Smoking the memory pipe with Amitav Ghosh

The first thing that struck me when I met Amitav Ghosh, the world famous author, after a gap of almost 30 years, was that the mischief has not faded from his smile or the twinkle from his eyes. We caught up at the coffee shop of Taj Vivanta, located besides the backwaters of Kochi where he had come to release his latest book, Rivers of Smoke .

The reunion brought back the smell of rain laden earth and the morning walks at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. The instantaneous recognition after we had parted ways so long ago was gratifying.

“In fact,” recalled Amitav, “the first draft of the Circle of Reason was typed on your Olivetti typewriter.” The old Olivetti portable typewriter was a prized possession in those days, now relegated to the dark recess of some cupboard, amidst my vast and growing junk collection. Yet, I now realised, that the old workhorse has some sentimental and celebrity value.

After having completed his Ph D in social anthropology from Oxford University, Amitav had come down to CDS to refer and roam through its spacious library, a veritable treasure trove of books in those days. Though the seeds of his first novel, The Circle of Reason had already been planted in his mind, there are some of us who believe that the easy going academic temperament of the CDS campus nurtured and nourished it.

 While the writer in Amitav came to the fore in every conversation, the academic in him was equally alive. Keeping alive the traditions of his academic background, he has done immense and painstaking research. Some of it in travel to destinations like the Mauritius and some in Guangcho in China: lots of it in archival work as well. In the Mauritius, there are two excellent archives. He also spends a lot of time digging through the Greenwich Maritime Museum in London. This is over and above the published sources in libraries: the British Library has a lot of interesting material relating Indian history. The reunion was not necessarily seamless.

A wall of three decades stood between us. Inanities were exchanged and memories shared. Sasi's tea shop downhill from CDS came alive as we recalled the CDS students and the faculty trooping into the wayside restaurant to savour the prized teas and banana fries. The ambience was rural, rustic and earthy: good enough to nurture creative and intellectual talents, but also helped gifted people to shine.

The question was serious. How do you keep track of the intricate and the numerous characters of your novels, do you draw family trees to keep pace with them and their activities? Pat came the reply: I keep scrupulous notes on all characters of the book, notebooks after notebooks.

 The whimsical smile was back: but more often than not I cannot find where I have kept my notebooks.

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