Amitav Ghosh in his use of this setting in The Hungry Tide takes that extra step in making the nature of the terrain itself the aesthetic effect of the novel. The political geography of South Asia has indeed provided rich material for novelists as they have developed subtle political critiques through representation of its continuous demarcations and the political struggles that have preceded them. In the fraught modern history of what used to be called the Indian subcontinent novels written in English have frequently turned to political issues of space, either as backdrop or as central concern, and spoken of cartographies (Kamila Shamsie, Kartography) and maps (Nadeem Aslam, Maps for Lost Lovers), developed a numinous relationship to land (Romesh Gunesekera, Heaven’s Edge) or tried to understand a territorially defining war (Tahmina Anam, The Golden Age). These have entered literary concerns in different ways. The legacy of these processes is seen in the postcolonial world which has either continued colonial demarcations or has instituted wholly new ones in the interests of more efficient governance.

( The Hungry Tide, 224)Īnd 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 roundabout people can use to pass in many directions – from country to country and even between faiths and religions ( The Hungry Tide, 247)ġColonial experience in India and its neighbouring countries has been primarily an experience of the reconfiguration of familiar space, the drawing and redrawing of borders and the division of territory into smaller or more manageable administrative units. In the tide country, transformation is the way of life. I realized, with a sense of shock, that this chimerical line was, to her and to Horen, as real as a barbed-wire fence might be to me ( The Hungry Tide 223-34) In other words we had crossed the border that separates the realm of human beings from the domain of Dokkhin Rai and his demons.

In the very middle of that mohona, we had crossed the line Bon Bibi had drawn to divide the tide country.

The hungry tide by amitav ghosh