanties.

The First Princess fell in love with Mohan Sawvant, a coachman well

as the guard of the gate of Outram House. She became pregnant, married

him, gave birth to a child and permanently settled in India. Irony of the

situation is that when Uma discussed with Dolly about the marriage of the

Princesses, Dolly told that in the entire Burma there were only sixteen

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eligible grooms. The Royal family’s custom was to marry within their

houses. Only a man descending of Konbaung blood in both lines was

eligible to marry. Further Dolly told Uma that “the queen would not allow

her daughters to defile their blood by marrying beneath themselves” (115).

But the dislocation or we may also say fate decided something different. The

Second Princess also eloped with a common Burmese and married him.

Both the First Princess and the Second Princess who had been born in

Burma remained in India. After the death of the King they did not go with

their mother to Burma. Displacement causes many challenges all that human

beings can do is try to adjust, compromise, live and above everything else

form relationships. This forming of new bonds, mixing of races and castes is

something that does not stop.

Dislocation or displacement has also blurred racial borders. For

instance, Rajkumar, an Indian married Dolly, a Burmese. So their sons Neel

and Dinu are half Indians and half Burmese. Neel married Manju, an Indian,

Uma’s niece.Their child Jaya half Indian and half Burmese. So also, Saya

John a Malaccan married Chinese woman. Their son Mathew is half-

Malaccan and half-Chinese. Mathew married Elsa, an American. How their

daughter Alison is to be identified in terms of race. Rajkumar’s younger son

Dinu married a Burmese writer, Ma Thin Thin Aye. Thus, the saga of these

families dislocates the concept of racial purity. The race is hybridized and

the concept of pure race is deconstructed. Saya John is a fine illustration of

this breed of hybridity which blurs the national and racial borders. His (Saya

John’s) clothes are Western. He speaks English, Hindustani and Burmese.

His face looks like that of Chinese. Saya himself makes fun of his

amalgamated identity:

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They (Indian soldiers) asked me this very question: how is it that you,

who look Chinese and carry a Christian name, can speak our

language? When I told them how this had come about, they would

laugh and say, you are a Dhobi Ka Kutta- a washerman’s dog- na

ghar ka no ghat ka – You don’t belong any where either by the water

or on land and I’d say, yes, that is exactly what I am (GP 10).

At that point of time Rajkumar joins and laughs. This is laughter of

mutual sharing; Rajkumar is as much washerman’s dog as Saya John. This is

true in the case of several characters in the novel.

Dislocation resulted from colonial occupation and administration has

caused mental colonization of colonized. For instance, Saya does not see the

English as usurpers. For him they are superior. From them he has learnt the

art of using everything for his own benefit. The Europeans for him stand for

efficient exploiters of natural resources. Before the European’s arrival,

Burmese people had the skills but they never thought of hijacking the natural

resources. Until the Europeans came none of them ever thought of using

elephants for the purposes of logging. Their elephants were used only in

pagodas and palaces, for wars and ceremonies. “It was the Europeans who

saw that tame elephants could be made to work for human profit. It was they

who invented everything we see around us in this logging camp. This entire

life is their creation” (74). This is what Saya tells Rajkumar about

Europeans. As his master, Rajkumar, was also “convinced that in the

absence of the Biritish Empire, Burma’s economy would collapse” (306).

Later we see Arjun, Uma’s nephew, boasting of his connections with

westerners. In his mind, he has accepted that the Western style is better and

therefore desirable. Once Arjun told Dinu what and how they lived in the

Academy: “Where religion does not matter, where we can all drink together

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and eat beef and pork and think of nothing of it?” They do so “to enter the

class of officers to prove themselves as well as to their superiors that they

were eligible to be rulers, to qualify as members of elite. To rise above the

lines of their soil”. Further Arjun boasted that “we are the first modern

Indians: The first Indians to be truly free. We eat what we like, we drink

what we like. We are the first Indians who are not weighed down by the

past” (279). Dinu understood that it was through their association “Arjun

and his fellow officers saw themselves as pioneers” (279). Many instances

can be given where the author has shown the cruelty of colonization and its

impact on the lives and mind of the colonized. Decolonization is not easy;

perhaps it is not even possible. As Arjun says: “We rebelled against an

Empire that has shaped everything in our lives: Coloured everything in the

world as we know it. It is a huge, indelible stain, which has tainted all of us.

We cannot destroy it without destroying ourselves” (518).

The theme of how the colonized army and persons were being used to

colonize other free countries runs though this novel. These soldiers were

psychologically dislocated. The colonial administration of colonies led to

appointment of soldiers into the British army in large number. The irony is

that the English lived in their own enclaves and followed their own pursuits:

Most of the day to day tasks of ruling were performed by Indians. The

Indian soldiers were the most trusted and seasoned. They stood by their

masters even during the uprising of 1857. When the British army crossed the

border to invade Burma it was found about two third of the soldiers were

Indian sepoys. Fighting for family and country may instill strength and spirit

of fighting; the Indian soldiers were fighting neither for their family nor for

their country. Therefore, how they could fight for their masters was the

question that puzzled many. When Saya John was in Singapore looking at

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the state of Indian soldiers he enquired “how do you fight an enemy who

fights from neither enmity nor anger, but in submission to orders from

superiors without protest and without conscience?” (30) Saya felt it was just

for the meager amount that they would allow their masters to use them as

they wished. And then he told Rajkumar that “they’re just tools without

minds of their own. They count for nothing” (30). Uma’s followers,

congressman, Burmese students and Buddhist monks attended the marriage

of Manju and Neel. Looking at Arjun one of the Burmese student activists

reminded Arjun what they say in Burma when they see Indian soldiers. “We

say there goes the army of slaves – marching off to catch some more slaves

for their masters” (288). One of the congressmen, looking at Arjun’s

uniform, asked him: “How does it feel for an Indian to be wearing that

uniform” (288). Because of these ridicules from outside and inside

prejudices, distrust and suspicion from the British the Indian soldiers were

caught in conflict. The Glass Palace portrays this conflict and the emergence

of questioning within the Indians, particularly among the educated middle

class. The process of recovering the sense of selfhood was started. This

struggle is developed in the characters of Uma Dey, her husband Bipin

Beharey Dey and Arjun. Bipin Dey and Arjun become aware of their mental

subjugation to the imperial racist oppressive ideology. They have been the

beneficiaries of its practices that divided the colonized people. They enjoyed

the sense of their position, in the colonial power structure. But gradually the

inherent injustices and falsity of the empire in its claims of humane, liberal

and civilizing purposes were revealed to them and they became

disillusioned. When King Thebaw and Queen Supayalat lived in Ratnagiri,

Bipin Dey had been made responsible for the King’s well being. The unjust

conditions of the King’s exile, complete indifference of the British rulers to

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the needs of the king and of his family members were known to Bipin Dey.

When the Queen called him to inform that her First Princess was pregnant,

Bipin Dey expressed concern about the reputation of the king of Burma and

their daughter. He said Sawant was just a servant he could be persuaded to

go quietly to his village. The Queen replied with anger: “Collector sahib,

Sawant is less a servant than you” (150). The district collector expressed

surprise over how could the Queen take such a scandal lightly. The ferocious

Queen remarked: “There is no scandal in what my daughter has done.

Scandal lies in what you have done to us” (150). The Queen says that they

have heard many lectures from British on the subject of barbarity of the

Kings of Burma and the humanity of the Angrez. The British declared that

they (Queen and Kings) were tyrants, enemies of freedom, murderers. They

lectured as if they only understood liberty, they did put kings to death, they

ruled by through laws. The Queen asked “if that is so, why has King Thebaw

never been brought to trial? Where are these laws that we hear of? Is it crime

to defend your country against an invader? Would the English not do the

same”? (150). When the queen asked these questions, Bipin Dey, beneficiary

of imperial rule, felt ashamed and the sweat dripped down from his face. The

marriage took place between coachman Swant and the First Princess. When

the King came to Ratnagiri the First Princess was just three years old. Bipin

Dey, an Indian officer, was scapegoated for mistakes of his predecessors. He

was called back. Sensitive Bipin became deeply frustrated, went rowing into

the deep sea and the boat drowned. Such was the plight of the subjugated

officers who were in the service of British.

Arjun also discovers his loss of individual identity as he realizes that

he has been moulded like a clay-vessel, by the hands of an unknown ‘potter’

and made to believe in the highly idealistic goal proclaimed by the Empire in

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modernizing and governing the unruly countries in Asia, and to become a

willing ‘tool’ for that vast power. When he went to Burma to fight for the

British government during 1940s, he begins to gain the knowledge of his

complete submission into the colonial ideas as an unthinking unreflecting

person. A new psychological awareness comes to him from the relationship

with Alison, who turns him down saying she felt pity for him rather than

love. Alison remarks about Arjun as Saya John remarks about Indian

soldiers. Alison tells him “you are not in charge of what you do; you’re a

toy, a manufactured thing, a weapon in someone else’s hands. Your mind

doesn’t inhabit you body”. She saw that despite the largeness and authority

of his presence, he was a man without resources, a man whose awareness of

himself was very slight and very fragile: she saw that Dinu was much

stronger and more resourceful. Arjun’s friends in the Battalion tell him about

the nationalist duties of the Indian and Arjun finds him self caught in

peculiar moral dilemma. The battlefield becomes a ground of Arjun’s moral

conflict and his first glimpse of ‘self’, an inner core of thinking, feeling and

moral responsibility, is realized in the conflict of duties towards his country

and the so called ‘masters’.

Arjun’s painful self discovery is interwoven in the complicated

history of the Japanese invasion of Burma, their subsequent defeat and the

British army’s threat of military action against the ‘deserters’ of the British

army. Arjun hides in the jungle, hounded more by a sense of shame, of

betraying the nation and his inability to recover his identity in a wholesome

way. He seeks his death in the jungle, after killing Kishen Singh who has

stood by him faithfully.

When the colonizers entered the colony they promised that they would

rule through laws, ensured freedom, equality and protection of individual

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rights. But they did as the Queen foretold. She told: “Within a few decades

the wealth will be gone and they too will leave” (88). Consequently, golden

Burma was left in destitution, ignorance, famine, despair and chaos. The

country is under the control of neo-colonizers. This situation is represented

at the end of the novel. Jaya, tracking the traces of her uncle Dinu, with the

help of Ilongo, comes to Rangoon. She goes to her uncle’s house cum photo

studio. Dinu could not ask his niece to stay in his house because

apologetically he says: “Don’t forget that you are in Myanmar. Nothing is

simple here…. Every household has a registered list of members…. nobody

else can spend the night there without permission” (511). The freedom of

expression, so basic to the development of society is also curtailed and every

book and magazine has to be presented to the press security Board “for the

perusal of a small army of captains and Majors” (535) Daw Thin Thin Aye,

wife of Dinu, stops writing when she finds her articles are rejected and

mocked at by barely literate people.

Dislocation has fueled communal animosity and clashes in the name

of nation. Because of imperial rule the Indians moved to Burma in large

number. The Indians became strong, powerful and prosperous. For instance

Rajkumar, an orphan boy, becomes a successful businessman in teakwood

and rubber plantation. Like Rajkumar many Indians run varied businesses

and contributed to the economy of Burma. Dolly says, “Indian moneylenders

have taken all ‘farm land; Indians run most of the shops, people say the rich

Indians live like colonialists, lording over the Burmese” (GP 240).

Consequently the solidarity between Indians and Burmese turns to animosity

and the Burmese felt displaced. Inter cultural marriages between the two

communities are condemned and women like Dolly are, in her words, seen

as “traitors to their own people” (240). Burmese hostility against Indians is

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reinforced in the macabre image of the Indian who is chased by a mob of

blood thirsty Burmese who beheaded him. Riots breakout all over Burma

and the unquestioning harmony between Burmese and Indians turns to

hatred and bloodshed. The riots last for several days and the causalities

numbered in hundreds, “the toll would have been higher still, if it had not

been for the many Burmese who had rescued Indians from the mob and

sheltered them in their homes” (245). Dolly and her sons become the targets

of attack because she has married an Indian. For Rajukumar it is the war

being fought by the British. His failure to perceive the situation leads to

personal tragedy. In an air-raid on Rangoon, the elephants carrying timber

from Rajkumar’s timber yard become panic, as a result of that the logs begin

to topple down crushing Neel, Rajumar’s elder son. Neel’s death crushes the

hope of his family. His wife, Manju commits suicide by jumping into the

river. Rajkumar leaves for Calcutta. Dolly goes to nunnery in Rangoon and

dies there. Dinu lives in Rangoon with his Burmese wife losing his father’s

entire property. Jaya, daughter of Manju and Neel, is brought up by

grandparents in Calcutta. The religious aversion that Egyptians have for

Hindu faith and rituals In an Antique Land has a parallel in the racial

animosity between Burmese and Indians in The Glass Palace.

Thus the colonial occupation led to the physical, political,

psychological, racial and cultural dislocations. Yet the novel ends with a

desire to reestablish a culture of ease and love, comfort and compassion,

forgoing the hatred and violence. The real hope among the people is

awakened by the figure of Aung San Suu Kyi who has torn the masks from

the face of cruel regime and inspires people with her charisma. She holds no

political institutional post but she has become an institution in herself.

Ghosh shows her popularity, her openness in facing the public and her

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ability to laugh. Thus the novel which begins with invasion and plunder ends

with reconciliation, faith and hope.

Narrative strategies in The Glass Palace.

The Glass Palace is a bulky novel of 547 pages with seven parts. It

covers the time span of more than one century from 1885 to 1996. The

events of the novel take place in Malaya, Burma and India. It is a family

saga of three generations. Such a novel of epic scale with sweeping

historical background is structured efficiently by Ghosh. The detailed

examination of the novel reveals that in spite of its bulkiness the novel is a

well organized. Rukmini Nair remarks, “The Glass Palace is not just a

thoroughly researched novel, it is a carefully plotted one” (169). Amitav

Ghosh being a social anthropologist foregrounds the system of family.

Therefore family is the central unit around which other events revolve. Here

in this novel Ghosh employs family as the connecting aspect. John Theme

points out, “In The Glass Palace he (Ghosh) employs the form of the family

saga to tell an epic story” (269). There are four families in the novel; the

major events in the novel take place around these families: firstly, the family

of Rajkumar and Dolly and their sons Neeladhri and Dinanath; secondly, the

family of the King Thebaw and the Queen Supayalat and their Princesses;

thirdly, the family of Saya John, his son Mathew, daughter-in-law Elsa and

grand daughter Alison; fourthly the family of Uma, her husband Bipin Dey,

her brother, her nephew Arjun and her nieces Manju and Bela. Most of the

events in the novel occur in these families. The unity of the novel is

achieved through the interconnection of these families. The family of the

King Thebaw is connected to the family of Rajkumar through Dolly, a maid

servant of the Queen. The family of Rajkumar is connected to the family of

Saya John through the marriage of Dinu, Rajkumar’s younger son and

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Alison, granddaughter of Saya John. Saya John’s remark is worth quoting in

this context. When Alison and Dinu seek his blessing, he says: “Rajkumar’s

son and Mathew’s daughter what could be better? The two of you have

joined the families. Your parents will be delighted” (446). The family of

Rajkumar is connected to Uma through the marriage of Neel, Rajkumar’s

son and Manju, Uma’s niece. Uma’s family is connected to the King’s

family through her husband Bipin Dey, district collector in charge of looking

after the well-being of the Royal family in Ratnagiri. Uma’s family is

connected to Saya John’s family by way of Uma’s niece and Saya’s

granddaughter are the daughters-in-law of Rajkumar. So also, Uma

persuaded Mathew to return from America and to join his father. Thus

through the form of family all the strands of the novel are connected and the

unity of the novel is achieved.

Another narrative strategy that connects most of the events of the

novel is the employment of the historical event. Ghosh agrees that he is

interested in the historical events, their impact on the individuals, their lives

and their predicament. This novel opens with the sound of canons’ echo

through the silver curve of Irrawady. The imperial fleet crossed the border

on 14th November, 1885. The war between imperial army and Burmese army

began. As the Burmese army could not match the British army, the war

lasted for just fourteen days and without informing the King Thebaw the

Burmese army surrendered. Rukmini points out: “In Ghosh’s novel, the

repercussions of this ‘fourteen day war, are tracked for over a century”

(167). Ghosh treats this as a major historical event. The entire novel narrates

consequent events like dethronement of the King, exile, war between Japan

and British army in Burma and their implications on the individuals, families

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and nation. Thus, the single historical event brings into its fold all the events

and provides structural unity to the novel.

The novelist adopts in this novel the third person omniscient

narration. The novel begins with “There was only one person in the food

stall who knew exactly what that sound was, that was rolling across the

plain, along the silver curve of the Irrawaddy, to the western wall of

Mandalay’s fort. His name was Rajkumar and he was an Indian boy of

eleven not an authority to relied on” (GP 3). Here the narrator comments on

the unreliability of the character. He knows what that sound was that rolled

across the plain and curve of the Irrawaddy. The employment of third person

narration is very much suitable to this novel because it is a novel brimming

over with ideas, exploring the ways we co-operate with our own oppression,

the nature of exploitation, the dehumanizing effects of racism and

dispossession and the miraculous way in which a change of consciousness

can eventually alter the course of history.

The marriage between Dolly and Rajkumar is arranged by Uma. On

that day Uma has provided two garlands of marigolds and Jasmine. She has

woven them herself with flowers picked from the garden. At the end of the

civil ceremony, in the collector’s camp office “Uma and Rajkumar

garlanded each other, smiling like children” (GP 169). At this point of time

the readers are surprised to know why this has happened. But this doubt is

cleared at the end of the novel. When Jaya, niece of Uma, runs into Uma’s

room, to her surprise, she finds “that Rajkumar was in her (Uma’s) bed.

They were fast asleep, their bodies covered by a thin, cotton sheet. They

looked peaceful and very tired, as though they were resting after some great

exertion” (545). From the time of their acquaintance in page number 140 to

till the page number 545 nowhere readers can suspect their relationship. But

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this authorial anticipation achieved through the device of slip. This kind of

narration is possible in third person omniscient narration. The novel is

brimming with ideas, facts images, allusions and irony. Nowhere does it

seem that the narrator is dominating. Most of these things are achieved

through narrative voices that are various characters in the novel.

Ghosh has employed epistolary method of narration. Letters are used

as narrative voices. As it is a novel of large scale, single method of narration

may lead to monotony. Therefore, in order to avoid it and to increase the

authenticity of the narrated events, Ghosh has employed epistolary method.

There are several letters in the novel, so, only a few are discussed as

examples. Rajkumar becomes a successful and respected businessman in

Burma. As he wants to trace Dolly he seeks the help of Uma’s uncle in

Rangoon. Uma’s uncle readily accepts and writes a letter to Uma to do a

favour to Rajkumar. Much of Rajkumar’s background, nature, talent and

personality are revealed through this letter. One more letter which reveals

much and adds to the theme is letter written by Arjun to his sister Manju. In

that letter Arjun gives minute details about the events in the military

academy. Another one is a Royal proclamation. Saya John brings it and

many people it read at Macho’s tea-stall. The proclamation reveals the

demands put forth by the British, their acts, and intentions. It further

proclaims His Majesty would lead the war against Britain “to uphold the

religion, to uphold the national honour, to uphold the country’s interests”

(16).

The characterization as a narrative device supplements the theme of

this novel. As Hawley remarks The Glass Palace exhibits: “the Dickensian

proliferation of characters” (1). In this novel we see the king, the queen, the

princesses and common men and women. The major characters are The

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King Thebaw, Rajkumar, Saya John, Bipin Dey, Arjun, Neel, Dinu and

Mathew; the Queen Supayalat, Dolly, Uma, Alison, Manju, Jaya and the

Princesses. All these characters are distinct and vibrant. It may be true that

many of the characters lack full psychological and emotional depth and

complexity because the form is deliberately episodic to cover massive social,

historical and geographic landscapes. But each character is individual with

its own strengths and weakness. The characterization holds mirror to the

contexts. We don’t feel the characters are stereotypes.

The narrative device story within a story is effectively employed in

this novel too. Besides, the major stories of the four families which have

been already explored, there are many ‘little narratives’ in this novel, for

instance, the stories of Ilongo Alagappan, Saya Dey, Mohan Sawant, Co

Buckland, Ma’cho, Jaya, etc. Each of these stories adds in its own way to the

theme of dislocation.

First the story of Ilongo Alagappan is undertaken for study. He is the

illegitimate son of Rajkumar. When Rajkumar is transporting labourers from

Madras to Burma, on voyage a woman is sent to his cabin to spend the night

with him. Consequently, Ilongo is born. It exemplifies how dislocation leads

to the exploitation women by the neo-colonialists. Ilongo works in the

rubber plantation with his mother. Due to the war between Japan and Burma

the Rubber plantation is under loss. The owners Alison died and Dinu settled

in Rangoon. So, nobody was there to take care of it. Ilongo being an active

member of the trade union of plantation workers purchases the estate with

contribution from plantation workers. It is renamed as “Morningside Estate:

A Property of the Malaysian Plantation Workers’ Co-operative”. Now

varieties of plants are grown, the income has increased. The plantation

workers get good income and other facilities like education to their children,

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health care etc. Ilongo, by virtue of his practical mindedness, strength to

work and knowledge becomes a prominent figure in Malaysian politics. He

becomes a minister in the government. He has been honoured with the title

‘Dato’. Thus Ilongo has exploited the opportunities opened up by the war.

Mohan Sawant is a coachman of the King Thebaw in Ratnagiri. By

virtue of his honesty and hardwork he becomes the guard of the king. He

becomes very close to all members of the Royal family. The First Princess

falls in love with him, conceives and gives birth to children. The First

Princess remains in India with her family, “her love for him (Sawant)

proved, just as unchangeable as her mother’s devotion to the late king.

Defying her family she went back to Sawant and never left Ratnagiri again”

(GP 213). This story also illustrates how displacement leads to racial,

cultural, religious and physical dislocations. Like these stories there are

other stories in the novel which contribute very much to the thematic

concerns of the novel.

The next major narrative device employed by Ghosh is intertextuality.

Ghosh says “to write The Glass Palace I read hundreds of books, memories,

travelogues, Gazetters, articles and notebooks, published and

unpublished”(Authors Note GP 549). This suggests how much research

work he has gone into the writing of the novel. The Glass Palace is an

amalgamation of history, autobiography, psychology, romance, memory and

fiction. This novel is historical in the sense that it depicts the Second World

War and consequent dethronement of the King. It is “a minutely researched

account of the lives of Indian soldiers in the British army in the World War

II, which deftly avoids anti-colonial simplism, by showing varying positions,

but nevertheless succeeds in telling this history form an alternative point of

view” (John Thieme 271). By giving dates, years, names, and places he tries

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to make it as factual as possible. It shows Ghosh’s perennial interest in

historiography which he writes with a revisionist perspective.

There are several elements relating to the writer’s personal life which

give autobiographical touch to it. Ghosh’s father was first lieutenant colonel

in the army and later a diplomat. To depict vividly the mental conflict of the

Indian soldiers in the World War II Ghosh has got insights from his father.

This he has acknowledged in the author’s note. “The seed of this book was

brought to India long before my own life time by my father and my uncle,

the late Jagat Chandra Datta of Rangaoon and Moulmein “(GP 549).

Rukmini Bhya Nair points out:

The pivotal figure of Rajkumar in The Glass Palace now seems to me

an in-text metaphor for Ghosh’s own authorial persona, as he

perceives himself. Like Ghosh, Rajkumar is a boundary crosser. Who

makes several transitions across national frontiers during his life time

but he is also a man so absolutely focused that he creates his own

destiny, his own history (166).

It is a psychological novel in the sense that many of the major

characters are caught in conflict. By the time war breaks out between

England and Germany, Rajkumar’s business has slowed down. He has failed

to understand the significance of what is happening around him. Therefore,

his teakwood business doesn’t earn any thing. He is caught in conflict of

whether to return to India or to stay back in Burma. His wife, Dolly suggests

him to go to India. But he says, “It is hard to think of leaving: Burma has

given me everything I have “(GP 309). So also Dolly is caught in conflict.

When she is in Ratnagiri, Uma suggests her to go back to Burma. She

replies, “If I went to Burma now I would be a foreigner, they would call me

a kalaa” (113). Dolly’s mind is disturbed after returning to Burma. So at the

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end she goes to nunnery and dies there. Bipin Dey, the DC, is also caught in

the conflict of his duty to his masters and his nation. He has expected his

wife to be up to the standards fixed by the colonizers when he realizes that

she is not so. He feels sorry and regrets. Uma is also caught in conflict.

When she cries her husband asks why are you crying? Have I done wrong?

She replies, “You have been nothing but kind and patient. I have nothing to

complain of” (172). In the beginning Arjun is very loyal to the British. He

boasts that the British government has provided him with everything. But

when realizes that it is not fulfilling the claims it made, Arjun’s mind is

caught in conflict of whether he should fight for his masters or he should

fight for his nation. Finally he decides to fight for the nation and dies

fighting.

The use of the language in the novel supports the theme of

dislocation. Ghosh has used Chutnified language in this novel as nowhere in

any of his novels. The major events of the novel take place in Burma,

Malaya and India. Therefore many Hindi and Burmese words and sayings

are used in this novel. He uses Hindi words like Kaala, Kaisa hai? Sub

kuchh theek-thaak? (GP 8), Jaldi chalo, Jaldi (152)), Ek gaz, do gaz, teen

gaz, malis, theekhai, shabash, anchal, almirah, namaste, bandobast, achha

gaari, kaun, da etc. Hindi proverbs like “Dlhobi ka Kutta na ghar ka nag hat

ka” (10). Burmese words like “Bale’? (3), baya-gyaw (5) ‘Ook Chinthe’(33),

Thanaka (34), Thooria (47), Yethas (43), tai (71) Oo-si, (93), ayam limau

purut (364). Many more such words and phrases are sprinkled throughout

the novel. The hybridity of language reflects the consequences displacement.

Ghosh employs symbols and images as narrative device in this novel.

The title The Glass Palace is symbolically used. The readers are introduced

to The Glass Palace twice. In the beginning of the novel we are introduced to

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it as a vast hall with shining crystal walls and mirrored ceiling. When the

Queen enters only her images are reflected. It is situated in the centre of the

Royal Family’s apartment. The building has hundreds of rooms with gilded

pillars and polished floors, canals and gardens have surrounded it. There is

no entry to the common men. This Glass Palace signifies the cruelty and

coloniality existed in the pre-colonial period. Later at the end of the novel

we come across The Glass Palace which is the name of Dinu’s photo studio.

When we are introduced to The Glass Palace, the studio, the novel comes to

a full circle. In the photo studio Dinu holds discussion on various issues with

people from all classes. In his Glass Palace images of the ordinary people

are kept. It stands for democratic set up in which people discuss and mingle

freely. Dinu’s studio is an oasis of hope in the midst of suffocating

surroundings. It signifies the possibilities of restructuring the social life on

the grounds of compassionate friendliness. So also, Ghosh uses the

characters, The King Thebaw and Aung San symbolically. The king Thebaw

never came out of the palace. He symbolizes the self enclosed world. Aung

San, the uncrowned Queen of Burma, the deeply loved image of Aung San

symbolizes transition from monarchy to democracy. Through these symbols

and images Ghosh achieves the knotting of the loose episodes and conveying

the message of retrieving faith, hope and order.

The Theme of Dislocation in The Hungry Tide

The Hungry Tide chronicles the issues of home and homelessness,

borders and boundaries, place and displacement, ecology and human

development, conflict of cultures and classes. In The Glass Palace these

issues are unravelled against the historical background. In The Hungry Tide

these issues are unravelled against the geographical backdrop, through the

interlocking stories of Piya, an Indian American marine biologist, Fakir, the

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illiterate native who becomes her guide, a Delhi professional who acts as her

interpreter, eviction of refugees, and Nilima and Nirmal’s efforts to bring

change in the lives of people of Lusibari.

The novel opens with forty two year old Kanai Datta who oversees an

office of translators and interpreters in New Delhi. He is standing on a

railway platform observing Piyali Roy. Both are heading from Calcutta to

Canning in the Sundarban. He is going because his aunt Nilima told him that

his uncle Nirmal had left a cover with writings specifically for Kanai. He has

to go through it and tell her the content.

Piya had been born in Calcutta but had moved to the USA when she

was just one year old. She is now a graduate student in cetology at the

Scripps institution of Oceanography in California. She has undertaken this

trip to do the survey of the marine mammals which she thinks are unique to

the Sundarban. Soon after arriving in Canning, Piya comes across a poor

fisherman, named Fokir. He saves Piya from drowning in the silty and

vegetation filled water. He promises to take her to the dolphin region. Fokir

doesn’t know English but they manage to communicate. Piya achieves

advancement in her project of mapping, identifying the habitat and studying

the behavior of Irrawaddy dolphins. Inspired by the success she plans to

collect more information within her ten day stay. So, once again she goes

into the deep river water of tide country. A storm breaks out followed by

heavy rain and powerful and devouring tides. Fokir dies in the incident. As

ideas given by Fokir could be the sources for decades of ‘research’, with the

sponsorship of Nilima and involvement of local fisherman, Piya starts an

institution in the memory of Fokir , an unlettered down trodden fisherman.

Lusibari is one of the islands of the tide country, which is the most

southerly of inhabited islands. This island was made habitable by Daniel

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Hamilton and named this island after his wife Lucy. People came to this

island in three waves in 1920s, in 1947 after the partition and 1971 after the

Bangladesh war. Nilima, and Nirmal, Kanai’s aunt and uncle respectively,

came to Lusibari in 1950 in search of a safe haven. Nilima dreams of

bringing change in the lives of the people of Lusibari. She has founded

Badabon Trust. It has provided medical, Para- legal, agricultural services,

training to women to be self sufficient, and land holdings were broken.

Nilima dedicates her entire life to this and finds satisfaction in this work.

Nirmal worked as headmaster of Hamilton school in Lusibari and

retired. From college days itself he was attracted to poetry and the

communist idea of revolution. He felt he could not do any of these during his

service. So, after retirement he got an opportunity and decided to help the

refugees sheltered in Morichjhapi Island. As it was a reserved forest area,

the government intended to evict these people. In the encounter between the

government and the refugees thousands of refugees were killed in 1979.

Nirmal died soon after this massacre. Through Kanai’s reading of the note

book written by Nirmal, before his death, we come to know about the history

Marichjhapi massacre.

This novel highlights the dislocation of the refugees caused by nature

and the government. First let me examine the dislocation caused by nature.

The novel is set in Sundarban, which means ‘the beautiful forest’. People

believe that the word is derived from the name of a common species of

mangrove the Sundari tree. But in the record books of the Mughal emperors

this region is named not in reference to a tree but to a tide-bhati. To the

inhabitants of the islands this land is known as bhatirdesh- the tide country.

The description of the tide country itself provides a picture of dislocation

places. This tide country is an immense archipelago of islands stretching

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from the Hooghly River in the West Bengal to the shores of the Meghan in

Bangladesh. Some of these islands are “immense and some are no larger

than sandbars; some have lasted through recorded history while others were

washed into being just a year or two ago” (The Hungry Tide 7). In this area

the river channels spread across the land like a fine mesh net. They have

created a terrain “where the boundaries between land and water are always

mutating, always unpredictable” (HT 7). Some of these river channels are

long that their shores are invisible. Usually these channels meet in clusters of

four to six, this confluence in known as a mohona. The mohona creates such

scene that it is very difficult to guess where they flow and where they join

the sea:

There are no borders here to divide fresh water from salt, river from

sea. The tides reach as far as three hundred kilometers inland and

everyday thousands of acres of forest disappear under water only to

re-emerge hours later. The currents are so powerful as to reshape the

islands almost daily- some days the water tears away entire

promontories and peninsulas; at other times it throws up new shelves

and sand banks where there were none before (HT 7).

In this place when the tides create new land, mangroves begin to

gestate overnight and cover a new island within few short years. Other kinds

of trees are not found here, mangrove forest is a universe unto itself. The

mangrove is impassably dense. Every year dozens of people perish in the

embrace of that dense foliage, killed by tigers, snakes and crocodiles. By

providing the background of mutating, fluctuating, transient islands and

boundaries of islands, Ghosh propounds that dislocation is not just human

creation it is a natural phenomenon present since the origin of the earth.

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Natural dislocation has not only effaced the boundaries between

islands and rivers and sea in the tide country, but it has also rendered human

life pitiable in Lusibari:

hunger and catastrophe were a way of life, after decades of settlement

the land had still not been wholly leached of its salt. The soil bore

poor crops and could note be farmed all year round most families

subsisted on a single daily meal (HT 79).

The hunger drove these people to hunting and fishing and the results

were disastrous many died of drowning; many more were picked off by

crocodiles and sharks. The mangroves also didn’t help the people; thousands

risked their dives to collect meager quantities of honey, wax, firewood and

fruits. No day seemed to pass without news of someone being killed by a

tiger, a snake or a crocodile. The school condition in the village was also not

good. Nilima found that there were large numbers of widows in the village.

In a place where men of marriageable age were very few it was impossible

to think of remarriage. Widowhood meant a lifetime of dependence, years of

abuse and exploitation. The protagonist of the novel Fokir is also devoured

by the hungry tide at the end. The occurrence of cyclone and flood is the

common phenomenon in the tide country. Horen narrates his own

experience of being caught in one such cyclone. Once when Horen and his

men were on the water, immediately the water level rose. They tied the boat

to the tree trunk; they climbed up and sat on the branch of a tree. Looking

around he saw that they were not the only people to take shelter in a tree.

Many others had saved their lives in similar fashion. Whole families, young

and elderly alike, were sitting on branches. They spent two days on the tree,

without food or any water. Many had been blown away by the storm. When

the flood subsided they look around, “there were corpses everywhere and the

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land was carpeted with dead fish and live stock. They found out that three

hundred thousand people had died” (350). So also Nirmal records in his

diary about the worst storm that had hit the tide country. Accordingly in

October and November 1737 a terrible storm occurred. It created a wall of

huge wave of twelve metres in height. Consequently:

The water rose so high that they killed thousands of animals and

carried them upriver and inland. The corpses of tigers and

rhinoceroses were found kilometers from the river, in the rice fields

and in village ponds. There were fields covered with feathers of dead

birds. They say there was not a building in the city left with four walls

intact. Bridges were blown away, godowns were emptied their rice,

and on the river were many ships at anchor, large and small. The wind

picked them up and carried over the top of trees and houses. They say

that over twenty vessels were lost that day, including boats, dinghies

and the like (HT 204).

Nirmal further writes that it is true story recorded in documents stored

in the British Museum. This story underscores the uncertainty of lives of the

people and animals in this area. Thus, the inhabitants of Lusibari lead their

lives always under the shadow of threat by natural dislocation.

Another dislocation highlighted in this novel is the dislocation caused

by the government. Ghosh has provided space for refugees in his other

novels like The Circle of Reason and The Glass Palace. The Hungry Tide

also throws light on the lives and predicament of dislocated refugees. It

raises the serious issue of choice between the protection of environment and

human beings. In Morichjapi, one of the islands of the tide country, a large

number of refugees had taken shelter. They were originally from East

Pakistan. They had come to India after the partition of India and Bangladesh

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war in 1971. These refugees were the poorest of rural people, Dalits,

oppressed and exploited both by Muslim communalists and by Hindus of the

upper castes. They were forcibly kept in a refugee camp called

Dandakaranya in Madhya Pradesh. The refugees called this resettlement

camp as concentration camp or prison. They faced a lot of difficulties there.

They could not speak the languages of that area, local people treated them as

intruders, the police surrounded them and they were forbidden to leave that

place. In 1978 these refugees organized themselves, broke out of the camp

and came to Morichjhapi. These refugees did an amazing work in this island.

They constituted organizations; institutions, set up their own government,

did the census of the refugees and divided the island into zones. Their

achievement is really astonishing. Nirmal, expressed his appreciation in

these words: “I stood transfixed, I felt something was changing within me,

how astonishing it was that I, an aging, bookish school master, should live to

see this, an experiment, imagined not by those with learning and power, but

by those without” (171).This shows how dislocation led to regenerate the

hard work culture of these people. Irony of the situation is that government

was not ready to allow them to settle there. The government wanted to evict

them because the island was part of the reserved forest. Their earnest appeal

was that “we need to let people know what we are doing and why we are

here. We have to tell the world about all we have done and all we have

achieved” (172). This unfolds that the subaltern are not dullheaded, they can

achieve if the opportunities are provided. These people should be left to live

in their places without effacing their culture and values.

Because of the foreign aid and pressure in the name of protection of

wild animals, the government, led by the colonial minded bureaucrats,

hypocrite and dull-headed elected representatives, went ahead to evict the

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refugees. Consequently, there had been a series of confrontations between

the settlers and government forces. The government inflicted many measures

to make them voluntarily leave the island. For instance the settlers had been

prevented from bringing rice or water to Morichjhapi, boats had been sunk,

people had been killed. But the refugees became stronger and they asked the

questions like, “who, indeed, are we? Where do we belong” (259). They said

unitedly that “We will not leave Morichjhapi, do what you may” (254). The

plight of the refugees worsened. They had been reduced to eating grass. The

police had destroyed the tube wells and there was no potable water left. The

settlers were drinking from puddles and ponds and an epidemic of cholera

had broken out. The wrath and feelings of these refugees are expressed in

Kusum’s words:

…the worst part was not the hunger or the thirst. It was to sit here,

helpless, and listen to the policemen making their announcements,

hearing them say that our lives, our existence, was worthless than dirt

or dust. It has to be saved for its animals, it is a part of a reserve

forest, it belongs to a project to save tigers, which is paid for by

people from all around the world. Who are these people, I wondered,

who love animals so much that they are willing to kill us for them? Do

they know what is being done in their names? …. To me that this

whole world has become a place of animals and our fault, our crime

was that we were just human beings, trying to live as human beings.

No human being could think this a crime. This is how humans have

always lived by fishing, by clearing and by planting the soil (161-

162).

The voice of these marginalized was not heard by the government. It

finally evicted the refugees forcibly. In the final encounter between the

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government and the refugees thousands of refugees were massacred. The

voice of these subalterns goes unheard. What is underscored here is the

casual way in which the refugees’ lives are dealt with by the government,

because it links ‘development’ with foreign ideology and aid. The same fact

is underlined again when Piya sees a tiger being killed by the villagers for

having harmed humans and live stock. Greatly upset by the killing, in a

shocking display of insensitivity to human life Piya condemns the killing of

the tiger, “Everywhere in the world dozens of people are killed everyday- on

roads, in cars, in traffic, why is this any worse” (301). This is what prompts

Kanai to give the most telling statement in the whole novel. “It was people

like you who made a push to protect the wild life here, without regard for the

human costs. And I’m complicit because people like me-Indians of my class,

curry, favour with their Western patrons” (301). Piya speaks so, because she

does not know that no day passed in tide country without news of someone

being killed by a tiger, a snake or a crocodile. The author hints that if the

ideas are brought from the west and imposed on the third worlds without

taking into consideration the local situations, the result may be a great threat

to human beings. We have to question the Western ideologies.

The displaced marginals encounter several authorities which have

rendered them homeless refugees. First the newly carved up nations, second

the West Bengal State government and third one the Western ideologies.

The newly carved up nation Bangladesh, led by the elite pushed millions of

refugees towards marginalization and homeless in the context of partition of

the sub-continent. Second the West Bengal government which went ahead in

implementing the direction of the central government. Third the westernized

perceptions, polices and strategies of the environmentalists and

climatologists who try to impose their vision in far off natural sanctuaries

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like Sundarban without taking into consideration the local situations. The

irony of the situation is that as Kailashnath et al remark: “the Grand

narratives have ushered failures and costs on both counts: the Tigers,

Dolphins, Flora and Fauna of Sundarban have dwindled and the refugees as

marginals remain on margin, displaced despondent” (12).

The danger of implementing the Western ideologies is that the

western perception of climate change faces challenges. Firstly within the

Western territories the debates and implications of climate change have not

been exhaustively negotiated in public, despite the consensus that it is good

for the whole humanity. However the climatologists of the West and their

followers in the guise of the state elites have established scientific consensus

to prevail and conserve nature and its animal species. Secondly when experts

and trainees in the filed of environmental science like Piya impose the

Western ideas like protecting animals on non-Western territories like

Sundarban. Those ideas do not suit well with the local situation because

these territories have severe land and resource constraints in regards to

accommodating the needs and interests of the marginals.

On the other hand, regarding the issue of human development, the

developmental experts are lamenting over the displacement, negligence and

oppression of the refugees /margianls at the cost of the need of the

conservation of climate. Hence, at the core of this riddle is the ethical

dilemma between the ecological needs and human needs. Amitav Ghosh in

his interview has said “When we look at writers of the Thirties and Forties

we ask them “‘where did you stand on fascism? In the future they will look

at us and say ‘where did you stand on environment”. I think this is

absolutely the fundamental question of our time”. (Amtiv Ghosh in

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Conversation). Thus, the novel goes on to raise larger questions like whether

the islands belong to marginalized or the animals.

Ghosh has interwoven the stories of individuals who are dislocated

into the story of natural dislocation to make it more relevant. The people of

this tide country are being caught in a vicious circle; they lead a very

miserable life. Some greedy and rich people take advantage of this. They

take poor women promising jobs in the city and they sell them there. For

instance, Kusum’s mother was promised a job by Dilip, a local rich man, so

went with him. But he sold her where “she was working in place where truck

drivers came, to sleep on charpais and buy women for the night” (163).

When Kusum went there with the help of Rajen, she saw her mother’s body

was wasted and her face was thin and drawn. She told Kusum “Don’t look

Kusum. Don’t touch me with your eyes; I blame that Dilip; he’s more

demon than man. He said he’d find me work and look where he had brought

me: to eat leaves at home would have been a better fate. This is no place for

you, Kusum. You must go back” (163). Thus, the nature, the government,

neocolonial agents; international, national and local have dislocated the

people of tide country.

Narrative Strategies in The Hungry Tide

The Hungry Tide is divided into two parts, namely the Ebb: Bhata and

The Flood: Jowar. The title of the novel and titles of parts are symbolically

employed. The hungry tides dislocate the boundaries between the Western

and non-Western, rural and town, educated and uneducated, outsider and

insider, home and homelessness and traditional and modern. As Saswat Das

points out “His (Ghosh’s) purpose is not merely to deconstruct the binary…

but to unite them as part of integrated whole” (184). The Ebb: bhata stands

for the placid nature and the Flood: Jowar stands for the furious nature of the

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tides. If the ebb is thesis, the flood is the antithesis, for the synthesis, for the

creation of new order the ebb and the flood should be there.

The study reveals that The Hungry Tide is not a novel of plot but it is

a novel of place and characters. Novel is set in Sundarban, its location,

climatic condition, its formation, its nature, its flora and fauna and such

other details are already discussed. As it is a novel of place how place itself

causes dislocation is discussed in the beginning. Here in this novel it is not

the events with cause and effects that create and hold the plot of the novel

together. But it is the place that holds all the events and characters. It is an

innovative technique employed Ghosh. In The Glass Palace the historical

events, the war between the Burmese army and the British army and the

dispossession of the King Thebaw lead to the web of events. But here in The

Hungry Tide no such historically important events occur. The Glass Palace

delineates impact of these events on the lives of the individuals and nation.

The Hungry Tide depicts the impact of ebb and tide on the lives of

individuals, water creatures and Sundarban.

As in The Glass Palace in this novel also the omniscient narration is

employed. The authorial descriptions and comments on place and characters

are sprinkled throughout the novel. But that does not dominate the

conversational style. The narrative voices are preferred to authorial

comments. For instance, much of the information about the tide country,

Marichjhapi massacre and about the narrative of the glory of Bon Bibi,

mythical legend, is provided in the journal written by Nirmal and left for

Kanai. This is more reliable because Nirmal lived in the tide country as a

teacher for three decades. In the students days itself he was known for his

intellect and writing. Moreover, he was the professor of English. He had

passion for poetry. Only such person could provide reliable and authentic

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account of that place, its traditions culture, events occurred there, and of

fauna and flora.

Ghosh employs memory as a form of narration of several events in the

novel. Though the events in the novel occur during a span of ten days,

through memory and records a vast time space is covered. Nilima narrates

through memory her college days, her love for Nirmal and their marriage in

spite of opposition from the family, her family background and their arrival

to Lusibari in 1949. Piya also reveals her family life, her love failure, college

life, and motivation to become a catelogist through memory.

Nilima affords lot of information about the life condition of people of

tide country, incessant killing of people by tigers and experts opinions on it

and the measures taken to prevent killing by tigers and to protect tigers is

provided through records. She says “I have been keeping unofficial records

for years based on word of mouth reports” (HT 240). Nilima believes that

over a hundred people are killed by tiger here each year. She has kept of the

record of killings by tigers from 1866. She also furnishes the records of

different opinions of naturalists regarding this killing. One expert opined that

Royal Tigers of Bengal, of tide country, kill human beings because, due to

daily submersion of forests, parts of islands and tigers’ scent markings are

washed away. So in confusion the tigers kill human beings. Another expert

opined these tigers are fond of human flesh. Another expert opined that there

is the scarcity of fresh drinking water in Sundarban. In compliance with

these suggestions, measures were taken but still human killings by tigers

continue.

The episode of Morichjhapi is narrated though the record kept by

Nirmal. Morichjhaphi episode has already been discussed while examining

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how the marginals were displaced in order to implement the western idea of

protecting wild animals at the cost of human beings.

The glory of Bon Bibi, a mythical story, is narrated both through

memory and records. Fokir recites the entire story orally. When he is asked

how he knows he says that he has learnt it from his mother and she from her

parents. Thus the story of Bon Bibi is transmitted orally from generation to

generation. Horen tells Nirmal that this story is available in the book form

also. The title is “Bon Bibir Karamoti Orthat Bon Bibi Johuranama (The

Miracles of Bonbibi or the Narrative of her Glory) written by a Muslim

author Abdur-Rahim.

As regards the characters and characterization, Ghosh draws

characters from the middle class and the lowest rung in the society. Some of

them are insiders and some of them are outsiders to the tide country. Kanai,

Nilima, Nirmal and Piya are middle class Indian characters. Kusum, Moyna,

Fokir and Horen are from the lowest rung of the society. Kanai and Nirmal

are outsiders they remain as outsiders. Nilima and Piya are outsiders but they

transform into insiders. Moyna making use of the available facilities, within

the place, emerges as successful woman. Fokir represents the co-existence of

human beings with nature. As in most of his novels Ghosh here in this novel

also provides enough space for the dislocated marginals.

As for the characterization is concerned, most of the characters are

characterized through their acts, speeches, dresses, and other characters’

opinion about the character being portrayed. Kanai’s is character is revealed

much through his speech and other characters’ opinions. He boasts that he

knows six languages and he is so busy. Nilima warns Piya to be careful

about him while going for further the study of dolphins. Once when he tries

to provoke Moyna, she remarks “I can see that you play this game with

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every woman who crosses you path” (259). Moyna’s character is revealed

through her efforts, acts, and other characters’ opinion. Kanai remarks

“She’s very striking. She is an unusual and remarkable woman. She’s

struggled to educate herself, against heavy odds. She’s ambitious. She’s

tough and she’s going to go a long way” (196). Piya’s character is revealed

through her acts and limited speech. Nilima’s character is unfolded through

her act. The success of Badabon Trust speaks volume about her. Nirmala’s

character is revealed through his diary. It projects him as an idealist,

dreamer, lover of poetry and dreams of bringing change and establishing

egalitarian society through revolution. Fokir’s character is much unfolded

through his acts. He speaks very less. The saying “speech is silver and

silence is gold” aptly applies to him. Till the last breath he guides Piya in her

project of studying orcella dolphins. Piya’s opinions about him throw a lot of

light on his personality.

Now let me examine the individual charcters. To begin with let me

take up a couple Nirmal and Nilima. Nirmal is originally from Dhaka. He

came to Calcutta as a student and stayed there after partition. He inculcated

leftist ideology, was recognized as an intellectual, good speaker and writer.

He taught English at Ashuthosh College. Nilima happened to be his student.

She followed him “as if he is flame and she a moth” (HT 76). Nilima is from

a very good background. Her grandfather was the founding member of the

congress party and her father was an eminent barrister at Calcutta High

Court. In spite of opposition from the family she married him. Within a few

weeks of their marriage Nirmal was detained in jail for participating in the

International Socialists Conference. Because of health problem and doctor’s

advice, with Nilima’s family help Nilima and Nirmal came to Lusibari in

1950. When the couple arrived in Lusibari the people of that place were

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leading a miserable life. Having observed this pitiable plight of the

inhabitants Nilima decided that these people should not remain what they

were. So she founded a Mahila Sangathan-the women’s union and ultimately

to the Badabon Trust.

Within a few years of arrival of Nirmal and Nilima, Zamindaris were

abolished and large holdings were broken up by law. The membership of

Badbon trust increased and offered an ever increasing number of services

like medical and agricultural. The trust saved many poor from exploitation

by the powerful and rich. For instance it saved Kusum from Dilip who

wanted to sell her as he sold her mother to a brothel. The Trust helped

several to grow. For instance, Moyna joined the Trust and took training in

hygiene, nutrition, first-aid and midwifery and now works as full-fledged

nurse in the Trust’s hospital. The Trust has also built the cyclone resistant

building to protect people from frequently occurring storms and tides.

Nilima devotes her entire life to the services undertaken by the Trust.

Nilima is practical minded and enterprising. She is entirely rooted in her

socio-cultural milieu which she has only partly created and yet which she

owns wholly by encompassing a section of humanity within it. Her presence

is felt by space. The people respect and love her therefore they affectionately

call her Moshima. She has developed an unbreakable bond with the place.

“To move across Lusibari for Nilima would mean a sort of betrayal of the

bond she has built with it after years of dedication towards the social

progress of the community, which lives there” (Saswat Das 183). Though,

she has come from different place she does not feel dislocated. Here Ghosh

touches upon and problamatizes the binaries ‘Home’ and ‘Homelessness’.

Moving to a new place would not mean homelessness to Nilima. It would

rather be a gesture towards finding a new space for sheltering her desire. The

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novel ends with Nilima’s opinion. She says: “For me home is wherever I can

brew a pot of good tea” (HT 400). Thus, Ghosh dislocates the concept of

homelessness.

Nirmal on the other hand is not satisfied with his work. Till the

retirement as a school teacher he was happy, but after the retirement his

mind became restless. He felt his desires of writing poetry and bringing

revolution to set the order right were not fulfilled. So when the refugees

came to Morichjhapi, Nirmal felt he should help them.He felt it was the right

context to materialize his idea of revolution. Nilima tells Kanai why Nirmal

often went to Morichjapi because “he could not let go to the idea of

revolution” (HT 282). He was very much influenced by German poet Rainer

Maria Rilke’s statement that “life is lived in transformation”. That is why

Nilima is disappointed with Nirmal who wears unsettlement as a kind of life

style apparel. Nirmal chased a romantic, ideal, and a selfless state, a state

where one experiences a unique fusion with the world’s problems. Saswat

Das has rightly described Nirmal’s character: “he in habits the illusory space

that challenges the notion of home as a hospitable domain and yet home is

where the revolutionaries are, and that space could be any where in the

world.” (181). Nirmal failed in his dream of changing world though

revolution because like Hamilton, he too functions on ideologies that ignore

local history, society, and nature. Like Hamilton, Nirmal dreamt of a society

where “men and women could be farmers in the morning, poets in the

afternoon and carpenters in the evening” (HT 53). He believed that all this

could be achieved by “revolution”. The loss of note book which he had left

for Kanai signifies transient nature of revolutionary ideals and Nirmal’s

dislocation from his family and the world.

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Dislocation leads to origin of feeling of outsider and insider. This

outsider- insider paradigm is based on geographical and cultural attitudes of

the characters Kanai, Piya and Refugees are depicted in this novel as

outsiders, where as Fokir, Moyana, Nilima, Nirmal, Kusum and Horen as

insiders.

Kanai Datta is a linguist who runs a translation bureau in Delhi.

Ghosh places him as an outsider, “Kanai was the one other ‘outsider’ on the

platform” (4). He comes back to Lustibari to read the note book left by his

uncle Nirmal written during the last days of his life. He doesn’t have respect

for the people, their values and place to which he has come. He boasts of his

knowledge of languages. He is selfish his aunt Nilima’s remark exemplifies

this. She remarks, “He did not have time for anyone but himself-not his

parents and certainly not us” (251). He likes flirting with women. When

Piya decides to take Kanai as her interpreter during her study of Orcella

dolphins Knai’s aunt warns Piya, “Do be careful, my dear. It’s dangerous in

the forest- and not just because of the animals” (251). Kanai does not

sympathize with men, but admires and sympathizes with women. Once he

says: “so for as Fokir is concerned I am afraid my sympathies are mainly

with his wife” (219). Kanai represents the modern colonized minded, middle

class Indians. Kanai, as he claims, lives in a translated world, a world at

once unreal and vacuous. He is not at ease while journeying through the

socio cultural hinterlands. “Kanai’s fall in literal sense, indicates nature’s

way of rejecting those who rush into its fold without understanding its law,

which is one of perpetual change and transformation “(Sarswat Das 180).

When his love for Piya goes unreciprocated he returns to Delhi. His return to

the world where he came from is indirectly a comment on those who cannot

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live life beyond the confines, which is spun like a paralyzing web within the

cozy spaces of habitats, called home.

Piya, the cetalogist, comes to study the movements of one of the

vanishing marine species called orcella dolphins. She is a committed women

undertakes her work in a different place, in the tide country, in the midst

several of hazards. She doesn’t know Bengali but that did not come in the

way of exploring data about orcella dolphins. She is struck wonder to know

the knowledge of Fokir about orcella dolphins. When Kanai asks Piya why

does she need the help of Fokir who does not know even know how to read

and write, Piya tells him that he “knows the river well. His knowledge can

be of help to a scientist like myself” (212). From the beginning to till the

death Fokir helps her. First when she fell down in the mud Fokir holds and

stops from falling into the mud and protects from the guards. On the second

occasion when Piya objects the killing of a tiger by a village people, the

enraged people were ready to attack her Fokir protects her at that time. He

has got more information regarding orcella dolphins than what she expected

like their habitat, behavior, mapping and so on. At the end without caring for

his life Fokir protects her from the hungry tide. Though she is separated by

language, class and more importantly the social institution of marriage from

Fokir, invisible bond has developed between them.

The Bengali words Fokir uses and the gamchha he wears remind her

father. She is full of appreciation for his worth, she proudly says: “I have

worked with many experienced fishermen before but I have never met

anyone with such an incredible instinct. It’s as if he can see right into the

river’s heart” (267). For her it is so amazing to come across some one like

Fokir. Piya knows that Fokir has a faithful wife and a son yet unconsciously

she is drawn to Fokir forgetting her class, caste, profession and everything.

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We don’t know whether they would have lived together in real life or not but

when they are caught in the storm, thundering heavy rain and devouring

hungry tide:

their bodies were so close, so finely merged that she could feel the

impact of everything hitting him, she could sense the blows raining

down on his back: she could feel the bones of his cheeks as if they had

been super imposed upon her own: it was as if the storm had given

them what life could not: it had fused them together and made them

one (HT 390).

Recollecting the promises she has made to him, in the silence of her

heart, Piya collects fund from conservation and environmental groups to buy

a house for Moyana, Fokir’s wife, and to provide college education to Tutul,

Fokir’s son. Piya immortalized Fokir’s name by starting a project in his

name. Fokir has shown her many routes to trace the dolphins. Piya points

out: “one map represents decades of work and volumes of knowledge. It is

going to be the foundation of my own project” (398). She decides to co-exist

with local people and their culture. Her final statement “for me home is

where the orcella are” (400) underlines this. Piya comes as an outsider and

decides to remain as an insider.

Moyna, is an ambitious and bright girl. Through her own efforts, she

has managed to get education. She had walked every day to another village

for schooling. She wanted to go to college. But her parents’ married her off

to Fokir, an illiterate. After marrying an illiterate person she doesn’t give up

her dream of getting college education. She has got nursery training in

Lusibari hospital and become a nurse in the Trust’s hospital. She wants to

give good education to her son. Though she has fascination for city and city

people she does not transgress the boundaries of family. She remains faithful

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to her husband. Once Kanai asks her if she has to choose between Fokir and

him whom would she choose? She replies quietly, “what are you asking

Kanai babu? Fokir is my husband. I can’t turn my back on him.” (258) What

Moyna tells Kanai mirrors her love and respect for her husband. She

remarks: “when the wind blows on the water you see ripples and waves but

the real river lies beneath, unseen and unheard” (258). Moyna has the

heightened understanding of her surrounding; of the place that would shape

her destiny. In spite of lack of opportunities and scope she finds right way of

creating them of her better future. Though transcendence is Moyna’s

objective, her preparation for it starts at home. Home is where she has learnt

to overcome the imponderables erected by destiny. “Her love for home is her

greatest strength. She exploits the possibilities available there”. (Saswat

181). She is as practical as Nilima.

Fokir, is the protagonist of the novel. He is the son of Kusum and

Rajen. At the early age he lost his father in railway accident and mother in

Morichjhapi massacre. He is an unlettered fisherman he has married Moyna,

an obedient and ambitious woman, and has a son by name Tutal. Fokir

experiences complete union with the river, which respects no boundaries.

River is a passion for Fokir who identifies each and every moment of its life

with his own. The unerring accuracy with which he directs Piya to the

stream where dolphins gather is indicative of his instinctual understanding of

natural phenomena and creatures. As his mother Kusum pointed out, “he has

the river in his veins” (HT 245). Piya thought, based on researches, that

Gangetic dolphins are common in the tide country but to her surprise Fokir

shows her Irrawaddy dolphins. He knows accurately where these dolphins

inhabit, at what time they appear and disappear, their behavior and their

movement map. Piya realizes that “he is very different when he is on the

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water” (218). His knowledge about water and its creatures may be very

useful source for scientists to undertake advanced research. He knows what

even the advanced technology supported equipments could not detect. When

he is asked how he knows so much about this place and water creatures, his

naive answer is: “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t’ know about this

place: back when I was very little, long before I had even seen these islands

and these rivers. I had heard about Garjontola from my mother” (307). If

Fokir is the representative of the ideal symbiotic relationship between man

and nature, Kanai is the urban man cut off from his spiritual mornings.

Kanai thought that Fokir doesn’t know anything. He looks at Fokir as

menial, low caste, rustic, and village man. He is counted for nothing and a

man whose value is less than that of an animal. He tells Piya that Fokir

wouldn’t be able to show her dolphins. But Fokir proves Kanai’s perception

is wrong. He has led her unerringly on the river water and helped her to

acquire more information about dolphins. That is why both Piya and Moyna

love this uncommunicative man very much. The saying ‘speech is silver and

silence is gold’ aptly applies to him. For him no barriers come in the way of

knowing river. Ultimately he brings about change or realization in Kanai.

Fokir “allowed him to look through another set of eyes, to filter the world

through a mind other than his own” (327). Realizing his futility infront of

Fokir, Kanai decides to leave for Delhi. For his passion for river and its

creatures and keen understanding of them Fokir is immortalized.

Story within a story is the narrative strategy employed by Ghosh in

most of his novels. Here in this novel, the story of Bon Bibi, a local

mythological story, is interwoven. The glory of Bon Bibi was handed down

the generations through the oral tradition of story and song (rural theater) as

told by Abdur Rahim. Bon Bibi and her brother Shah Jongli were sent to

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“atthero bhatt ir desh”( tide country) in order to make it inhabitable. She

came and defeated the established demon spirit Dokkhin Rai and made it

possible human habitation. It is believed she protects the honest poor when

they are in danger. Bon Bibi became the tutelary deity of the islands and a

representative of Hindu-Islam syncretism in the tide country.

Bon Bibi divided the archipelago by an imaginary line that separates

human habitat from that of the animals and humans were instructed to curtail

greed and not to venture into the wilderness for profiteering. Because of this

legend order was reinstated in the wilderness and human habitat and

propounded control over human need. The equitable dispensation of the

space was however, punctured by greed thus leading to ecological imbalance

in the tide country. For Piya who witnessed the prayer to Hindu goddess

with invocations to Allah is a syncretic phenomena and it is part and parcel

of the ecosystem. Sundarban geography epitomizes subalternity, but these

marginalized subalterns could co-exist with predators in the wilderness

because of the cult of Bon Bibi. Amitav Ghosh in one of the interviews with

Ahmed Hussain expresses that though myth may be fictional in nature but it

is about life, about society and it is these myths that restrict complete break

from the past to the modern or from the modern to post modern. The more

we study and project such myths and their realities, the more we understand

the situation. Thus the inclusion of the Bon Bibi story enhances the thematic

concern of the novel of dislocating the grand narratives and replacing it with

the little narratives.

Intertextality is also effectively employed in this novel. The Hungry

Tide has incorporated social history, scientific report and geography. The

information regarding the killings by Royal Tigers of Bengal, reason for

their attack on human beings, number of people killed every year and

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measures taken to reduce the human killings and to increase the number of

depleting species is accounted in the form of scientific report. So also, the

data regarding the marine mammals of the tide country is also narrated in the

form of scientific report. The exact location of the Sundarban, the

archipelago, river channels, its water, habitation, flora and fauna and ebb and

tide are accounted as in geographical map reading.

The narrative device of ‘mixed genre’ is also employed in this novel.

Here the genres of literature such as, poetry, essays, oral traditions, and

theater performance are combined. The entire history of refugees, their

movement from Bangladesh, their settlement in Dandakaryna in central

India, ill treatment of them by the local people and government, their urge

for the mudy and tidy country, their arrival to Morichjhapi, their efforts to

restructure their lives, confrontations with the government and the massacre

of the refugees are all narrated through the diary left behind by Nirmal. The

mythical story of Bon Bibi interwoven in the novel is presented through

stage performance, orally and through Nirmal’s diary. Nirmal sprinkles

throughout his diary the thoughts and poetic lines from Rainer Maria Rilke’s

Duino elegies. For instance, the often quoted poetic line is “Life is lived in

translation” (225). Other poetic lines are; “because animals already know by

instinct we’re not comfortably at home in our translated world” (206),

“Some simple thing shaped for generation after generation. Until it lives in

our hands and in our eyes and it’s ours” (143). To sing about someone you

love is one thing; but oh the blood’s hidden guilty river-god is something

else” (182). Nirmal’s diary not only reflects his love for poetry, but also

reflects his Marxists’ ideas. Nilima says “he couldn’t let go the idea of

revolution” (282). And further she tells “he was a historical materialist. For

him it meant that everything which existed was interconnected: the trees, the

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sky, the weather, people, poetry, science, nature (282-283). This description

not only portrays Nirmal’s character but epitomizes Ghosh’s idea of the

world.

The day before Kanai departed to Delhi, he wrote a letter to Piya. It is

a letter of lamentation. He prided the breadth and comprehensiveness of his

experience of the world. He loved to say he knew six languages. He has

realized his follies and writers: “at Garjontola I learnt how little I know of

myself and of the world” (353). Thus, Ghosh brings together various genres

and subjects and creates his own discourse to convey his ideas. Saswat Das’s

opinion exemplifies this, “Ghosh works by a method that can be called

deconstructive, but then his ostensible objective is to create an independent

discourse” (184).

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