Before stepping out of room no. 324 and closing the door behind us, we instinctively turned, our eyes coming to rest on a bronze sculpture of a fish. Its head and entire body, placed vertically, appeared caught in a moment of joy, with only the tail breaking the surface of the water.
Was the slender aquatic a Channa Marulius or Cyprinus Carpio, or was it Catla or Karfu, which Shoma had prepared at Tavoy for Varsha? It could also have been Labeo Rohita, aka rui maach, Amitav Ghosh’s favourite. We were neither ichthyologists nor connoisseurs of fish, merely average fish lovers, and in that moment — and in the 15 minutes before it — the spirits inhabiting Ghost-Eye, the Jnanpith Award winner’s latest book, seemed very much in attendance in that room at Taj Bengal.
Ghosh’s novels leave a lasting impression on both mind and soul, returning in different ways to connect and reconnect long after they are read. Whether it is The Calcutta Chromosome, the Ibis Trilogy, The Glass Palace, or Gun Island, each makes its presence felt well after the story has ended and the reader has moved on to the next book. Each lingers like a delicacy of fish that leaves an indelible mark on the palate, prompting a craving for more. Ghost-Eye joins this list with ease; its themes, characters, conversations, and the images conjured by its prose possessing a shelf life that extends far beyond the final page.
Cut to t2oS’s tête-à-tête with Ghosh, who is in Calcutta on the book launch tour, it is pointed out to him that in Ghost-Eye, the climate crusader appears more prominent than the storyteller. As early as the second page of the novel, he refers to the average global temperature in 1969, compares it with that of 1877, and notes the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 325 parts per million.
“Well, as is made clear in the rest of the book, the narrator is very fixated on these issues. So, of course, he’s thinking about them,” says Ghosh, sitting in a brightly lit room overlooking the Race Course.
Is he anywhere close to Dinu, Ghost-Eye’s narrator, who becomes depressed with increasing AQI levels? Clarifying, he adds: “No, Dinu is not me, and I don’t pay that close attention to everything. He’s very obsessive.”
But there is one quality of Amitav Ghosh that mirrors Dinu’s — an acknowledged hopelessness with mathematics, a fact he admits while asking for an Earl Grey as his afternoon sip. Was the early invocation of air-quality statistics a deliberate choice, or did it emerge instinctively in those opening pages?
“It came naturally,” he informs, keeping his answers short to a stranger, who like a million others is a fan of his style of fiction that has mysticism, thrill, is rooted to the soil, is educative in so many ways and, most importantly, that lingers.
Attuned to the planet
Before getting into the thick of things, he was reminded that his debut book, The Circle of Reason, was published in 1986, marking nearly four decades of writing. Given the limited time available for the interview, rather than asking him to revisit his entire journey, the focus shifted to when his pen began gravitating towards more contemporary and urgent concerns.
“I started writing about these various crises around 2015,” says the author, who, on one hand, is known for weaving complex narratives and dense characters, and on the other hand, draws our attention to the crises that the planet is enduring. The Great Derangement, Wild Fictions and other non-fictions have done that without mincing words.
“In fact, I was paying attention to them from long before... from about 2000 onwards because I’ve been doing research in the Sundarbans and already back then you could see many of the adverse impacts of various environmental crises,” says Ghosh, who has also consciously used his books — Ibis trilogy, The Hungry Tide and others — to draw attention to climate change and its impact on lives.
Was he equally conscious while writing the Ibis trilogy — Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), and Flood of Fire (2015)?
“Yes. I was thinking about it in the Ibis trilogy as well. There’s a huge emphasis on botany, also on the river systems and so on. So yeah, I was very aware of these issues while writing the trilogy as well.”
As someone who is deeply attuned to the planet and troubled by the unpleasant changes unfolding around us, there was a clear sense that Ghosh must be engaging in more ethical practices, choices that, in their own way, contribute to causing less harm to the environment.
“I try to avoid using plastic. I also don’t have a car.” After a pause he adds: “But, of course, that’s only possible if you live in a city that has good public transport.”
He continues: “I always compost. I try and reuse as much as possible and I try not to waste stuff.”
Fish and past-life memories
From quiet activism, the conversation moved on to fish in the novel, a subject that delights any Bengali and underscores the abundance the region has long been blessed with. The passages stem from the premise of the latest novel — a three-year-old girl, born into a vegetarian family, insisting on eating fish, recalling it as part of a previous life. Taking a cue from the playful exchange between the protagonists, the question was put to Ghosh: How adept is he at recognising the many varieties of fish available to us?
“I’m not that good. But it’s interesting to me to see all these varieties because a marine biologist friend of mine was saying that in Bombay or Goa, when you go to a fish market, you see maybe 10 different types of fish. In Bengal, in any market that you go to, you’ll see at least 30 or 40. It’s a huge variety,” says Ghosh, who is partial to rui maach. He says that he can cook fish very well.
The novel moves across different time periods and geographies, opening in Calcutta in 1969. Speaking about weaving his observations of the city into the narrative, and how unrecognisable it has since become, he says: “I remember Calcutta very well from that period. I was 13 in 1969. I remember what it was like very much. It’s like I described in the book; it was a city with constant power cuts and ‘load shedding’, as we called it. And there were these morchas and michils. Also, that was a period when the Naxals were very strong. So that was another thing that was very much an important part of our lives. And, you know, I think the city would be unrecognisable to today’s Calcuttans.”
From the unrecognisable Calcutta, the conversation shifted to another enduring aspect of the city and its inhabitants — its culture of healthy debate. This constant lends texture to the novel, offering pragmatic arguments that stand in opposition to ideas of reincarnation and alternative worlds.
“I think we all have that argument going on in our heads, don’t we? So to some greater or lesser degree, we’re all thinking, is this real? Is this unreal? What is the explanation? Why is it happening? So I’m just reflecting those arguments,” says Ghosh, who doesn’t like to use the word ‘reincarnation’ because “I think it implies that we know what’s actually happening. Whereas I like to think of it as past-life memories. We do know that many children, a significant number of children, are born with past-life memories. And I find that very interesting. Where did these memories come from? How do they suddenly one day wake up and start remembering some other life? They often have marks on their bodies, relating to their past life. They remember languages…. So all of these things happen. I can’t explain them. But I think they happened with such regularity that we can’t ignore them.”
The debates, scientific explanations, and the experiences of Varsha, Dev, and Shoma draw the reader in as an active participant; whichever side one chooses, the twists are arresting and will blow your mind.
The novel’s high point lies in the fact that it does not merely address a warming planet — the increasing frequency of cyclones, the loss of homes, lives, and land — but also points towards the possibility of collective action, before the English economist and demographer Thomas Robert Malthus’s theory of Malthusian Correction becomes a reality. The answer or the strength lies in the very title of the book. One does not need special powers, or to be a ‘ghost-eye’ like Varsha, to attempt meaningful change. It is possible to be entirely ordinary, outside the novel’s metaphysical realm, and still bring about transformation that seems impossible. Is this what the title ultimately suggests? The question is put to Amitav Ghosh.
“Absolutely. Yes. Yes, exactly,” Ghosh agrees, before the conversation turns to governmental apathy worldwide in formulating meaningful, far-reaching policies to address climate change, bringing the conversation to a close