Paper: EC (202) The Shadow Lines as A Memory Novel

 

                 Assignment Paper: -EC (202) VII 

                         Topic    : -The Shadow Lines as

                                            A Memory Novel       

                 Student’s name    : - Vala Neeta T.

                         Roll no          :- 22

                         URL              :-valaneeta391011.blogspot.com

                         Semester       :-  M.A. Sem.ii

                         Batch            :-  2010-11

                            Submitted to Mr. Devarshi Mehta,

                              Department of English,

                             Bhavnagar University

    Introduction:-

          Amitav Ghosh is an Indian Bengali author known for his work in the English Language, and winner of many Awards and Prizes for his novels and short stories, he is indeed a celebrated author.

    His works include novel s like…

Ø The Circle of Reason (1986)

Ø The Shadow Lines (1988)

Ø The Calcutta Chromosome (1996)

Ø The Glass Palace (2000)

Ø The Hungry Tide (2004)

Ø Sea of poppies (2008)

    The Shadow Lines

Rubek:

            You have no conception, really of the way an artist’s mind works.

     Maya (smile and shakes her head):

               God heaven I don’t even have any conception of the way my own mind works .

                                                   ( Henrik Ibsen ,When We Dead Awaken. ii)

The Shadow Lines is a novel in which Amitav Ghosh has been able to realize his artistic conception through an art form, which is cohesive. Amitav writes along a stream of consciousness which makes it easy for the reader to associate and attack himself with the story. The Shadow Lines lies in the genre of what is known as a memory novel where the content of the entire novel is derived from the memory of characters.

Ø The main characters of the novel are

ü The narrator

ü Tridib

ü Ila

ü Grandmother

Ø The secondary characters are

ü The narrator’s parents

ü Ila’s parents

ü Mayabebi and the Saheb

ü Robi and Mrs.Price

All the characters are introduced in relation to the main protagonists, the consciousness which forms the centre of the narrative. Ghosh is best known for his effort to recuperate and represent the silent voices of major historical events and project that side of an incident which never get voiced. The novel captures some of the most troubled times of world history, be in the Indo – Chinese War in 1962, Calcutta Khulna riots in 1964 or the time when Hazrat Bal had disappeared from Kashmir in 1963. Ghosh constantly moves forward and backward creating a zigzag like pattern contributing to the complex structure of the novel. The novel beautifully showcases human relationships and also talks about the importance of borders, lines and nations. The book shares a very strong and important message on how the borders demarcating the nations have begun to demarcate the people as well. It elaborates on the fact that these lines should hold no meaning and one should search for a land without borders, where there is no discrimination, no hatred and where there is only place for peace and harmony. Ghosh handles this delicate subjects with such beauty that the class of work. The words have such a lyrical feeling despite the fact that they all come from memory.

  The Shadow Lines is considered by many prizes and award as his best work and it was also awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in the year 1989.   

    The Shadow Lines as A Memory Novel

  “Everyone lives in a story…stories are all these are to live in, it’s just a question of which one you chose.”

     Amitav Ghosh chooses to tell a story that pervades through the seems of reality and fiction, of time and space, of memories and beliefs.

    What is memory?

We all understand it rightly to be a psychological process as much integral to our consciousness as thinking is. We are rational because we think, and also we memorize. We use this faculties consciously when we learn our lessons for taking examination, or subconsciously when different experiences leave their impressions on our minds, without our becoming aware of this. So, both thinking and memory are the very essence of our learning. But, then, they are not identical. Memory is rational and emotive – pertaining to the cognitive and the affective parts of personality. Thinking, on the other hand, ever as understanding and not as mere awareness is purely rational - completely devoid of feelings, emotions and sentiments, which are the components of our affective life. Memory therefore is perhaps more gratifying than the purely objective, disinterested kind of thinking. Literary artists, poets and novelists alike have acknowledged the presence of emotive element in memory. No wonder, the famous poet Shelley alludes to memory in these words:

       We look before and after

            And pine for what is not

       Our sweetest songs,

             With some pain are fraught.   (- Ode to Skylark)

The word ‘pain’ here is indicative of the emotion accompanying memory. Similarly, Ghosh, the novelists makes the narrator of his novel recall his own experiences with a fondness- another emotive element.

Take for instances, the narrator’s following recollection of an incident, pertaining to Tridib:

  When I was about nine Tridib once stayed away from his haunts for so long that regulars begun to wonder what had happened to him […]. Then, one evening I heard that he had surface at Gole Park again. I […] found him […] and heard him say ‘I have been to London […] I have English relatives through marriage’ […]. It was then […] that I cried: Tridiba […] you made a mistake. You were in your room, smoking […]. There was a howl of laughter and a chorus of exclamations: You fraud, you liar […] you haven’t been anywhere […] another shaper voice brake in and said […] the fact is hat he is a nut he has been anywhere outside Calcutta (12)

The narrator ‘was furious with himself for having exposed Tridib to their ridicule […] shouting he told them the truth as he knew it;  that Tridib had been to London, with his parents, many years ago when he was a boy.’(12-13)

  The point to be noted here is that in recalling his attempt to undo the damage to Tridib’s reputation, the narrator feels relieved and happy. Now, happiness, undoubtedly, is a state of emotion.

  Memory of experiences, unlike that of facts is either happy or sad but never indifferent; thinking, on the other hand, is definitely non-emotive as when I think about an abstract concept like ‘space’, or my solving a mathematical problem. Memory is both rational and emotive. That is why; it is an instrument and sustainer of the creation of a work of literary art.

    Socrates long ago mentioned some important features of memory, which we need to discuss in the context of The Shadow Lines. Here is what Socrates said to Theaetetus about memory:

 Imagine, then, for the sake of argument, that our minds contain a block of wax, which in this or that individual may be larger or smaller, and composed of wax that is comparatively pure or muddy, and harder in some, softer in others, and sometimes just the right consistency. Let us call it the gift of the Muses’ mother, Memory, and say that whenever we wish to remember something we see or hear or conceive in our own minds, we hold this wax under perceptions or ideas and imprint them on it as we might stamp the impression of a seal-ring. Whatever is so imprinted we remember and know so long as the image remains; whatever is rubbed out or has not succeeded in leaving an impression we have forgotten or do not know.

This statement by the great Socrates contains the following truths about memory:-

ü Memory, like all knowledge begins in perception or experience. Before sense perception, or as the philosopher would insist, before the determinate kind of perception begins, mind is a ‘blank state’ or Tabula Rasa as theme calls it; it does not have the traces of memory on it.

ü Experience leaves some kind of a trace, which goes into the formation of the fund of memory. Just as the table is made of wood and nails and adhesives, similarly, Ghost’s novel is apparently, at least, made up of the narrator’s memories relating to Tridib. There are many characters, like the narrator’s grandmother’s, of Mayabebi’s, the narrator’s cousin Ila’s and of Mary’s the acquaintance of both Tridib and the narrator, and so on. Then, there are memories of the normal or stylized behaviour of these characters. Referring to the grandmother, the narrator says: “For her, likes and dislikes were unimportant.”

                                  Or

           “She (grandmother) would pretend to dismiss him with a toss of her head.”

Then, in this fund of memory there are memories of places. The author recalls the grandmother’s observation, namely, “Tridib living in that crumbling house.” Or the stall at the corner of his lane where Nathu Chaubey sat, or the place at the for end of the garden of Queen Victoria’s house in Sri Lanka where the thala - Gaya, seeing a snake thrashed at the end of its rape, “battering the tree it was tied to” all these instances are the memories of the places.                                                               

Further, there are memories of conversation among different characters, even memories of recognition, say

      “We recalled how quickly we had taught ourselves to distinguish the shapes of their aircrafts from ours.”

And of the characters reactions like “trigonometry!” in the context of the grandmother’s observation that her uncle did not let any Muslim come within ten feet of his shadow in his younger days or “playfully, he [the old man] waggled  his head” at May and she smiled back.

Moreover, all memories are traceable to perceptions in the fictional world. This is in accordance with the Socratic view that memory begins in perception. 

Ø The next important idea implicit in the statement of Socrates is that there are individual difference in memory. This is especially significant in the context of the works of literary art, of which The Shadow Lines is a brilliant example. We may recapitulate what Socrates tells Theaetetus,

         “[…] Our minds contain a block of wax, which in this or that individual may be […] pure or muddy, and hard in some, ‘softer in others […].’ Here the ‘hard’ in the less sensitive and ‘softer’ is the more sensitive receptivity of an individual which results in shallow or deep memories, respectively.”

For example,

           Remembering May Price exactly as she had looked seventeen years ago, the narrator says:

           Her hair was still cut exactly as I remembered it from the time she had stayed with us in Calcutta: falling thick and straight to her shoulders, mantling her head and the sides of her face; but where I remembered it as dark and glossy, it was streaked now with strands of gray which shimmered when they caught the light (14).

      Or, when he recalls hearing, even in the drunken state,

“the sound of feet pounding heavily after him” (155)

       Or the vital fact mentioned in the letter that was written by Maya Debi to the narrator’s grandmother-

      “Maya Debi wrote that she had not been able to visit their old house yet […]” (189-90)

Without softer, that is, more alert sensibility, how could the narrator remember that his grandmother gasped with disappointment and nostalgia on seeing the courtyard of her ancestral house. “A workshop […] inside our courtyard! What’s become of the old jackfruit tree?

 Equally true is the fact that all artists, literary or performing, have a ‘softer’ memory as the material cause for their creative endeavour. This softer memory material does not allow, in their case, events to just happen and pass them all into an organic unity, befitting a successful novel. He has done it through narrative devices with the help of which the raw material i.e. memories have got organized and become a major component of the novel.

    The implication of the next idea in the statement by Socrates.

It is this: in our psychological life, forgetting occurs and may occurs at different times for different reasons.

ü One is the biological reason, which affects everyone the mental faculties become weak in old age and one starts forgetting.

ü The other reason for forgetting is that one tends to forget that which one does not like.

       Generally, the pleasant and the useful are remembered and the unpleasant is forgotten. This characteristic of memory, that is, its being selective, is also quite evident in The Shadow Lines.

   When the narrator tells Ila how he ‘longed to visit Caira, to see the world’s first pointed arch in the mosque of Ibn Tulun, and touch the stones of the Great Pyramid of Cheops […]. She clicked her fingers, gave herself a satisfied nod, and said aloud, inadvertently oh yes, Cairo, the ladies is way away o the other side of the other side of the departure lounge (20).

Here the narrator remembers and recalls Cairo, for its beauty and interesting historical architecture. In contrast, Ila remembers ‘the Ladies’ and only the Ladies a utility. The rest of Cairo has been either forgotten on it simply does not get registered on her mind. Ila’s memory is clearly selective in The Shadow Lines.

    LANGER says,

  “Narratives of memories always have semblance of memory more purely than actual history.”

Langer’s main idea pertaining to memory is fourfold:-

Ø First that recollection, particularly of the narrative type necessarily organizes memories in various ways.

Ø Second, that in the nexus of memory, a single memory may stand out for a variety of reasons, so much so that it appears almost self complete.

Ø Thirdly, two radically opposite events can be seen to belong to the same life by recording the relatively minor intervening detail,

Ø Finally that in narratives ‘virtual memory’ is present in its purest form, unaffected by actual memory.

    The narrator in The Shadow Lines relates different kinds of events and experience in different ways.

For instance, he interrelate the two political events, namely, the war of 1962, and the riots of 1964, differentiating them from each other and then in the same breath mentions a cricket match that was played during the same period as the riots. He remembers this disparate in the context of the riots. Subsequently, it helps him to notice a headline in the newspaper, which says:-

 “Twenty-nine killed in riots.”(222-23)

Similarly, the event of the CBI recovering the Mu-I-Mubarak with people of Srinagar rejoicing at its recovery, assumes importance in the context of a significant event:-

 “when I was reading through that short report for the fifth time, it struck me suddenly, like a slap in the face, that May, Tridib, and my grandmother must have left for Dhaka the day before” (226).

We notice that, through such examples, Ghosh is not only relating different events, he is even dating them in a causal order. When the narrator notices that Malik is getting a little impatient with him and not paying attention to what he is telling him, he feels impelled to act so as to interest him. Noticing Malik’s inattention is the cause of what the narrator does next. He frantically tries to find evidence in support of his contention that the riots of 1964 did happen and claimed many lives. He remembers all this vividly. Similarly, the recovery of Mu-I-Mubarak and the accompanying celebrations help him mark the day of the departure of May, Tridib and his grandmother. All these memories get directly or indirectly related in different ways to build up the novel.

    The second important point in Langer’s concept of ‘virtual memory’ is this: an event may stand out among other events because of its sheer emotional impact.

For example:-

   Ridiculous though he was, I was alarmed by the tone of his voice […] as he said, ‘we have received information […] that you have been visiting prostitutes in houses of ill-repute […] I was so taken aback that I managed to say: who has given you this information sir? Your own grandmother […] you can see for yourself. The writing was unmistakably my grandmother’s […] I was so unmistakably my grandmother’s […] I was so taken by the sight of her resurrected hand, reaching out to me after her death. I have never understood how she learnt of the women I had visited a couple of times, with my friends nor do I know how she was that I was in love with Ila so long before I dared to admit it to myself. (92-93)

The incident can be seen to stand out due to its sheer emotional impact. It is finished, discrete, incident, with an absolute identity of its own. That is why it lingers on the narrator’s memory without ever leading him to the next memory in the series, in the narrator’s mind.  Nor does it refer to his memory of the incident prior of it. It is a self-complete entity and it not only gets retained in the protagonists mind but also dominates it.

    Another idea of Langer about aesthetic or ‘virtual memory’s is that “sometimes […] we have to recall and arrange a series of intervening events before we really feel convinced that two such diverse situations belong to the same life.”

For example:-

  “When we were fourteen, she […] once pointed to a picture of a boy who, to me, already looked like a grown man with a lace like an American film star […]. His name is Jamshed Tabrizi, she said, he is a fencing champion and this year his father gave him a BMW sports can for his birthday […] and as soon as he gets his license, we are going to drive down to the beach at Pattaya […] And then in a rush, looking at me sideways, she added, he is my boyfriend (23).”

 But a few lines later,

  “he was […] with his own thrown around the shoulders of two laughing blonde girls […] and […] Ila herself on the edge of the back row […] standing with a book under her arm.

  She was that I had noticed this, and when I came upon that yearbook again a week later, I discovered that the page had been torn out.” (23)

The memory of Ila tearing out a page from the yearbook helps the narrator relate definitely two separate incidents to Ila’s life- her claim of being intimate with a so called boyfriend and her subsequent isolation in a foreign land. They are seen as related to the same person by the narrator because of his recollection of the intervening incident of Ila tearing the page.

    Finally, to explain what Langer means by saying that narrative always have semblance of memory “more purely than actual history”

For example:-

  That house, that one, just down the road, over there, […] is called lymington mansions […] an incendiary bomb fell on it, and burned down two floors. That was on the 1^st of October 1940, two days before your uncle died. (56)

A bomb failing on a building can be an event recorded in history, accessible to all but it is not presented there as an experiential event: it does not get recalled by anyone, in particular. So, strictly speaking, this incident has not been acted upon by anyone’s mind and, therefore, is not a case of ‘virtual memory’. Not being subjective or experiential, it is not an example of a ‘semblance’ of memory- namely, that the Lymington mansions have been party destroyed, is being remembered as an event. The memory of this event has remained imprinted on the mind of the narrator, because it is experienced with sadness as a personal loss. Subjective factors, integral to ‘virtual memory’ creep in. that is why, it is being recalled so vividly and it remains inextricably bound up with his life. Such a recalled so imagined incident is also accessible to all but it necessarily evokes emotive response in them. It may be noted that an incident created in a work of literary art and the same incident recorders differently. Whereas the former may evoke an emotional or aesthetic response, the latter will be received as apiece of objective history. In the former it is the presentation of memory as semblance or phenomenal memory, and in the later it is the gathering of pure, objective kind of information, like the one which a reader gets while reading a book on current affairs. Only the disinterested and dispassionate understanding is involved in reading such a factual book.

    Conclusion

    Ghosh has used memory in all its dimensions not merely as the ‘efficient’ but also as the ‘material’ cause of the novel. Just as the activity of the carpenter is the ‘efficient’ cause of the table, similarly the act of recalling done by the author/narrator is the ‘efficient’ cause of the novel. Further, the content of recollection is the ‘memories’ of which the narrative is composed. Such memories are the ‘material’ cause of the work in the same way as wood is the ‘material’ cause of the table. However, the final purpose of the novel is to create an image of personal and social history, which is non-memory goal. Yet to achieve this objective, Ghosh has made maximum and effective use of memory in almost all its dimensions and forms. Even if the novel were constuted of imaginary incidents, cast in the mnemonic made of ‘virtual memory’ it would still be considered as a memory novel.