An Analysis on Life and Work in Selected Novels of Amitav Ghosh: Diasporic Consciousness

INTRODUCTION

English language is the most important thing British left in India. India is a country with many languages and dialects. Even then English language became popular and a common dialect which helped unify Indian sub-continent during colonial and post-colonial period. The affluent middle class used English language frequently. Likewise many Indian writers also used English Language for their writing. The writers who lived in India as well as in other countries most commonly wrote in English language. Some of the modern Indian writers are Anita Desai, Khuswant Singh, and Arundathi Roy and so on. Among such writers, Amitav Ghosh has published various acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction. He was born in 1956 in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford, Alexandria. His works are The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1988), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glass Palace (2000), The Hungry Tide (2004), Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), The Flood of Fire (2015), the three volumes of The Ibis Trilogy. Most of his works deals with historical issues. The non-fiction works are In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in Cambodia and at Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), and The Imam and the Indian (2002) Diaspora derived from the Greek ―scattering of seeds‖, it is used to describe population, migration and dispersal. Diaspora can be referred to people migrating from one country to another country due to various reasons such as seeking refugees, for example jews went in exile from the homeland of Palestine. Thus diaspora refers to displaced communities of people migrating from their homeland. Somehow the thought process and the way of living of a diasporic community have influenced Amitav Ghosh‘s life and eventually the consciousness of a confused mind and sense of loneliness experienced by the migrated people can be seen in his writings. As V.S. Naipaul pointed out in A Way in The World, 1994 ―Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves‖ Amitav Ghosh travelled frequently in his youth, living in East Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, and India. His first novel The Circle of Reason deals with the life of a boy named Alu who lived in India and his adventure living in India and later, due to certain circumstances flees to Middle East. During his travel he meets various people from different nations. Thus this novel throws light on to the subject of exile, loneliness, migration, displacement. The visuals and situations the author encountered in his own life is seen in The Circle of Reason.

terms of culture, geographical structures have been discussed. The boundary line between nations and families showed the readers the quest for self-identity existed in each one of us. The characters in the novel are caught between two nations and the struggle to come of their artificially self-made personalities due to the influence of migration. In an Anitque Land is based on historical and anthropological research that Gosh conducted in Egypt during the 1980‘s. The novel was based on the problems of Jewish settlers in Egypt. So to collect more information about the main character, a slave and for further research on the subject the author lived in Egypt for few years and he described about his experiences with his neighbours in a small Egyptian village in his fiction. The Calcutta Chromosome (1996) is a science fiction set in three places, Calcutta, London and new York. It is also set in three different periods. The Glass Palace (2001) depicts the themes of displacement and quest for identity. Thus Amitav Ghosh‘s works mainly dealt with his own experiences. The major theme in his works is the diasporic influence which is evident from his own life. As Amitav Gosh pointed out in one of Jash Sen‘s article, ―I really don‘t plot a novel. I just start with an idea I find interesting or a character and then I give myself plenty of loose threads that I don‘t cut off, so I can pick them up again later as part of the story, if it suits. Sometimes the thread resolves them into the narrative and sometimes they just remain loose ends. It‘s a mystery really, how the story evolves.‖ Amitav Ghosh, a novelist with an exceptional sense of place and history, is one of the most popular novelists of the time. Ghosh has joined the famous novelists such as Monohar Malgonkar, Shashi Tharoor, Khushwant Singh, Salman Rushdie and Chaman Nahal and others with a sense of political and historical consciousness. One can identify the sense of historical reality, in Ghosh‘s novels. The idea of displacement, craving for strong identifications and race-relations, is the staple-stuff of Ghosh‘s novels. The term displacement is associated with diaspora and has got the poignancy in the hands of Ghosh. In the novel, ―The Circle of Reason‖ (1986), Ghosh used the magic realism in the literary scenario. The other novels like ‗The Glass Palace‘, The Hungry Tide‘, ‗The Shadow Lines‘ and ‗In an Antique Land‘ are the famous novels of Ghosh. The novel ‗Sea of Poppies‘ was shortlisted and got the Man Booker Prize, 2008 and it was awarded the India Plaza Golden Quill Award and the Crossword Prize.3John Meleodhas considered Amitav Ghosh as diasporic writer along with Caryl Phillips, Bharati novels. The term ‗Displacement‘ has got a vast connotation with respect to diasporic literature which involves the theme of a homeland, a place from where displacement took place and narratives of tough journeys undertaken because of the economic compulsions.456The word diaspora came from Greek words ‗dia‘ and ‗speirein‘, etymologically means ‗dispersal‘ and which involves two cultures and two countries are embedded in the migrant‘s mind, side-by-side. Amitav Ghosh is one of the postmodernists.789 Postmodernism has developed and determined in the Indian novels by the novelists, especially Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh belongs to the International School of writing which deals successfully of the modern world with the post-colonial ethos without sacrificing the old histories of the lands.Ghosh blends fiction and fact perfectly with magical realism. Ghosh weaves the magical realistic plots with the themes of postmodernism. The Indian diasporic history can be broadly divided into three major phases based on the motive of their migration. The first phase started during the colonial time, particularly in the latter half of the 19th century. During that time, many of the uneducated Indian indentured labours left their homeland to work in the sugar, rubber and teak plantations of the British colonies. In the mid-20th century, the second phase of migration took place. In this phase, the educated Indians started moving towards the developed nations, especially to the West for their economic development, and educational prospects. The third phase of migration occurred in the beginning of the 21st century when many of the Indians including the educated as well as the uneducated went to the developed nations in search of employment and earning. The Indian diasporic writers from all over the world started focusing on their homeland, the issue of migration and its effects, in their writings. For the Indian diasporic writers, it is India or the memories of India that become the materials to most of their literary expressions. Some of the important writers who concern their homeland and the diasporic subjects in their writings are V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Jumpa Lahiri, Bharati Mukherjee, Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry, Kiran Desai and Anita Desai. The diasporic literature act as a bridge between two different cultures as it commonly deals with the memories of home and the experience of the emigrants in a host country with their native culture. Thus this literature became an extended form of home return; many of the diasporic writers looking back at their homeland, its culture and its other aspects through their writings. Among them Amitav

movement of migration in all his novels was unique. He never directed his characters towards the loss on the foreign country instead he observed their experimental lives and gave a positive touch. His novels are always in search of the root cause of migration that never comes to view. He opened the past and re-examined every socio-political activity in order to expose its actual effect on common people and their migration. Ghosh‘s novels deal with the themes of political struggles and histories that caused the diaspora, memories of homeland, transculturation. idea of oneness and faceless human plights. He was veiy conscious on blurring the borders that divide India from its sub-continents. He expressed his vision of oneness or idea of the utopian world in most of his novels. There was a precise depiction of the reality of each and every stage in the lives of migrants in Ghosh‘s novels. As an Indian diaspora living in America, he was able to capture the outer and inner experiences of the people joining the exodus of migration and undergoing ineffable hardships. Both his fictional as well as non-fictional writings tend to project the restless moving across the continents, oceans and countries. Along with his universal ambition in his writings he never failed to offer a space to register the spirit of his homeland. Ghosh‘s one of the notable non- fictions is In an Antique Land. Histoiy becomes alive in the pages of this chronicle. This work shows Ghosh as an anthropological historian to the literary world. He underlined some of the tragic events in the history of Asia, particularly India and the Middle East. It brought back the readers to the time of trade and commerce before the arrival of Vasco-da Gama in India. Ghosh recreated the forgotten period of history in this book to show how freely India was in collaboration with the Arab and the Chinese World. By emphasising the trust between a Tunisian Jewish merchant and his Indian helper. Ghosh displayed the bond of human relationship between the different parts of the world.

DIASPORIC CONSCIOUSNESS

Diasporic Consciousness express a personss Diasporic experience and feelings. Almost all the Diasporic communities face initial problems and sufferings, when they settle in a new land. Even though they try to adjust to the new environment, language, culture and the society, they will suffer from the psychological problem also. Alienation, identity crisis, loneliness, rootlessness, dislocation, nostalgia, cultural change, gender inequality, racism, homelessness etc... are Diasporic themes and problems included in Diasporic Consciousness. Diasporic sensibility is not something permanent; it writing is not only the nostalgic reminiscing of place but also of time. Time leads to the development of groups and sub-groups within the Diaspora. Diaspora is a journey towards self-realization, self- recognition, and self-knowledge and self- definition. ―Diasporic Consciousness‖ is chosen with special reference to novels of an independent writer, Amitav Ghosh, who won a prestigious place in Diasporic literature. Ghosh looks at Diasporic literature in a new perspective. Ghosh is one of the Trinity after V.S.Naipaul and Salman Rushdie who popularized the Diaspora in Indian writing in English. He is an anthropologist, sociologist, journalist, novelist, essayist, travel-writer and teacher. Both his fictional and non- fictional narratives, move restlessly across countries, continents and oceans. Amitav Ghosh never writes the same type of novel but his novels are linked together by a number of common concerns. Travelling occurs in five of the essay-titles, history in different forms occurs in four of his works and the issues of „hegemony‟ are indicated by the wording of at least four of the titles. His novels are linked together by number of common concerns like history sociology, travelling, anthropology, ethnography, society and historicity. Diasporic Consciousness are analyzed here with particular reference to his novels The Circle of Reason (1986) and The Glass Palace (2000).

THE WORKS OF AMITAV GHOSH

Ghosh‘s first novel is The Circle of Reason, published in 1986. He was awarded France‘s Prix Medicis Award for this novel in 1990. It is a picaresque novel which concerns the adventures of Alu, a weaver from a small village near Calcutta, who leaves home to travel across the Indian Ocean to the oil town of al-Ghazira on the Persian Gulf and to African Sahara then back to India. This novel has a Diasporic theme of sense of displacement, self- identity, migration, alienation, quest for home, rootlessness etc... Ghosh‘s fifth novel, The Glass Palace, in 2000, is a tale of three generations of a family. It is a historical novel. This novel won the international e- book award at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2001. It is a story about Rajkumar, who lands in Burma in rags but later becomes one of the richest timber traders in Burma. This novel also has many Diasporic themes such as self-identity, alienation, migration, quest for home, etc... Diasporic theory is an account of physical and psychological journey of an individual. Diasporic idea has come to find its apotheosis in the ambivalent, transitory, culturally contaminated and

It can be called a temporary migration. The condition of migration brings out its role in the legitimization of „otherness‟ in postmodernist discourse. The migrants may suppress their recollections or sometimes passively allow them to be submerged; some of them may recollect the vision of the past while others keep up to date with reality by means of extended return visits to their country of origin. The condition of migrancy is seen as a state of indeterminacy, of tentativeness, of in- betweeness‖ as Homi Bhabha would call it, The migrant is seen as the critical participant- observer into his/her own condition, enabling powerful insights to be made into the insider- outsider dichotomy and the real lived experiences of migration. (King et al 8) In The Glass Palace, Ghosh writes about the predicament of migrants. The novel covers the sad episode of the last king of Burma and his doomed family that is exiled to Ratnagiri in India. The family of kings and queens were left with no other alternative but to live with and among commoners. With the outbreak of a plague and less money to maintain servants there was no other alternative but to allow the villagers to build a village around the compound of Outram House. Thus the deported Royal Family was forced to mingle with the commoners. This new way of life for the Royal Family may be summed up as follows: ―The sense of exile results in a deep feeling of loss, ache, separation, yearning for recuperation and restoration‖ (Shukla 7). Migration proves to be a curse for these people while the same migration proves to be a blessing for Rajkumar, a face of colonizer in the guise of the colonized. Rajkumar succeeds in getting a major teak contract to a railway company. In the case of Rajkumar, migration transforms his character as he rises from coolie to a timber merchant. Migration becomes an important theme of his novel as each journey serves to impact the identity of the traveller or the migrant.

DIASPORIC LONGINGS

Diasporic condition is the state in which longings and yearnings of the migrant are expressed. The concept of Diaspora stands steadfast in its claims towards the inevitability of nostalgia. Nostalgia has always been a useful compensatory tool to construct an alternative historical reality created by the images of the golden past, especially when there is discontent with the present socio-economic situation in any culture. Amitav Ghosh‟s fiction is expressive of an urge to find a context in which the characters try to transform the meaningless routine of life into a sensuous construct. The nostalgic sentiment comes handy to Ghosh to fill the narrative gaps that inevitably arise in the novel. compelled to live in India he strived for the place he considered to be his homeland i.e. Burma. He admitted his granddaughter, Jaya that for him, ―… the Ganges could never be the same as the Irrawaddy‖ (The Glass Palace 544). His longings and yearnings do not end in his life span; it ends only with the end of his life. In The Circle of Reason, all the characters in the novel serve the purpose of highlighting the nature of experiences of a migrant characterized by nostalgia and alienation. Alu took India with him to the countries and places he eventually calls home, intertwining his past with his present. He encountered the memories of his youth. Ghosh‟s writings replicate the current concern with the porosity of cultural boundaries. The characters in Ghosh‟s novels cross from within and beyond its borders. They do not dwell in distinct cultures but travel in cultural spaces that flow across borders. In The Glass Palace, the moment of Rajkumar, the eleven year old Indian‟s presence in Mandalay, the ancient walled city by the Irrawaddy River and seat of Burmese royalty, amidst the booming of English guns and the imminent imperialist threat is the first of the many indicators of the transfer of power and the transition in cultural positions. In The Circle of Reason, the story concerns the picaresque adventures of the protagonist Alu. It is also an allegory about the destruction of traditional village life by the modernizing influx of western culture, and the subsequent displacement of non- European peoples by imperialism. The multiculturalisms of Lalpukur can also be seen as a mixed culture of Bruce Lee and Hindi movies, schools of kung fu, language mixed up with Noakhali, Burmese, and West Bengal accent. As Ghosh writes the village is „churning like cement in a grinder‟ (The Circle of Reason 27). For each aspect of Lalpukur culture authenticates Diasporic movement from their different historical movements.

AMITAV GHOSH

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh, Srilanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. His novels are The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In an Antique Land, Dancing In Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and Sea of Poppies, The Ibis Trilogy. The Circle of Reason was awarded in 1990. The Shadow Lines won Sahitya Akademi award and Ananda Puraskar award. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the International e-Book Award in 2001. The Hungry Tide was awarded the crossword Book Prize in 2005.

English. This novel captures perspective of time and events that bring people together and hold them apart. The novel has an unnamed narrator relating the story of his experience and hios uncle Tridib‘s experiences. Tridib is consider to be the protagonist of the novel. Ghosh novel is a useful resource to study the both the challenges of diaspora as well as the strategies of negotiation. The politics of negotiation determines the multi-layered spectrum of responses to the diasporic space, and varied parameters exist in order to study these negotiations. In this novel Ghosh explains the sufferings of Tridib through the unnamed narrator. The distance draws him even closer and the homeland is elevated to a higher pedestal. He uses personal stories to shed light on the social, political and historical The Characters keep turning back to the homeland-its sacredness, rituals, culture, and thus adopt various families‘ symbols to help them freeze the image of the homeland in their being. This novel is considered to be a successful novel which stands for its powerful imagination. Both Tridib and narrator are good with their dominant imagination.

The writings of people who migrated to new lands are classified as diasporic literature. The thread of similarity runs these diasporic writers with their continuous involvement in representing their homeland in their writings. No doubt they all have the idea of home in their writings, but the concern and the perception on homeland felt by eveiy one of the diasporic writers is somehow different. This variation can be observed through the analysis of how the home is perceived by the diasporic writers and the different generations of diasporas. The creative writings forming a part of diasporas document the shared image of homeland and the memories of it. These memories of homeland arc sometimes the writers‘ own experience of the past but in many cases they are the experiences narrated to them by their ancestors. As a diasporic writer he not only represents the migrants‘ lives in his novels but also articulates his own diasporic consciousness in his writings. There are many different ways for diasporas to look back at their] homelands; among those Ghosh glanced at his homeland and its spirit by writing it in his novels. His novels in all aspects reflect his closeness towards his motherland. Indian elements in his novels have drawn the attention of many conscious readers and critics. Simultaneously, his practice of using Indian loan words in English also lends importance to the aspect of its Indianness to some extent. Ghosh's adoption of many Indian words and terms into English as well as use of many Bengali expressions

Indian writing in English has stamped its eminence by mixing up modernity and tradition in the production of art. Furthermore, the oral transmission of literary Indian works gained ground slowly. It formed an indelible mark in the heart and mind of the lovers of art. Amitav Ghosh is one of the postmodernists. Ghosh is immensely affected by the cultural and political milieu of post independent nation. Ghosh weaves the magical realistic plot along with postmodern background. Postcolonial migration to the foreign nation is yet another trait of postmodernism. Irony plays an important role in the postmodern fiction. Ghosh is very careful in using the vernacular transcriptions and English. Ghosh improves a rich and conscious tradition in Indian English fiction, a tradition which includes Shashi Deshpande and R.K. Narayan. In Amitav Ghosh novels, The Glass Palace, River of Smoke and Sea of Poppies, the post-colonialism, postmodern traits and the treatment of diaspora are obviously present. Ghosh was a prolific Indian Bengali writer belongs to the Diasporic community. All his novels influenced by the effect of loneliness. The immigration and alienation as a fact holds a great place in Diasporic writings. All his novels explores the sense of nostalgia. The haunting effect of losing homeland is considered to be the main aspect of diasporic writings. The dislocation in the characters explains the great sense of diasporic sufferings.

1. Chaudhuri, S. (2010). Translating loss: place and language in Amitav Ghosh and Salman Rushdie. 2. Dhawan, R.K., ed. (1999). The Novels of Amitav Ghosh. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1999. Print. 3. Ghosh, Amitav (2011). River of Smoke. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2011, Print. 4. Ghosh, Amitav (2008). Sea of Poppies. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2008, Print. 5. Ghosh, Amitav (2000). The Glass Palace. Uttar Pradesh: Harper Collins India, 2000, Print.

7. Ghosh, Sailen (2011). Interview: Chasing the Dragon with Amitav Ghosh.11 July, 2011. 8. Hawley, John C. (2005). Amitav Ghosh: An Introduction. New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2005. Print. 9. Joshi, Ulka (2000). ―Narrative Technique in The Shadow Lines.‖ Interpretations Amitav Ghosh‘s The Shadow Lines. (eds.) Indira Bhatt and Indira Nityanandam. New Delhi: Creative Books. 10. Kent, E. (2015). ―Ship-Siblings‖: Globalisation, Neoliberal Aesthetics, and Neo-Victorian Form in Amitav Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies. Neo Victorian Studies, 8(1). 11. Khair, Tabish (2003). Amitav Ghosh: A Critical companion. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003. Print. 12. Khuraijam, G. & Acharjee, S. (2013). Nation in Question in Amitav Ghosh‘s The Glass Palace. 13. Mokashi-Punekar, Rohini and Abhigyan Prasad : ―Imperial Frontier to National Border: Narration, History and Identity in Ghsoh's The Glass Palace‖. 14. Prasad, G.J.V. (2003). ―Re-Writing the World: The Circle of Reason as the Beginning of the Quest‖. Amitav Ghosh: Critical Perspectives. 15. Roy, B. (2014). Exploring the Orient from Within: Amitav Ghosh‘s River of Smoke. Postcolonial Text, 9(1). 16. Roy, B. (2014). Exploring the Orient from Within: Amitav Ghosh‘s River of Smoke. Postcolonial Text, 9(1). 17. Sreelatha, M. & Phil, M. (2013). Reconstructing Identities in Amitav Ghosh‘s Sea of Poppies: A Postmodernist Perspective. Language in India, 13(10).

PGT in English