The shadow lines of our subcontinent- A journey through Amitav Ghosh's 'Shadow Lines'
Amitav Ghosh's Shadow Lines was one book that simply made me cry a few times. Among other things like family, friendship and love, the book deals with the shadow lines that separate people in the Indian subcontinent. It spills out the irony of how one people are able to live in 3 different countries and gracefully able to forget our shared history and skillfully able to hate each other.
The protagonist's grandmother who was born and raised in Dhaka in pre-independent India( read pre-partition India) goes on with her husband to settle in Calcutta. Post partition, she faces the identity crisis of belonging to both Dhaka and Calcutta which were now part of two different countries. After several years she comes to know that her uncle was still living in their old house in Dhaka and decides to visit Dhaka to bring him back to where he should rightfully have been. She goes to Dhaka with her sister and brother-in-law who was a diplomat, recently appointed in there. It was the time of the 1964 riots in Calcutta and East Pakistan and they are struck by a tragedy.
Several times in the course of the novel, the author makes poignant statements on partition and our amputated existence. He throws to light some of the ironies of this separation. He makes us think over the meaning of this disunion and often points out the futility of the borders that separate us.
In one instance, the narrator's grandmother, who was preparing for her first flight trip to Dhaka asks her son whether she would be able to see the border that separates India from East Pakistan from the flight. She expects the border to be like the 'long black line with green on one side and scarlet on the other in an atlas'. She expects to see trenches and soldiers with guns pointing at each other.When her son replies that all she would be able to see are clouds and green fields, she is not satisfied. She thinks it over and asks,
"But if there are no trenches or anything,how are the people to know? I mean where's the difference then? And if there's no difference, both sides will be the same; it'll just be like it used to be before, when we used to catch a train in Dhaka and get off in Calcutta the next day without anybody stopping us. What was it all for then-- partition and all the killing and everything- if there isn't something in between?"
The grandmother's home in Dhaka was in the old city surrounded by sweet shops and lanes and pink cham-chams. As soon as she lands in Dhaka, she expects to see this part of the city and not the tall buildings that now made up the face of the city. She is accommodated with her sister's family in Dhanmondi, a fashionable suburb populated by ministers and diplomats. As soon as she sees Dhanmondi she says, "But this is for foreigners; where's Dhaka?". When she is reminded that she is as much a foreigner in Dhaka as is May(who is from Britain), it takes time for her to absorb that. To be a foreigner in one's own hometown is perhaps an experience that only South Asians can brag about!
As soon as they meet their uncle in their old house in Dhaka, the grandmother and her sister tries to persuade him to come to Calcutta by telling him that it is not safe for him, a Hindu, to be in there. The old man replies, "I understand everything. Once you start moving, you never stop. That is what I told my sons when they took the trains.I said: I don't believe in this India-Shindia. Suppose when you get there they decide to draw another line somewhere? What will you do then? Where will you move to? As for me I was born here, and I'll die here."
The 1964 East Pakistan riots were triggered by the alleged theft of the Prophet's hair from the Hazratbal Shrine in Jammu and Kashmir. Meetings and demonstrations were held in Pakistan. 31st December was observed as a Black Day in Karachi. In Khulna, in East Pakistan, a mob turned violent and destroyed shops of Hindus and killed many of them. In response, Calcutta witnessed attacks on Muslims.
The young protagonist of the story is bewildered at the chain of events. He cannot understand how a problem in Kashmir, triggered off protests in West Pakistan, created riots in East Pakistan and counter riots in Calcutta. It seemed to him that our borders were so porous that they were non-existent. Where else in the world would you find an internal problem in one country triggering off riots in neighbouring countries?
The young man takes an Atlas and keeping Khulna at the centre and Srinagar in the circumference, he draws a circle. Almost half of mankind comes in the circle. "It showed me that Hanoi and Chunking are nearer Khulna than Srinagar, and yet, did the people of Khulna care at all about the fate of the mosques in Vietnam and South China? I doubted it. But in the other direction, it took no more than a week".
He then looks at the map of Europe and draws a similar circle. He racks his brains to think of an incident in one part of Europe that brought people in the streets in another country, within this circle. He could think of none.
He says, " It seemed to me that within this circle,there were only states and citizens, there were no people at all."
He mocks those people who drew borders on the maps, thinking that these would separate people forever. "They had drawn their borders, believing in the pattern, in the enchantment of lines, hoping perhaps that once they had etched their borders on the map, the two bits of land would sail away from each other like tectonic plates of the prehistoric Gondwanaland. What had they felt when they discovered that they had not created a separation, but a yet undiscovered irony: the simple fact that there had never been a moment in the four-thousand year old history of that map, when the places we know as Dhaka and Calcutta were more closely bound to each other than after they had drawn their lines- so closely, that I,in Calcutta, had to only look into the mirror to be in Dhaka; a moment when each city was the inverted image of the other, locked in an irreversible symmetry by the line that was to set us free- our looking glass borders."
What sets us, people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh apart, is that we still primarily remain 'people'. Borders have tried to separate us. But yet, we are entangled in a web of history, hate, violence, and love. So often, that we feel that our borders are porous; mere shadow lines that we have tried to etch in order to console ourselves. If only, we'd realize that.
The protagonist's grandmother who was born and raised in Dhaka in pre-independent India( read pre-partition India) goes on with her husband to settle in Calcutta. Post partition, she faces the identity crisis of belonging to both Dhaka and Calcutta which were now part of two different countries. After several years she comes to know that her uncle was still living in their old house in Dhaka and decides to visit Dhaka to bring him back to where he should rightfully have been. She goes to Dhaka with her sister and brother-in-law who was a diplomat, recently appointed in there. It was the time of the 1964 riots in Calcutta and East Pakistan and they are struck by a tragedy.
Several times in the course of the novel, the author makes poignant statements on partition and our amputated existence. He throws to light some of the ironies of this separation. He makes us think over the meaning of this disunion and often points out the futility of the borders that separate us.
In one instance, the narrator's grandmother, who was preparing for her first flight trip to Dhaka asks her son whether she would be able to see the border that separates India from East Pakistan from the flight. She expects the border to be like the 'long black line with green on one side and scarlet on the other in an atlas'. She expects to see trenches and soldiers with guns pointing at each other.When her son replies that all she would be able to see are clouds and green fields, she is not satisfied. She thinks it over and asks,
"But if there are no trenches or anything,how are the people to know? I mean where's the difference then? And if there's no difference, both sides will be the same; it'll just be like it used to be before, when we used to catch a train in Dhaka and get off in Calcutta the next day without anybody stopping us. What was it all for then-- partition and all the killing and everything- if there isn't something in between?"
The grandmother's home in Dhaka was in the old city surrounded by sweet shops and lanes and pink cham-chams. As soon as she lands in Dhaka, she expects to see this part of the city and not the tall buildings that now made up the face of the city. She is accommodated with her sister's family in Dhanmondi, a fashionable suburb populated by ministers and diplomats. As soon as she sees Dhanmondi she says, "But this is for foreigners; where's Dhaka?". When she is reminded that she is as much a foreigner in Dhaka as is May(who is from Britain), it takes time for her to absorb that. To be a foreigner in one's own hometown is perhaps an experience that only South Asians can brag about!
As soon as they meet their uncle in their old house in Dhaka, the grandmother and her sister tries to persuade him to come to Calcutta by telling him that it is not safe for him, a Hindu, to be in there. The old man replies, "I understand everything. Once you start moving, you never stop. That is what I told my sons when they took the trains.I said: I don't believe in this India-Shindia. Suppose when you get there they decide to draw another line somewhere? What will you do then? Where will you move to? As for me I was born here, and I'll die here."
The 1964 East Pakistan riots were triggered by the alleged theft of the Prophet's hair from the Hazratbal Shrine in Jammu and Kashmir. Meetings and demonstrations were held in Pakistan. 31st December was observed as a Black Day in Karachi. In Khulna, in East Pakistan, a mob turned violent and destroyed shops of Hindus and killed many of them. In response, Calcutta witnessed attacks on Muslims.
The young protagonist of the story is bewildered at the chain of events. He cannot understand how a problem in Kashmir, triggered off protests in West Pakistan, created riots in East Pakistan and counter riots in Calcutta. It seemed to him that our borders were so porous that they were non-existent. Where else in the world would you find an internal problem in one country triggering off riots in neighbouring countries?
The young man takes an Atlas and keeping Khulna at the centre and Srinagar in the circumference, he draws a circle. Almost half of mankind comes in the circle. "It showed me that Hanoi and Chunking are nearer Khulna than Srinagar, and yet, did the people of Khulna care at all about the fate of the mosques in Vietnam and South China? I doubted it. But in the other direction, it took no more than a week".
He then looks at the map of Europe and draws a similar circle. He racks his brains to think of an incident in one part of Europe that brought people in the streets in another country, within this circle. He could think of none.
He says, " It seemed to me that within this circle,there were only states and citizens, there were no people at all."
He mocks those people who drew borders on the maps, thinking that these would separate people forever. "They had drawn their borders, believing in the pattern, in the enchantment of lines, hoping perhaps that once they had etched their borders on the map, the two bits of land would sail away from each other like tectonic plates of the prehistoric Gondwanaland. What had they felt when they discovered that they had not created a separation, but a yet undiscovered irony: the simple fact that there had never been a moment in the four-thousand year old history of that map, when the places we know as Dhaka and Calcutta were more closely bound to each other than after they had drawn their lines- so closely, that I,in Calcutta, had to only look into the mirror to be in Dhaka; a moment when each city was the inverted image of the other, locked in an irreversible symmetry by the line that was to set us free- our looking glass borders."
What sets us, people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh apart, is that we still primarily remain 'people'. Borders have tried to separate us. But yet, we are entangled in a web of history, hate, violence, and love. So often, that we feel that our borders are porous; mere shadow lines that we have tried to etch in order to console ourselves. If only, we'd realize that.
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