SHAOW LINES AS A MEMORY NOVEL

INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH

POST-INDEPENDENCE

TOPIC   :              “THE SHAOW LINES AS A MEMORY”

NAME     :           BHALIYA UMA H.

ROLL  NO :         01

SEM -2:                M.A. PART-1

BATCH:               2010-2011

                                                                                     

SUBMITTED TO:  Mr. Devarshi Mehta.

Department of English, Bhavnagar University.

·         AMITAV GHOSH

Amitav ghosh was born in 1956. He is a Bengali author as well as a literary critic in the field of English language. Ghosh was born in kolkata and was educated at the Doon school, st.stephen’s  college. Delhi Delhi University and the university of oxford as well. I oxford university he was awarded a ph.d. In the subject of social anthropology. Amitav ghosh has also been awarded the padma shri by the government of India.

·       SHAOW LINES AS A MEMORY NOVEL

Amitav ghosh’s second novel “the shadow lines is considered by many as his best work and it was also awarded the sahitya akademi  awarded in the year 1989. It lies in the genre of what is known as a memory novel where the content of the entire novel is derived from the memory of characters. It is at some level a recollection of events and their various interpretations held by the characters. Published in the year 1988, this memory novel beautifully knits together the personal lives of the narrator – tridib, thamma, lla, robi, mayadebi, nick, the data chaudhari’s and the shipes against the backdrop of important historical events of India, Bangladesh and England. The novel stresses upon the meaning of freedom in a modern world and questions the reader about the shadow lines that are drawn between people and nations and how these lines act as a barrier in maimaining  peace and harmony.

Ghosh makes shadow lines an interesting read. The image of journey is central to the story which is divided into two section of “going away” and “coming home”. In this novel ghosh constantly moves forward and backward creating a zig - zag like pattern constantly to the complex structure of the novel. The story is mystifying and would attract the reader to read it again. The novel beautifully showcases human relationships and also talks about the importance of borders, lines and nations. The book shares a very strong and important message on how the borders demarcating the nations have begun to demarcate the people as well.

Ghosh has beautifully carved the story of two families, the datta chaudharies, living in India and the family of prices, living in London which are related because of the healthy relation between their respective patriarchs. The main protagonist of the story. The narrator himself has been left unnamed till the end. He adores tridib. Who is his second uncle by relation but more like a friend to him in reality. The narrator carves the incidents and the places shared by tridib in a way that they become a permanent fixture in his memory. The narrator’s grandmother, thamma, a strict headmistress at a girl’s school. The narrator admires lla, his cousin who stays in London, but she has someone else in her life to whom she later marries, few years later. When the narrator visits London. He seems to know the streets and the building just the way an atlas would know. All because of experiences tridib had shared with him. Later we discover that tridib and may price. Loved each other secretly but their relationship could not mature due to some mishap which we get to know as the story unfolds. The same mishap permanently breaks down thamma’s spirit who was supposed to be really tough and strong. You will have to read for yourself to find out what could change so many lives in a go. Ghosh has tried to represent the borders we have drawn separating the countries them as mirrors which simply reflect us on the other side. These borders can at most distinguish between the names of the countries but cannot stop or erase the memories of one side on the other.

“The shadow line is concerned with the meaning of political freedom in the modern world”?

“Is wishing away of troublesome realities freedom”?

This novel focuses on the meaning of political freedom in the modern world and the force of nationalism. The shadow line we illusion and a source of terrifying violence.

1939 tridib the narrator’s father’s cousin, then aged 8, is taken to England, and in 1964 he is murdered by a street mob near his mother’s original family home in Dhaka. His boyhood experience in war – time London and his violent death twenty-five years later in Dhaka constitute the end – points of the novel’s essential narrative.

In the novel we can see that the two endpoint of the narrative takes place thirteen years before the hero’s birth and the details of the second are communicated to him only years later by may price. Tridib’s girlfriend who had actually witnessed that scene of terrifying violence in a “new” nation. But tridib is the hero’s mentor and guiding spirit. Almost an alter ego, and not only is his boyhood filled with tridib’s  London memories but his own later visit to London is a reliving of the scenes and events of tridib’s experiences there. Thus the two instances of the destruction force of nationalism mark not the actual, time span of the novel but its hero’s growth from childhood to maturity.

In this novel thamma’s attempt to free her uncle and take him on a homeward journey ends violently and tragically in three deaths - her uncle’s, the rickshaw puller’s and tridib’s. But with her imagination enslaved to the idea of nationalism, thamma fails to see that nationalism has destroyed her home and spilled her kin’s blood. She says…..

“We have to kill them before they kill us”

Thus, the end she fails to realise that national liberty in no way guarantees individual liberty.

Thus, the shadow line by amitav ghosh paints a landscape of symbolism and realism that spans both time and space. The concepts of distance and time are uniquely borders that divide countries and the imaginary borders that divide human beings. From the image – conscious character of the grandmother to the riots that explode in the streets ghosh takes the reader on a fascinating journey of exploration, dissecting the characters of the story while simultaneously dissecting the human race.

The title of the novel is perhaps the most philosophical statement ghosh makes asserting that the shadow lines or the lines that not only define our human shape but our inner struggles to choose between darkness and light. Are an intricate part of all human existence.

While the title “the shadow lines” can be read a thousand different ways and the significance of shadows throughout the novel can be interpreted with vast distinctions. One thing remains clear. The shadows that all human beings reflect are as unique to the individual as each written word is to a talented author like amitav ghosh.

Thus, at last we can say that shadow lines that exist in the memory of one, and therefore in another’s imagination. A narrative built out of an intricate, constantly crisscrossing web of memories of many people. It never pretends to tell a story, rather it invites the reader to invent one. Out of the memories of those involved memories that hold mirrors of differing shades to the same experience.