Myth, Magic And Meltdown

Amitav Ghosh’s latest, Gun Island, is a racy and dark novel that grapples with big, overwhelming ideas

- Mandira Nayar

His clothes are all black. No hint of light. For the Delhi launch of his new book, Amitav Ghosh chooses a dark, linen shirt, as befits the colour of the Bengal sky during the July rains. Over the years, Ghosh’s clothes have become monochromatic, a contrast to his technicolour worlds.

The tea is Darjeeling; no milk. Ghosh, however, reaches out for stevia. The ‘thank you’ is prompt. He is, if nothing, unfailingly polite. At the book launch at a packed India Habitat Centre, he signed as many as six books for one reader, making small talk as he did, and ended up reaching his dinner engagement well past 9.30pm.

Ghosh’s neighbours—he lives in a Goan village that is straight out of an Alexander McCall Smith—include an anthropologist and an artist-filmmaker. They were all in attendance in Delhi, like they had been when he was conferred the Jnanpith recently. An evening at the Ghoshes apparently includes a badminton match and dinner cooked by Ghosh, whose culinary skills are believed to be book-worthy.

His new book, Gun Island, is his first standalone novel since the Ibis trilogy. “After the trilogy, I was just dying to get back to fiction,” he says. “It came pouring out really. Fiction is where I live.”