Sundarbans In The Hungry Tide

Amitav Ghosh’s penchant for experimenting with and; mixing genres is visible in The Hungry Tide in full force. M. Abhijit Dhakuria very rightly comments: “Amitav Ghosh is a master of the genre ‘fictionalized thesis’.” Ghosh the investigator dominates in all his imaginary mechanism making them materialize very diligently doled out research tracts. All his stories are firmly based on history which he lays bare in front of the reader. The complete historical account of how the geographical backdrop of the novel i.e the sundarbans, the islands came into being, is provided with full clarity. Daniel Hamilton’s vision and the description of settlers, is elaborately discussed through the character of Nirmal. He dwells in detail even on the nomenclature

One village became “Shobnomoskar” “welcome to all”, and another became “ Rajat Jubilee”, to mark the silver jubilee of some king or the other. And to some he gave the names of his relatives that’s why we have here a Jamespur, an Annpur and an Emilybari, Lusibari was another such. (THT 51).

Here all over again, like Ghosh makes Alu generate a Marxist humanity without any divisions and separations as in The Circle of Reason. S. Daniel visualizes a world where all are welcome irrespective of their caste, class or nationality.

They could not bring all their petty little divisions and differences. Here there would be no Brahmins or untouchables, no Bengalis and no Oriyas. Everyone would have to live and work together when the news of this spread, people came pouring in, from northern Orissa, from eastern Bengal, from , Santhal Parganas. (THT

(THT 285).

Of the half-dozen central characters, in The Hungry Tide, the most compelling goes by the name of the Sundarbans. The rapturous description of the Sundarbans in the very opening pages of the novel shows how crucial the setting is to the plot and how the novel is indebted for its charm to the waters and forests of the Sundarban islands. The scheme of the novel is organized through acts and turns and twists of nature and the book is very effectively divided into two sections The Ebb and The Flood. The story is also told in the unhurried prose to be expected in such a narrative involving natural currents. Charles Foran in his review of the novel, Sunderbans Rising, says;

Not since the sodden Fens of Graham Swift’s Waterland has a contemporary novel so abandoned itself to the kind of primordial literary landscape first conceived by Thomas Hardy more than a century ago. For the most part we fancy ourselves too light – footed and plugged in at the mercy of such 19th century determinism a self conception as pleasing as it is