Book Review: The Shadow Lines By Amitav Ghosh

It’s been a week since I finished reading ‘The Shadow Lines’ and I have been wondering since, if this book should be reviewed at all. Not because it let me down, but because it is a masterpiece, one that I wasn't confident to do justice to with a review. But I finally decided to pen down my thoughts, because this is a book that has found a place for itself in my mind.

‘The Shadow Lines’ is a tale woven with emotion and memories that spread across generations and countries during Pre and Post-Independence. The narrator, as a young boy, traverses through his childhood, reminiscing incidents which seem random yet relate to each other more closely than anybody can anticipate. 

Then he brings forth through the time he spends in England, events that not only play a role in shaping his life and that of those around him but also explain a lot of the episodes from the past. He brings to fore the nuances of the relationships within the members of a Bengali family and the connection they share with an English one. These two families form the basis of this soulful tale of their lives and how the political situation that existed then leaves a permanent mark on each of them.

Reading ‘The Shadow Lines’ was a lot like eating a liqueur chocolate. At first you wonder what awaits you. As you bite into it, and feel the different flavours ooze out and engulf your senses and as you slowly twist and turn it, the uniqueness in the bite begins to stand out. When you are done, the taste lingers for much longer than you could imagine. Making you realize how truly beautiful the experience actually was. At first glance, it seems as if the boy brings to us just a spate of incidents, some that he experiences, others that he has been told, but as you read on you realize how each of those are tied together by a random act of violence. The observations of this young boy of history, of politics, of countries and relations from the perspective of his young mind are what make this book linger on in your mind long after you have put it down.

Spread across Bengal, Dhaka and London, Amitav illustrates the impact political situations have on individuals regardless of where they come from. Be it World War II or the birth of Bangladesh, he brings about the effect these incidents have at a very intimate level through the eyes of his narrator. An intense topic, but leavened by the interpretations of the young narrator make this book an engrossing read. What also adds depth to the story is his affection for his cousin Tridib, his infatuation with his cousin Illa and the love-hate relationship he shares with his Grandmother.

The ferocity with which he recollects every story he was told by Tridib, the experiences his grandmother had before Bangladesh took birth, or the different plane on which Illa lives, all add to the intensity of his narration. 

Eventually you get glimpses of what the narrator, his family and their English friends go through when he says “It’s all very well, you’re going away now, but suppose when you get there they decide to draw another line somewhere? What will you do then? Where will you move to?”

But what stayed with me most was what the Narrator felt when he was just a school boy and riots hit Calcutta

“That particular fear has a texture you can neither forget nor describe. It is like the fear of victims of an earthquake, of people who have lost faith in the stillness of the earth. And yet it is not the same. It is without analogy, for it is not comparable to the fear of nature, which is the most universal of all human fears, nor to the fear of violence of the state which is the commonest of modern fears. It is a fear that comes of the knowledge that normalcy is utterly contingent, that the space that surrounds one, the streets that one inhabits, can become, suddenly and without warning, as hostile as a desert in a flash flood. It is this that sets apart the thousand million people who inhabit the subcontinent from the rest of the world – not language, not food, not music – it is the special quality of loneliness that grows out of fear of the war between oneself and one’s image in the mirror”

This is a gripping story, narrated so beautifully through the memories and observations of the Narrator. A boy who has no name through the book, an important aspect that you don’t even realize till the very end. That’s how engrossing the book is.

‘The Shadow Lines’ is no doubt one of Amitav Ghosh’s finest works. And no one can put it more rightly than Kushwant Singh did “This is how the language should be used… this is how a Novel should be written.”