Seriously. Both of them were excellent in spheres that would make therm authors of bestsellers. I for one would buy their books (that is, if I couldn't find a free e-copy of them online and if they weren't very expensive). I could list a dozen reasons why. For starters, May had excellent language and Tridib could talk about anything. Well, at least I found whatever he talked about very interesting. Even about snakes.I am not sure whether I am generally interested in snakes. Because I dunno much about snakes, yet I am not sure whether I want to know or not, because, well, as said before, they are snakes. You know, those writhing, slimy things with triangular heads and forked tongues that slither really fast. Even then, I find it interesting that he can talk about them. That he is knowledgeable enough to do so. And he makes it sound interesting. So I would listen to Tridib if he talked about snakes. Tridib is admired very much by me not just because of his knowledge in archaeology (I love the subject and he is working on a PhD in it. Of course I admire him. Duh). His skills in imagination are just SUPERAWESOME, for lack of better word or expression. He constructs stuff in his mind so carefully, giving the initial image somebody has provided him with minute details, like slightly zoomed photographs (good quality ones, not the ones that get progressively blurred). When the narrator talks about what Tridib would have imagined after hearing about monitor lizard versus Ila's-enemy-the-snake, I tried, like Tridib, to construct that slop-roofed house with a pond and a garden where the UN official's family lived. (The mere fact that of all the things he heard, he was trying to draw an image of the house in his mind is pretty cool by itself, I should say). It was very picturesque. Like something out of a Disney movie based on a fairy tale. Like something I would like to live in. (Once I have a heavy paying job that required me to loaf around and submit reviews of the happy-ending novels that I read that week, while drinking my mug of hot chocolate and munching on non-fat chips. I would have a lounge chair where Ilas sat and would recline and read, enjoying the ambiance to my heart content. Hmm...colorful Disney dreams.) There was a tree, the medium tree that was neither too fat nor too slim, that was not too old but not too young, that had an afro hairstyle and the branches didn't go far and didn't look like sticks and were graceful. There was the tied up monitor lizard of course. (It looked much like a very small crocodile in my head, since I have never seen a monitor lizard and the Google images makes them look a little bit like snakes and we have already established what I feel about snakes.) Then there was very green grass and the yard of the beautiful house. I can outline the tiles on the roof. Now that I think about it, I could even put down a stone path from the door of the building to the lounge chair. But this still looks like Winne-the-Pooh/Disney-ish to me. I am having a hard time imagining what the actual house might look like. Or I am afraid that the image of the actual house will be very realistic and I wouldn't like it and would prefer my house where Belle would have lived with her retired Beast/Prince at the edge of the woods.
But Tridib could imagine. And in detail.He could retain his memory about things that he saw a long time back. i could argue that he has meticulously patched up memory where they have faded but the narrator's experience in London where he is able to identify the road and buildings tell me that those memories stayed very clear. THAT is one great memory, I'd like to say.
I could go on about the various instances where Tridib's memory and ability to construct things in his mind (if I start using the word imagination, there will be too much of it in this one page). Added to this is his ability to transfer these iamges to anther mind through word. Conveying doesn't cover this. The narrator is not even creating his own images in his mind using Tridib's words. He is reconstructing Tridib's images in his mind.
Which he is capable of because his mind is still innocent. It is able to capture images without questioning them or their probability of existence. He is not completely naive here because he has material evidence that Tridib had been to London(photographs) and I would like to think that the people at the tea stalls are not able to completely believe what he says is because they have grown up minds which are skeptical of everything and cannot imagine. (If they were able to do so they wouldn't be called adults and would be constantly asked to grow up and be cynical about the world.)
This brings us to May. As mentioned before, her language is beeeuutiful, especially when she is being slightly sarcastic. And she is an even nicer character that Tridib. As much as I admire him for being an academician in history and his story telling skills, I am still slightly suspicious of him for writing a pornographic letter to his friend who was younger than him. If he is so much in love with his pen friend, shouldn't he think a little bit about how she is going to be when they actually meet? But of course, he doesn't worry about it, and she apparently is exactly what he expected. Everybody lives in a story, he tells the narrator. The story he constructs for himself is so true that he might as well have written his own death in one of the chapters. Which he finally did, by the way. May is a rare person who still has some innocence left in her despite being grown up. I t is the innocence that Ila is dismissive about. That makes her cry for people that she wouldn't meet in her life. That makes her brave enough to plunge a knife to the jugular so as to stop the pain. The wide eyed look that is able to capture the world like nobody else's look. She is not seeing everything rosy. But she is seeing. Actually vision-ing (I feel like viewing or visualising are not the right words here)the world. She is looking and she is seeing. Unlike "normal" adults, who don't see. They look, they watch, things pass in front of their eyes. What May finds in Khaleel's smile while others think he is stupid is an evidence of this. She with her insightful eyes (yes, that is the word) and he with his detailing mind, would have eben able to create wonders in paper and on best seller charts and review columns had they been a couple and had taken up writing as their profession.
Who knew, had they lived and were a couple, may be they wouldn't have taken up my brilliant idea that would have made them rich and famous. He would have taken up a teaching job in the university and she would have done something similar (I have a hard time trying to peg May to a job- NGO, painting, clerical job in one of the corporate offices?). He would have studied about the ruins of churches and World War II memorials around London during his free time and she would have fasted on Saturdays and gone for fundraising for famine affected African countries. He would meet her in the coffee shop at evenings and discuss about everything under sun and then they would grab dinner before walking to the tube in the dusk, holding hands. She would help him proof read the book on some historical street he was writing about and he would help her draw her posters and come up with catching captions. I could go on constructing their lives - what would have been - but I am not sure Amitav Ghosh appreciates fan fiction, so I should stop. Also, if they had a life together, they would occasionally have to deal with the drama of Ila's and Nick's marriages, they would have let the narrator live with them during his studies in London. Okay, stopping here. Please don't be angry, Mr. Ghosh, I just love your work. And the narrator is a completely different story altogether and subject-worthy of another blog. Alrightalright. Stopping right here. Now. Zip.
But Tridib could imagine. And in detail.He could retain his memory about things that he saw a long time back. i could argue that he has meticulously patched up memory where they have faded but the narrator's experience in London where he is able to identify the road and buildings tell me that those memories stayed very clear. THAT is one great memory, I'd like to say.
I could go on about the various instances where Tridib's memory and ability to construct things in his mind (if I start using the word imagination, there will be too much of it in this one page). Added to this is his ability to transfer these iamges to anther mind through word. Conveying doesn't cover this. The narrator is not even creating his own images in his mind using Tridib's words. He is reconstructing Tridib's images in his mind.
Which he is capable of because his mind is still innocent. It is able to capture images without questioning them or their probability of existence. He is not completely naive here because he has material evidence that Tridib had been to London(photographs) and I would like to think that the people at the tea stalls are not able to completely believe what he says is because they have grown up minds which are skeptical of everything and cannot imagine. (If they were able to do so they wouldn't be called adults and would be constantly asked to grow up and be cynical about the world.)
This brings us to May. As mentioned before, her language is beeeuutiful, especially when she is being slightly sarcastic. And she is an even nicer character that Tridib. As much as I admire him for being an academician in history and his story telling skills, I am still slightly suspicious of him for writing a pornographic letter to his friend who was younger than him. If he is so much in love with his pen friend, shouldn't he think a little bit about how she is going to be when they actually meet? But of course, he doesn't worry about it, and she apparently is exactly what he expected. Everybody lives in a story, he tells the narrator. The story he constructs for himself is so true that he might as well have written his own death in one of the chapters. Which he finally did, by the way. May is a rare person who still has some innocence left in her despite being grown up. I t is the innocence that Ila is dismissive about. That makes her cry for people that she wouldn't meet in her life. That makes her brave enough to plunge a knife to the jugular so as to stop the pain. The wide eyed look that is able to capture the world like nobody else's look. She is not seeing everything rosy. But she is seeing. Actually vision-ing (I feel like viewing or visualising are not the right words here)the world. She is looking and she is seeing. Unlike "normal" adults, who don't see. They look, they watch, things pass in front of their eyes. What May finds in Khaleel's smile while others think he is stupid is an evidence of this. She with her insightful eyes (yes, that is the word) and he with his detailing mind, would have eben able to create wonders in paper and on best seller charts and review columns had they been a couple and had taken up writing as their profession.
Who knew, had they lived and were a couple, may be they wouldn't have taken up my brilliant idea that would have made them rich and famous. He would have taken up a teaching job in the university and she would have done something similar (I have a hard time trying to peg May to a job- NGO, painting, clerical job in one of the corporate offices?). He would have studied about the ruins of churches and World War II memorials around London during his free time and she would have fasted on Saturdays and gone for fundraising for famine affected African countries. He would meet her in the coffee shop at evenings and discuss about everything under sun and then they would grab dinner before walking to the tube in the dusk, holding hands. She would help him proof read the book on some historical street he was writing about and he would help her draw her posters and come up with catching captions. I could go on constructing their lives - what would have been - but I am not sure Amitav Ghosh appreciates fan fiction, so I should stop. Also, if they had a life together, they would occasionally have to deal with the drama of Ila's and Nick's marriages, they would have let the narrator live with them during his studies in London. Okay, stopping here. Please don't be angry, Mr. Ghosh, I just love your work. And the narrator is a completely different story altogether and subject-worthy of another blog. Alrightalright. Stopping right here. Now. Zip.
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