Writing an Alternative Past: the Challenges of Reading Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke(2011). - Pritam Mukherjee

Writing an Alternative Past

No author in our age has been able to demystify the role, and expose the limits of history like the way Amitav Ghosh has done in the first two parts of his Ibis trilogy. A highly ambitious project Ibis trilogy explores a hitherto untrodden area of the past which is still now enveloped in a thick film of smoke. In his attempt to understand the nature of Britain's opium empire Amitav Ghosh has undertaken an epic journey of sorts: starting from the upper Indian province to an island where unfortunate coolies are sent as indentured labour. Amitav's journey, in this second part, heads towards Canton [Guangjhou], a river port which is the centre of opium trade.

Is he writing a history then? Although he is primarily writing fiction Amitav Ghosh never really misses a chance in expanding and challenging the horizons of history. In Amitav's fictions History seems to be a utter failure when it is asked to incorporate the loss and sufferings, agonies and aspirations of an individual's personal time. As if Amitav has been assigned with the job of narrowing down gaps that have not been successfully addressed by history or any other similar discipline. Modern history, like many academic categories, emerges as a major discipline only in the nineteenth century. This is so very true even for the colonies. It is through fiction and history that our print culture started to imagine an identity of our regional[and subsequently a national] consciousness. It is primarily through these two conflicting and contending mediums we have searched our national voice right through the nineteenth century. History has its own way of framing the past so does fiction. But often we see that the forces of scientific history writing glide into the world of fiction and vice versa. From the early days of Bankim and Bharatendu Harishchandra, India has a strong pedigree of historical novel writing. Is it possible to situate Amitav comfortably in that long list of immortal authors?

When an author like Amitav Ghosh revisits the nineteenth century in his fiction he is surely trying to critically explore all those elements of our life that constitute our modernity. This is not a simple task. In fact the enormity of the project makes it look really an impossible job for an individual to carry out. Amitav is surely trying to find an alternative way of looking at the past where the rigid limits of disciplines have to be doubted and ultimately rejected in favour of a more inclusive way of approaching the lost time. Amitav's principal interest is then to open up a dialogue with a past that has shaped and continues to shape our modern condition. The dialogue has to be comprehensive if it has to attain some sort of authenticity and yet one is also only too aware of the fact that the past cannot be revived in its entirety.

Robin Chinnery , the central character

Seen from that perspective Amitav's is a failed project from the very beginning. But there is a doomed bravado about this failed project which adds strength to his fictional world. Historians have always championed and celebrated the singular development of the western world along the path of technological inventions and capitalist progress. History, as a result, has often become competing national biographies celebrating successes while downplaying huge losses. In preparing this balance sheet of nationalist development we have failed to focus on areas of civilizational interdependence, co-operations and dialogues based upon a common and yet mixed language. Many critics from the established media feel that Bahram Moddie [ Barry] is the central character of River of Smoke (2011). But for me the most important character of the novel is Robin Chinnery. Young Chinnery's friendship with Cantonese artist Jacqua sheds important sidelight on Amitav's own conviction in a meaningful dialogue between cultures. Robin's willingness to share, learn and work together with his Cantonese counterparts is a key to our understanding of the text. Many critical tensions rising from the text have their origin in the failure of communication between two cultures. But no such hindering factor can be spotted in Chinnery's exchange of ideas with the Chinese artists. It reminds us briefly of the days of Ben Yiju when a dialogue between cultures are not forced or impossible. It also projects us forward to a time when the unfortunate Indian will fail to earn respect from the representative of another ancient civilization - the Imam of an Egyptian small town. The rise of industrial capital has gradually made us slaves of 'phrase regimes' where there is little or no chance of a meaningful resolution of our problems. A careful reading of the novel reveals that the author - Amitav shares many of the desires and desolations of the young artist from Calcutta - Robin Chinnery. Both of them are engaged in an attempt to reconstruct the life in Canton through their own artistic mediums. For both of them the very nature of the job demands an exploration into possible forms. Chinnery seems to be only too aware of the audacious nature of his work, impossibility of drawing an image that will represent faithfully the life in Canton. Like Chinnery, Amitav also needs to go far beyond the expected lines of fiction writing, to chart his own way to tell a tale which is soaked in history. 

 

Canton – A 'Maximum City'

My apologies to Suketu Mehta for borrowing a phrase that he has showered on his muse Bombay a few years back. Writing on a city like Canton in the 19^th C. offers a great challenge. But Amitav never  indulges in any one-sided portrayal. he has tried to capture the essence of the city by incorporating elements from different layers of Cantonese life. Opium trade has turned this port into a city of sin. But Canton is not merely a vantage point of illegal opium trade. It is much more than what appears in its smoky surface. No one can deny its cosmopolitan nature; its ability to accommodate various strands of knowledge and culture. No where the dialogue between cultures has got a such an inviting space. It is fascinating to find so many colours, so many cultures mingling in this cauldron of early modernity. Amitav never fails to remind us that the city of sin is also the city of artistic pleasures and a domain of mutual sharing. Images of the city come streaming in at our eyes. Canton continually changes and shifts according to its own rhythm almost ignoring at first the political and military activities circling its smoky air for obvious trading rights. Both Chinnery and Amitav in their own ways aspire to portray the life in Canton. An artistic desire which drives both these men. The novel then becomes Amitav's idealistic quest and in some strange way his activism to dispel the gloom of history[ or modernity perhaps]. We don't know for sure what happened to Robin's painting of Cantonese life. But at least it is fitting that the novel must end with a description of his hauntingly prophetic image of a burnt down Canton. A result of western gunboat diplomacy and lust for power and violence. Incidentally these gunboats are designed by a person called Thomas Love Peacock who is a close associate of James and John Stuart Mills.

Botany as an Imperial science

The mastery of Amitav lies in his subtle portrayal of Paulette's character. Paulette's love for botany has been contrasted with Penrose's businessman like attitude towards the subject. In the Victorian world Paulettes are very rare. Botany, like any other imperial discipline, has been primarily asked to serve the interests of an empire looking to maximize its gain through revenue collection. Many of us have forgotten that no discipline is value free and neutral. An in depth study of the rise and development of botany as a academic discipline will surely reveal the startling connections between the empire and the world of western academia.

Violence and Aggression of Opium Commerce

In Amitav's world of fiction Penroses and Bahrams fail to make material profit at the end of the novel. They fail to recognize the vast world that exists beyond their sphere of mercantile influence. The illusory nature of material success has been highlighted time and again in the novel. But it's the important white men like Slade, Burnham, Dent who with their gunboat diplomacy and aggressive business tactics decide the course of human history. Their triumph is almost predestined. We may curse them, we may denounce them but at the end of the day they llok certain for yet another victory over an ancient civilization. Violence and aggression that confounded the kings along the Malabar coast in the fifteenth and sixteenth century are at work again. But for a sensitive writer like Amitav it is almost unthinkable to meekly surrender before the forces of violence. He fights back by celebrating life, love and human spirit in the face of catastrophe.

A Tribute to an Antique Land/ Writing Fiction in a Civilizational Mode

The second part of the Ibis trilogy in many important ways have been a revisit to an antique land. A tribute to those aspects of human civilization which encourage co-operation, exchange of ideas, and dialogues. The novel is not merely about the violence and aggression that characterize the opium traders of the foreign hongs. It's also about the Chinese commissioner Lin Setsu, Charles King, Zadig Bey, Cantonese artists, Paulette and so on. It's a remembrance of memories of lost opportunities and a possible union of civilizations. The novel [I am not too sure about the form though] celebrates the finer qualities of human spirit at a time of calamity. The very nature of our modernity has been shaped by these contending and conflicting forces. There's no point being judgmental about these things. An easy resolution is the last thing that one expects from a great work of art. Amitav denies us of any easy resolution or a comfortable end. In fact in the course of narrative we become his fellow traveller sharing with him our joys and agonies, hopes and despairs.