Bengaluru: A good writer can tell a story, an excellent writer can tell it well. A great writer can listen. Amitav Ghosh undoubtedly belongs to all three categories! Any journalist assigned to the task of interviewing him goes about it with a certain sense of awe, but the best-selling author has a remarkable gift for putting people at ease and drawing them out. “That’s why I became a writer,” he remarked. “I have found that people talk to me.”
In the city for the launch of Flood of Fire, the fitting finale to the immensely popular Ibis trilogy, Ghosh is, as one of the characters in his book admits, “besotted with words.” The Ibis trilogy can only be described as a literary masterpiece, for Ghosh hasn’t merely told a story - and he’s a masterly story-teller - he has created a world, a 19th century, colonial era universe where ordinary people find it in themselves to do extraordinary things. Ghosh’s Mumbai, Calcutta and Canton conjure up a world, more akin to Kingslanding and Winterfell (A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin) than they are to the world we inhabit, minus the dragons, of course!
The series, which occupied a decade in his life, has finally come to an end. What has it left him with? “A sense of accomplishment,” he says at once, smiling. Is it hard, to let go of characters that have been so much a part of his existence? “I think that's one reason why I wanted a trilogy, but no, I don’t feel like I'm leaving them behind,” he said. “They are a part of me even now.”
A couple of chapters into the book will leave readers marvelling at Ghosh’s exquisite prose and the wholly new lingua franca comprising quaint 19th century-isms, where ‘trouser’ is spelled ‘trowser’ and ‘mistri’ is ‘mystery’.
“I like the oddness of the word ‘mystery’,” he agrees. “We don’t actually have records of the way people spoke at the time, but my research did have me reading a lot of old documents. The words, the punctuation - they’re all completely unlike what we’re used to today. It’s never standard, no matter how pedantic people are.” Sentences flowed, they contained clauses and sub clauses - punctuation, in my opinion, leads to stilted thinking.”
For Ghosh, the story really began with Deeti, the light-eyed young woman who engineers a daredevil escape for her brother, Kesri, the riveting protagonist in Flood of Fire. “It all started with her and Behram (the Parsi businessman) I sensed, during Sea of Poppies that Kesri would go on to become an important character.”
Like most writers, he has no idea where his story will go. “I don't even know the end of a chapter when I start,” he said. “I had no idea what my characters would be like. It’s a constant journey, I wrote to find out where their lives would take them.”
Needless to say, extensive research went into the books. It involved rummaging through piles of old documents, understanding English, Bhojpuri, Parsi and even Cantonese as it was spoken at time.
“I would consult with my Bhojpuri and my Parsi friends, yes, but the languages have changed so much. I do speak Cantonese, though.” In fact, he is working on another book already, based on the research he did for the Ibis series.
What’s his takeaway from China, a country that he writes about with complete authority and about whom Indians still know so little? “There are number of commonalities between Chinese and Indian culture,” he said at once. “Yes, there are contrasts, but they are so much like us. You have little temples everywhere, just like you find in India. You walk into a shop in China and find a little altar set up. Indians do have an incorrect notion of their neighbour, simply because they don’t travel there enough.
Personally, I find it easier to get around Beijing than New Delhi!” Ghosh, interestingly, began his career as a reporter, proof-reading copies and covering assignments. “I was very young at the time. I still do a fair bit of journalism and looking back, all I have ever done is write,” said Ghosh, with a little smile.
He has, over the years, proved himself adept at many different styles, but his heart lies with his novels. “I prefer fiction,” he said. “Non fiction is about communication, the simpler it is, the better. With fiction, language is used for a lot more than just putting a point across. It establishes the mood, the place and works at so many different levels. Linguistically, it's a much greater challenge.”
Ask him if he wants to see his books turned into a television series or into films and he shrugs off the idea noncommittally. “I wouldn’t be happy with giving just one book and anyway, it would be so expensive to do that I don’t think anybody would want to try,” he answered. When he isn’t writing, Ghosh tends to his garden at his home in Goa, just so he can be alone with his thoughts.
Clearly, solitude means a great deal to the man - about an hour into the conversation, his eyes begin to flicker, almost subconsciously, toward the door. So we leave him to his hectic two-day schedule in the city, with the hope that he will be able to steal a few moments of solitude with a cup of tea to do what he does best - dream.
