Skip to main content

Book Review: The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

Undisputedly ‘The Hungry Tide’ can be regarded as the best work of Amitav Ghosh. The novel has a few fact-provoking themes: adventure, silent appeal for love, nature’s wrath on human intervention, redemption, traces of lust, confrontation between the beast and the humans, and spiritual streaks to a degree. Like other great writers, in an attempt, he too have found a setting – a place where the characters of the books can be seen engaged into different conflicts and pulling the readers ultimately. The writer has prodigious imagination powers.


The story of this novel opens with Piyali Roy, often known as Piya in the book. She is adventurous by nature because her profession gives her that sort of leverage. She comes to India, from USA, to research about Irrawaddy dolphins, mainly found around the Sunderbans. In her journey she soon gets acquainted in the contact of Kanai Dutta, a businessman from Delhi. Ironically, he is not as daunting as Fokir.

If readers heed on the characterization, they would consider Fokir as the main protagonist in the book. Fokir has a boat and chants some magical verses and also knows almost all the water territories of that area – around Lusibari and many other islands, which are parts of Sunderbans.

Piya, throughout the novel, lives in the company of Fokir to take research work on Irrawaddy dolphins. Ironically, the language gap, between them, develops a silent love for each other. And Kanai is jealous of their bonding. In midway, Kanai got frightened by island’s enigmatic circumstances and returns to Lusibari - a safe place.

The book holds double narrative. First is of the ongoing life of Piya, Fokir and Kanai and his auntie Nilima. But, in flashbacks, through a diary – a second story runs parallel to much degree. It was the story of again silent love that was between Kusum, Fokir’s mother, and Nirmal – Kanai’s uncle.

The convergence of both stories sees no vantage point of union. The writer has wonderfully described the water, boats and apparently the people of that soil and forest; however he did not describe other aspects linked with the islands, boats, dolphins and rivers.

The main protagonist Fokir dies in the end while saving Piya’s life in a dreadful storm. His sacrifice was driven by love. It is astonishing to see that both Piya and Fokir feel love for each other but they never get into any sort of physical intimacy. Fokir knows that he has to sacrifice his life to reveal his fondness and love towards her, which he does in the end.

The book is a good narrative, a good read. There is no particular end or solution. The story folds on a tragic note.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
67 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
64 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
23 comments
Read more