Nirmal in his journal uses the metaphor of mohonas to bring together rivers of language:
…the mudbanks of the tide country are shaped not only by rivers of silt, but also by rivers of language: Bengali, English, Arabic, Hindi, Arakanese and who knows what else? Flowing into each other they create a proliferation of small worlds that hang suspended in the flow. And so it dawned on me: the tide country’s faith is something like one of its great mohonas, a meeting not just of many rivers, but a circular round about people can use to pass in many directions – from country to country and even between faiths and religions (THT 247).
A study of Amitav Ghosh’s novels without doubt involves a deliberation on the unpredictability of boundary whether corporeal, ethnic or emotional. This novel involves more personal divisions between men and women, besides other borders. Self confessedly Ghosh concerns himself with the predicament of the individual against a broader historical or, as in The Hungry Tide, a geographical backdrop. Here nature itself defies categorisation and keeps changing its …show more content…
Kanai, the translator of cultures, finds himself stripped of all urban defences facing a tiger in a swamp. Fokir, the unlettered fisherman, falls in love with a woman who is an embodiment of science (Piya). A massive storm brings death and terminates a potentially rich love. Nirmal falls in love with Kusum and finally breaks with his armchair past. Ghosh’s musings on language, on translatability on the forgotten massacre of Morichjhapi in which dominant cultures forcibly wipe out movements form below, are deftly woven into the interactions between the characters, yet the most dominant theme is of a great sweep away by water, the flood on land, the revolution in the mind. As the reigning deity of the tide country Bon Bibi , in Ghosh’s vision a plural syncretic local cult presides over this flood, she is Goddess of hope but also of
…the mudbanks of the tide country are shaped not only by rivers of silt, but also by rivers of language: Bengali, English, Arabic, Hindi, Arakanese and who knows what else? Flowing into each other they create a proliferation of small worlds that hang suspended in the flow. And so it dawned on me: the tide country’s faith is something like one of its great mohonas, a meeting not just of many rivers, but a circular round about people can use to pass in many directions – from country to country and even between faiths and religions (THT 247).
A study of Amitav Ghosh’s novels without doubt involves a deliberation on the unpredictability of boundary whether corporeal, ethnic or emotional. This novel involves more personal divisions between men and women, besides other borders. Self confessedly Ghosh concerns himself with the predicament of the individual against a broader historical or, as in The Hungry Tide, a geographical backdrop. Here nature itself defies categorisation and keeps changing its …show more content…
Kanai, the translator of cultures, finds himself stripped of all urban defences facing a tiger in a swamp. Fokir, the unlettered fisherman, falls in love with a woman who is an embodiment of science (Piya). A massive storm brings death and terminates a potentially rich love. Nirmal falls in love with Kusum and finally breaks with his armchair past. Ghosh’s musings on language, on translatability on the forgotten massacre of Morichjhapi in which dominant cultures forcibly wipe out movements form below, are deftly woven into the interactions between the characters, yet the most dominant theme is of a great sweep away by water, the flood on land, the revolution in the mind. As the reigning deity of the tide country Bon Bibi , in Ghosh’s vision a plural syncretic local cult presides over this flood, she is Goddess of hope but also of