Between the lines

Author Amitav Ghosh’s Jungle Nama delves into the wisdom of e Sundarbans and the syncretism of Bengali folk culture—even as he collaborates to create a community-based literary experience, finds Shahnaz Siganporia

Sometime last year, as the lock-downs were phasing in and out, Amitav Ghosh, like the rest of us, spent a lot more time at home and in his kitchen. One of the many ‘foodstagrams’ from his kitchen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, tells you how to make a Bengali style fish, Kalia (usually prepared with the locally found Bengali catla or rohu), with Pacific rockfish, adding a tongue-in-cheek, “The key to survival in the new era is adaptability,” into his caption. Be it on the plate or page, Ghosh is consistent in his ability to adapt not just to suit but to often mould the zeitgeist. If in The Great Derangement (2016) he outlined a manifesto of sorts of why writers need to change the way they write in thought, content and form to suit the changing needs of the Anthropocene, then his latest, Jungle Nama (HarperCollins India), a free-adaptation in verse of the legend of Bon Bibi, part of folk mythology from The Sundarbans, Ghosh does exactly that.

He takes a fantastical folk tale and reminds us why it is timeless. He then collaborates with a younger generation of artistes—Salman Toor, who recently exhibited his first museum solo at The Whitney, New York, and Ali Sethi of Coke Studio fame, known for his ‘multicultural non-binary’ musicality—to free the narrative form of the solitary read into a collaborative and community-based experience. Extracts from an interview with Ghosh on his new book and gaze:

Shahnaz Siganporia: What is it about the Sundarbans that keeps you coming back as an author?