On both the occasions that I’ve had the privilege of interviewing Amitav Ghosh in Mumbai, it’s been against the backdrop of the sea. Four years ago, when we met to discuss his book River of Smoke (it followed Sea of Poppies in the Ibis trilogy), it was in a boardroom at the top of a South Mumbai hotel, the sea — serene and distant — many storeys below us. Last Saturday, interviewing Mr Ghosh for the final installment in the trilogy, Flood of Fire, the sea was right across the road from us — grey and choppy because of the incessant rains — framed by the Gateway of India, in front of which visitors of all ages splashed about while holding onto bright umbrellas.
The view of the sea was a fitting setting for our conversation — so much of the action in Ghosh’s Ibis books has to do with the ocean. The sea brings war, change, servitude, freedom, uncertainty and adventure, leading readers (and his characters) up to the First Opium War between China and Britain.
Ghosh spent 10 years writing this trilogy, spanning from 1839 to 1841, and has expressed “a mild surprise” that his characters hadn’t reached the 20th century, considering how long he had been writing about them. “It is a little disorienting,” he admits, sipping Darjeeling tea and looking remarkably relaxed considering the whirlwind round of publicity he’s been on for Flood of Fire. “I’ve aged 10 years, and my characters have only aged three years!”
Not that he regrets the decade spent in writing this one project. Ghosh, who was on the shortlist for the Man Booker International Prize this year, has previously said that he loves writing stories on this epic scale, rather than the kind of novel “which is about a character’s thoughts as he climbs a set of stairs”.
“It’s just the way my imagination works,” Ghosh says. “Everybody writes what they feel able to, and this is what interests me. It’s been the way I’ve always read books, I loved Balzac, Walter Scott, Herman Melville, writers of that kind. I feel naturally drawn to these bigger stories.” He pauses, then asks, “Why has writing short, disconnected books become the norm? This wasn’t always the case. All of Balzac’s books are internally connected. All of Marcel Proust’s books are part of a long project. Why have writers today given up the long project and taken up the short project? When I was writing the trilogy, I sometimes felt I was practising a lost art.”
If Ghosh’s approach to writing is out of the ordinary, even more so is his approach to the subjects. He has previously mentioned that he came to these subjects “through literary endeavour”. Elaborating on what that means, Ghosh says, “I have always been interested in narratives, I’ve always loved novels. And I was very lucky that the one place that I chose to study anthropology (Oxford) was very interested in literature. If I had been in any other department, I don’t think I would have done my PhD or anything.”
The field work for his DPhil — that took him to Egypt, Tunisia, the Sahara — Ghosh says, was his “equivalent of writing school”. What about the experience honed his craft? “Travelling across the Sahara was an incredibly vivid and exciting experience,” Mr Ghosh says. “In Algeria, there is an area called the M’zab, and a town, Ghardaia... It’s like something from another planet. The desert is completely flat and brown, and then there is this vivid green hole in the ground, with these stalactites coming out that the town is built around. I’ve never seen anything like that… So there were all these incredible experiences, strange encounters with people, kind of like a fantasy. But it was in Egypt that I really did a lot of writing. I was stuck in a village where nothing much happened. I would spend the day talking to people and later, I would write up my notes. I often say to younger writers, keeping a journal is one of the best ways to teach yourself writing: A journal not about yourself, but one describing your interactions with the world. It teaches you to observe, it teaches you to listen, it teaches you to write about people and things.”
Flood of Fire (Ibis Trilogy 3) by AMITAV GHOSH Rs 799, pp 624 Penguin Books India And Hamish Hamilton
One may imagine that Ghosh pays close attention indeed to the things people tell him, especially during his travels. One incident that he has mentioned, is of meeting a pair of “ship brothers” in Mauritius — their families had travelled on the same ship generations ago. That idea sparked Ghosh’s fascination for “communities of experiences”— people brought together not by blood, but by the connections they create. His own such “community” is the circle of friends and neighbours with whom he has formed “really deep connections” in Goa. “They’re not writers or intellectuals, but they all read deeply… And I love that about my life in Goa, I feel I’ve found my community there,” he says.
Up next for Ghosh are two non-fiction books: One, based on his research for the Ibis trilogy, the other, a collection of lectures that he will deliver later this year. He’ll be writing them the way he always does — a first draft in pencil on plain paper, the next with a pen, at his desk every day from 9 am to mid-afternoon. Are there any “rituals” associated with his writing? “Well, I have habits,” he says. “The one thing that I’ve done in the last few years is I’ve switched from a sitting desk to a standing desk. Writing is a very unhealthy profession, because you’re sitting all day and that’s not good for you. And I find that working at a standing desk is energising and different.”
