In his essay on the anti Sikh riots of Delhi (The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi), this is what Amitav Ghosh has to say about “The Shadow Lines”:
a book that led me backward in time to earlier memories of riots, ones witnessed in childhood. It became a book not about any one event but about the meaning of such events and their effects on the individuals who live through them.
It is difficult to describe the book any better this. While the central, climactic event – that of a single riot which changed the lives of several people unwillingly pulled into its vortex – is only revealed in the end, the narrator’s journey through the “shadow lines” of geopolitical boundaries, through the past and present, is really an attempt to find some meaning of such meaningless (at least to the victims) violence.
At one level, it is all about personal relationships. There are a surprising number of characters, given the relatively short length (less than 250 pages in the first hardcover American edition), and I found myself fumbling between family hierarchies. Essentially there’s the narrator’s family, and the family of their close English friends.
As evident, the characters span three generations. I have highlighted the ones of central interest.
Grandmother and Mayadebi are sisters, who grew up in Dhaka before the partition. While Mayadebi, the more gregarious of the two, marries a diplomat and enjoys a life of stature abroad, Grandmother loses her husband in Kolkata and has to fend for herself and her only son, the narrator’s father. She’s a fighter, refuses any charity, and manages to raise her son, the narrator’s father, who eventually becomes a successful executive.
The narrator and Ila, to whom he is attracted, are thus distant cousins. His yearning for her however goes unrequited. The narrator’s character and that of Ila are an antithesis. While he tries to solve a puzzle of the past, she attempts, in her evasion, to obliterate it, at least for herself. She assumedly falls in love with Nick, and the two are engaged.
Then there’s Tridib and May, their unconsummated love, Tridib’s death and May’s guilt. Tridib, May and the narrator stand at the the opposite ends of perception defined by Ila and Nick.
Robi, who is closer in age to the narrator and Ila rather than his much elder brother Tridib, comprises the third character, along with the narrator and Ila, who reflect on the past, in the present from where the novel takes off. The three get together in London, where the narrator is a student and where Ila lives, and where Robi is in transit en route to Boston.
The story unfolds through flashbacks, then progresses occasionally in the present. The narrative is intricate, and Ghosh is laudable for handling the complex flow of time, from starkly different historical perspectives, masterfully.
In this setting, between the buildup of generations of history, the hitherto unknown circumstances of Tridib’s death is revealed to the narrator (and also to us) in the final phases of the book. To those having undergone the trauma of such riots and even to those living in the shadow of it, which essentially includes people of the entire subcontinent, the book poses a simple yet challenging question: Was it really worth it?
In Robi’s own words:
“…why don’t they draw thousands of little lines through the subcontinent and give every little place a new name? What would it change? It’s a mirage; the whole thing is a mirage. How can anyone divide a memory?”
If there’s one book of Amitav Ghosh that’s undeniable, it is this. Here Ghosh the fiction writer takes precedence over Ghosh the researcher/academic, and by a wide margin. Unlike his later works – where the story sometimes takes turns that seem like props for a grander scheme on which it relies, unfortunately, like a crutch – there is clear focus, a deep, driving intent to unfold truth in the true novelistic style.
In the end, the futility of subcontinental politics intending to erase the truth of human lives by inventing “shadow lines” of divisions emerges acutely through the work. Therein lies its greatest success.
Yes, sub-continental politics and riots loom large in the novel, as do the shadow lines of borders. But what I found most appealing in the novel was the portrayal of imagination; the shadow lines between imagination and reality; the reality of lines on maps; of stories.
For instance, even though Ila travelled extensively, for her the world was just a series of airports, her fixed points being the Ladies’ in different airports. On the other hand, the young narrator remembers vividly whatever he’s told by others of faraway places and people. Imagination with precision. Remember the scene when as an adult he goes to London and remembers street and place names that Ila and Tridib had only told him about?
Some of are like that, no? Our imagination is more vivid than other people’s actual observation of places and events.
Nice review.
Thanks Smoke Screen, for elaborating on the point. Tridib, who has a strong influence on the narrator character, certainly sees things in a different light. It allows him (and the narrator) to blend into a time and place much more deeply. It is a rare quality.
I also especially liked the part when the narrator finds places on the map which are geographically close, yet political events in a place even farther away has a greater effect. The Dhaka riots were sparked off by an upheaval in Kashmir over the prophet’s hair. Kashmir is further away from Dhaka than Indonesia. The reality of people seem to be bound by these imaginary lines.
shadow lines by ghosh is an epitome of hw complications can be made simple and interesting. Very serious themes of politics has affected humanity since ages .caste and creed has been influencing politics in this indian subcontinent-riots-communal conflicts;partition of nation and states on the basis of religion, language;rupturing humanity, incising brother hood, corrupting the consciousness and coscience; people are left in state of utter confusion regarding there roots and identity.people born in lahore now living in delhi , people born in dhaka now living in calcutta, such displaced , migrated or to be more precise the uprooted families are the main focus in this novel by ghosh…i ,exploring how politics has been commented upon by contemporary indian english novelists in their novel ,found this piece as inspiring.how politics mingle and amalgamate with the human lives and effect them ?how politics has become so major a theme to be discussed in this celebrated literary genre.politics is not discussed in shadow lines but one can not be unaware of the fact or can not hold oneself from asking question as to why riots in bangladesh were followed by the same in calcutta…….{the circles …..in the novels…raise so much questions to be asked…}what amitav has sought to ask is the reason why muslims living in india are hated suddenly …why there are kept by some in india and killled by others simulataneously.whether india wants to remain secular or it needs to be a single religion state.what is there to be suspected if some person whowas born in lahore before pakistan was declared separate nation and now wants to visit that place…..is nostalgia a crime or seditions…..do they need to show there love and faith or to prove that every time……will they never be allowed to feel at home or they have to keep “moving on” as ghosh wrote…{jetomosha}.can emotions be manipulated by politics as they have been in india,pakistan,bangladesh for many decades.how can memories be formatted/patterned according to the location…..how the reality of people seem to be bound by these imaginary lines….{imaginary circles….?}
Thanks Sudhir.
It is indeed disturbing to note that such politics are continuing unabated to this day. The idea of nationhood, instead of rising with the nation’s maturity, appears to be on the decline instead. Sometimes I shudder to think in what state we shall see the “India” we knew in fifty, or even twenty, years.