Kumar Rajyavardhan, deputy head of the mass communication department at the IMS Unison University in the Doon valley, has many aspects to his personality, besides being a brilliant teacher.
He has been a journalist for several years before entering the profession of teaching. His doctoral research on the works of Amitav Ghosh is now being published in the form of a book. Titled ‘Novels of Amitava Ghosh: A Critical Analysis’, the book is slated to be soon released in Dehradun.
The book highlights Amitav Ghosh as being one of the finest among the new generation of Indian English writers. He has been creating ever fresh and great novels one after another having many dimensions.
The book has been divided into five chapters, including introduction and conclusion. A couple of novels have been studied in each chapter comprising six novels: The Circle of Reason, The Shadow lines, In An Antique land, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide. The fourth chapter consists of three novels The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide and Sea of Poppies.
The introduction of the book starts with a short background of post Midnight’s Children novelists belonging to the new generation and it examines the life and works of Ghosh, including seven fictional and two non-fictional works, Countdown and Dancing in Combodia in post-colonial and post-modern context.
The second chapter presents the study of The Circle of Reason and The Shadow lines. The Circle of Reason deals with displacement after partition and journey for survival and resettlement.
The Shadow lines is the symbol of national boundaries that divide the people. The novel revolves round riot and violence. It is an authorized biography of the narrator who is the author himself. The novel is divided into two parts ‘Going Away’ and ‘Coming Home’. The characters wander in search of a home. It is the story of displacement and quest for the meaning of life.
The third chapter includes the study of In an Antique land and The Calcutta Chromosome. In an Antique land is an autobiographical travel tale. It presents a comparative study of medieval and modern Indo-Egypt relation. The novel deals with anthropology, sociology, history and religion.
The Calcutta Chromosome, a novel of malaria, delirium and discovery is a scientific thriller. The protagonist of the novel Murugan has an alternative interpretation of malaria research related to counter-science. The novel describes mysticism and mystery, supernatural and superstition, science and counter science.
The fourth chapter depicts the study of The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide and Sea of Poppies. The Glass Palace is a magnificent historical novel which deals with British aggression, capture and operation of power in Burma including and Malaysia. The post-colonial novel includes also Indian freedom movement and World War Second, but it is an epic of South-East Asia.
The Hungry Tide is a regional novel spread over the Gangetic delta, Sunderban, an archipelago of many Islands. The central figure of the novel is a cataloguist who studies Gangetic dolphin. The novel is a discovery which depicts the agonies of displaced people including the wild beauty of the Islands with terror of tides and tigers.
Sea of Poppies is the first book of an Ibis trilogy. Ibis is a ship transporting optical and slaves from India. The novel explores the savage operation of colonial power in India around the first half of the 19thcentury and transportation of opium to China and slaves to Mauritius Islands.
The last chapter presents the conclusion of the study in which plots, characters, textures and language of all the novels has been presented in the context of post-colonialism, sub-altern studies, post-modernism and magic realism.
Interestingly, Ghosh was a student at the Doon School along with another famous writer, Vikram Seth. Ghosh was born in Kolkata on July 11, 1956 to lieutenant Colonel Shailendra Chandra Ghosh. In school in Doon, the young Amitav was given to writing long poems, some of which were published in “The Doon School Weekly”. Once Ghosh mentioned in an interview that Seth, his senior, had advised him to look at his poems more carefully. He suggested that he should “stick to prose.”
Ghosh has received numerous awards for his works. Some of these awards are Prix Medicis Etranger for The Circle of Reason (1986), the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Shadow lines (1988), the Pushcart Prize for his essay, “The March of the Novel through History: My Father’s Bookcase” and the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt International e-Book Awards for The Glass Palace. Often categorised as historical fiction, Ghosh’s works show an intense understanding of human nature. His characters are living, breathing people whom his readers, meet, understand and befriend.