Hyderabad: In a room in a star hotel, the winners of the DC contest awaited their favourite author to walk in. The lucky winners, Gopa Roy, Prem Kumar, C.K. Vinaya Chandra, Sunita Reddy, Jai Singh and Sujato Ghatak, were chosen from hundreds who had written in answers for the DC contest on Amitav Ghosh.
And while they were busy talking and introducing themselves to each other, they were caught unaware when Ghosh walked in. They took a minute to realise that Amitav Ghosh was in the same room as they.
Smiles were exchanged and the man who has won the Arthur C. Clarke award and was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, sat down, asking everyone to introduce themselves.
As he was introduced to Jai Singh, whose PhD topic is on Ghosh, the author exclaims, “It feels like an insect just met an entomologist.” And the conversation soon turned around from “we are great fans” to an intensive discussion about the author’s books, which, all of them claimed transcend beyond many boundaries as the characters always come alive and speak to them. A humbled Ghosh smiled often muttering, “That’s just very kind of you.”
Questions arose about his love for language that is so evident in his books. Ghosh said, “I have always been intrigued by languages and feel it’s so important that we not just restrict ourselves to English. My father spoke Bhojpuri and I have grown up listening to him.” Asked about his topics that is a far cry from the popular historic fiction books we see, Ghosh said, “I have always been the boy who has stayed away from the mainstream. If my classmates loved cricket, I would think of another sport. It has always been like that for me.”
His books have chronicled history and the fans were all too excited to talk about it. Sharing anecdotes, Ghosh said, “While writing Glass Palace, I travelled across Malaysia and Burma where I met the Indians who worked in the plantations during the World War and they shared their young pictures which was overwhelming.”
And the curious reader Sujato Gahtak also asked Ghosh about his schedule, but ended up reciting it himself confessing that he has read all of his interviews.
They were all in awe of the intense knowledge Ghosh possessed and Gopa asked, “How do you make sure you describe the surroundings but not educate everyone? How do you not deviate from fiction?”
Deeming it an interesting question, Ghosh said, “In the process I’m teaching myself first.” And the talks continued about the excitement Ghosh had when he received a telegram in 1984 about the publication of his first book, to his portrayal of the Sunderbans, which Ghosh said hasn’t been discovered by many Indian authors, to the uncanny resemblances of how the story of a book soon became a reality not just once for him.
