Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace

 

Amitav Ghosh's latest novel The Glass Palace came out two years ago. For various reasons I didn't get the chance to read it. Finally when I sat down, it took about a week to finish the nearly five-hundred-fifty-page book. One could say I read it in one sitting. I can't say this about any other book of Amitav. I've read all his novels. It took time to read his other novels. Amitav is a storyteller, but he likes to add history, philosophy, politics and sometimes aesthetics. He doesn't write a book that can be read in one sitting. I would not say that The Glass Palace is different from his other novels, but it does have a unique romanticism attached to it. The plot will haunt you.

The novel is a story of the life of Bengalis in Burma. It is of epic proportions, spanning three generations and one hundred and twenty-five years. The story starts in Chittagong, and then gradually spreads over Burma, India and Malaya. Amitav explores various dimensions of the skepticism of the Indian middle class regarding British colonialism, the independence movements of India and Burma, and political loyalty.

The center of the story is Rajkumar Raha from Chittagong. At the age of ten this little orphan boy came by sampan to Mandalaya, today's Burma. He finds shelter in the shop of a Burmese lady. Within two decades this penniless little boy becomes a very wealthy timber merchant with the aid of a Chinese merchant. This wealth was made by exploiting Indian and Burmese workers, bribing English administrators and by driving himself. But Rajkumar cannot hold on to his wealth till the end. Along with the English, Indian merchants too bore the brunt of the anticolonial movement that grew before and during World War II. His own son is burned alive; his beautiful house transformed to ashes in front of his own eyes. He has to flee to India with his family, and in the end Rajkumar returns to India the way he came to Burmaempty-handed!

Although the central character of the plot is a refugee Bengali, Amitav's story is not centered solely on Rajkumar. It is not a narration of the rule and exploitation of Indians in Burma. Furthermore, it is also not a dissection of English colonialism. All these issues are found in the novel, but the writer's emphasis is somewhere else. Amitav likes to view people outside and above the boundaries of their geographical location. Inside human mind and memory time has no direction; there is no distinction of nations. The history of mankind also has a boundary-less appearance. Amitav's focus is with this appearance, this province-less geography. I don't know another contemporary novelist who narrates the human dimensions of globalisation with such sharp enthusiasm. Amitav started considering these questions fourteen years ago in his novel Shadow Lines. Even in that novel, Dhaka, Kolkata and London seem to rest on the same plane. His first novel The Circle of Reason spread across Lalpukur of East Bengal to the Sahara Desert in Africa. Even in this novel, one sees how people move easily from one place to another, settle down, dream and become a part of local history. I don't think there is another writer in World Literature who can present his characters outside their own geographical location, within an transnational setting, with such ease.

History is therefore a natural element of The Glass Palace. Fredrick Louis Aldamo of Colorado University said "history continuously talks in this novel." However, if one classifies this purely as a historical novel, one will overlook the comprehensiveness of its humanistic dimensions. History is not only narration of the past, but also the present.

The contemporary nature of the characters of The Glass Palace amazes us and also helps us to understand them. The two central characters are Rajkumar and his wife Dolly. Both are on opposite poles from each other. One strives to make his wealth flow over the edges; the other searches for self-purification to free herself of the emptiness of her heart. Their elder son, Neel, follows his father. He wants the world at his feet. The younger son, Dinu, is an artist, who chases love. Uma is probably the most modern Bengali character. She is vehemently against colonialism, whereas her husband is a Bengali District Magistrate who serves the British Raj, Thibo, the expelled king of Burma, is a silent character in the novel. He has lost all interest in life with the loss of power whereas his wife, Queen Supalatia, is overwhelmed by greed and lust for power.

The second set of characters comprise two members of the British Indian colonial armyArjuna and Hardy. Arjuna comes from a middle-class Bengali family. He is the first army officer in his clan. Hardy is the third-generation British Army officer. Being members of the colonial army, both are opportunists and tend to exploit their social status to the full. At the start they see no contradiction in their loyalty towards both their nations and the British Army. The problem, however, starts after the outbreak of World War II when the Hindu Freedom Army is created using the pretext of the Japanese invasion of Burma. Arjuna and Hardy both confront the same question---towards which country do their loyalties lie? Are they defending their country or are they simply mercenary soldiers of the Raj?

This play of contrasts is seen throughout the entirety of The Glass Palace. The core of the novel is the twenties---the era of an unending war, devastation and deaths. Every chapter describes this continuously and incessantly. In spite of this continual theme Amitav's main message is that of hope and resurrection of life. This resurrection becomes clear with the life and times of the generations of Rajkumar. Neel is killed in a Japanese bombing attack. His daughter Joya survives. The responsibility for searching out Rajkumar's other son, Dinu, falls on her shoulders. The life cycle does not become complete before this search is over. The resurrection is further established with the political scenario of erstwhile Burma. The country frees itself from the yoke of colonialism, but within a very short time martial law is established. Aun San Suu Kyi emerges at the end of the novel. Dinu emerges as a nameless infantry of the freedom struggle of Burma that Amitav portrays. He cannot return to Bangladesh or India even after the end of colonial rule. He remains in his childhood Burma, and now it is his job to preserve its past through the pictures from the studio that he opened in Rangoon named after Emperor Thibo's palace, The Glass Palace.

Amitav filled the novel with many dramatic events, but has left vast areas for polemical disputes. Although Amitav is clear about which side of the divide his sympathies lie, one does not get the impression that he is trying to impose his thoughts on the reader. Though the entire novel is fiction, a work of imagination, Amitav's book remains true to historical facts.

But it is also true that historical events in this region have traveled faster than fiction. For this reason, the plot sometimes does a double turn and at times the story therefore loses its texture and weaving. As the curtains start to drop, we see the author in a bit of a hurry. The finishing of the tapestry seems to be a bit synthetic. This, however, is not unnatural for a 500-page-plus book -- even Tolstoy had to hear such allegations with his War and Peace.

2. The Glass Palace: Amitav Ghosh in his own words

Amitav Ghosh was born in Kolkata in 1956. He spent a brief period in Dhaka with his father, who was a diplomat. His education was first in Kolkata, then Oxford and finally in Cairo. His first novel The Circle of Reason, was published in 1986 when he was only 30 years old. The Shadow Lines (1988) was received with acclaim among readers and critics. Besides his prose pieces his other novels are In An Antique Land (1993), and The Calcutta Chromosome (1996). Currently he is Professor of comparative Literature at Queen's College in New York, USA. He took a year's sabbatical to write The Glass Palace.

(This interview was taken over telephone last year. It was conducted in Bangla, and where the author spoke in English the lines are given in italics.)

HF: The Glass Palace is the story of an orphan boy, Rajkumar. It starts in Chittagong. How did you collect historical information for this part of the then East Pakistan?

AG: I talked with many people and also interviewed them while writing the book. Shawkat Ali Khan is a very close friend of mine in Dhaka. They were in Rangoon at one time. They have the Royal Stationery Shop in Dhaka, and this business was first started in Rangoon. They also have many connections in Kolkata. I talked with him about many issues regarding the novel. Other than him, I managed to write the novel after talking and interviewing as many family friends as I could.

HF: You mentioned it took you five years to write this novel. How much of this did you spend on research and writing?

AG: Research and writing can't be separated from each other distinctively. In 1995 I received an invitation from a magazine in Burma for an assignment. This was the beginning of the research. It was also the first time I had the privilege to meet Aun San Suu Kyi. I did a lot of research the following two years. I had to travel to neighbouring countries, especially Malaysia and Thailand. Research and writing both moved simultaneously.

HF: Your father and uncles lived in Burma. The novel must have their stories. The story of Indians you have portrayed is not that charitable. Does any portion of your plot or your characters identify with reality?

AG: Yes, it does. For instance, at the end of the story the burning of the godown really happened to an uncle of mine. His whole life's savings was turned into ashes froma Japanese bomb attack. But that is not a big deal. Did you know that the story of the Indian business community in Burma was not a happy one? Wherever South Asians traveled in colonial times, they found themselves as 'the most oppressed wing of colonialism.' We saw that in East Africa and also in Burma. The Indians who retuned from Burma have borne testimony to this. They were therefore xenophobic towards the natives. It is also true that the Burmese freedom movement was crushed by the hands of Indian soldiers.

HF: I am certain you had it in your mind to write this novel for a long time. You heard stories from you father and uncles. You were inspired by these stories. How much similarity did you find between the stories you heard and the fiction you created?

AG: You can say that the whole story changed. At the beginning of a novel I have at best one direction, one shape. Then when I start filling in the bits and pieces, it totally changes. The same thing happened this time too. I heard these stories many times in my childhood. In the beginning I started out writing a family storya memoir. In the end it all changes. 'There comes a moment when a novel acquires a life of its own.'

HF: The Glass Palace is a book of epic proportion. It has many stories, a lot of history. Organisation, arrangement and research of the novel are not an easy task at all. What advice do you have for somebody who would start a novel of this proportion today?

AG: There is no doubt I had to work very hard for this novel. I was going through the manuscript a few days ago on my computer. I get tired just looking at it these days. A work of so many years! You have to write at least ten times more than what you end up printing. I have one piece of advice for new writers of this generation. Our South Asia is full of 'grand themes', it has a very rich history. 'it's an enormously rich subject'. Unfortunately when I read their works, I find them very unambitious, very uninteresting. I think the writer should decide how much ambitious a project he/she will take up.

HF: You mentioned in an interview that the task of a writer is to bring out 'moralistic truth'. I am not clear on what you wanted to say. I know literature as the narration of humanistic experience, its interpretation. When you raise the issue of morality, the issue of value judgement arises. Do you think that is the correct path for the writer?

AG: I don't think the phrase has been quoted correctly. What I meant to say is that moral and ethical problems are urgent for literature, absolutely fundamental. It is not true that the writer will have to take one point of view. But how can one not think that a good writer, an honest writer, will not explore, and address the moral and ethical issues of the time framework he is working on? Fiction acquires its fundamental character from this addressing. As a fiction writer my goal is not to explore principles; rather the lives of people, to explore and extract how moral and ethical issues express themselves. I have attempted to do this in The Glass Palace. The characters of this novel are expecially distinguished on the basis of moral and ethical issues.

HF: All right. Do you agree that when a writer follows a certain idea alongside the plot, there is a possibility it may turn the whole story false if he is not virtuoso enough?

AG: In the world of art and literature 'all judgement is contingent on the performance of it.' I don't think it is possible to neglect ethical and moral issues, 'they are omnipresent.' For example, take 1971 and Bangladesh. Tell me, how does a writer depict the times by bypassing the social morality, history and politics of the time?

HF: If morality dominates there is the possibility of bias. Is this not also true?

AG: I don't agree that the writer has to be totally objective. Don't you think that the writer will try to explore and examine the time and people and issues that he thinks are of interest? I agree that in the context of a novel, the most important aspect is its characters. When we consider the characters, how can we not consider their moral and ethical dimensions? The moot point to keep in mind is if your plot has been honest and faithful.

HF: Many have commented that your book is full of details. In this book also you have laboured in descriptions of photography, models of cars and designs of furniture. How much of this is research, and how much of it comes from your personal knowledge?

AG: I guess you can say both. The great disparity and wonders of this world attract me tremendously. Not only myself, I think this would be fascinating for most people, to know more about the world around them. When I read a book. I also want to know what the design, colour and shape of the world the writer is trying to construct. These issues naturally attract me when I research a book. It is therefore not strange that these things will enter my enthusiasm. For me, a novel is not a journey following a particular path. A novel 'is an overarching form that can include everything'. If I see there is no scope to write about archaeology, history and philosophy, I will not have any interest in the novel. Maybe I will not write another novel. If the objective of a novel is to describe only events, then I won't have interest in such a narrow perspective. People may hold different views, but this is my philosophy about novels.

HF: Many have already started to compare your work with Doctor Zhivago. Some have said it is an epic. In my eyes, the novel is reminiscent of Tolstoy. I have seen images of Tolstoy not only through the plot of the novel but also the contrasting nature of the characters. The way the characters first approach each other and then become separated, it seems a kind of fate controls them. What is your own view?

AG: You are spot on! Tolstoy has influenced me more than Pasternayak. I am not that much eager on Doctor Zhivago. In my eyes Tolstoy is a writer par excellence. Similar issues excite me too. For instance, Tolstoy has tried to explore how history works, especially in War and Peace. The other writer that has inspired me to take up this work is Solzhenitsyn, especially his August 1914.

HF: Your stories are all unique. Your characters are different from each other. It seems they are travelling the world around, moving easily from one country to another. I think you also have nomadic features like the characters in your novels although you come from an urban middle class background. How did this nomadic tendency arise?

AG: I guess you can say my life is like a compass. I have one fixed pointKolkata, the rest moves. This book also characterizes this notion, the whole book 'is centered on Bengal'. All my books are constructed in this fashion. You can say Kolkata, or South Asia, is the center. This is not deliberate. It has happened gradually.

HF: How much connection do you have with home?

AG: I go back home every summer with my family. I have a house in Kolkata. Sometimes I also go back in winter.

HF: Do you plan to visit Dhaka?

AG: I always want to go, but just can't seem to organize it. I don't want to go for a few days but for a whole month so that I can see and explore properly.

HF: Can I inform the people of Dhaka of this desire?

AG: Of course! I very much want to go to Dhaka, very much!

Hasan Ferdous is a correspondent for Prothom Alo. Asrar Chowdhury teaches at Jahangirnagar University.