The Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh

 Hello friends! 

I am Nidhi Jethava and I am a student of MK Bhavnagar University. In this blog, I am going to discuss some questions connected to our thinking activity about ‘The Gun Island’. It is our learning that after completing a particular unit we have to write a blog and it’s called thinking activity. So before writing about this I would like to give a brief about ‘Why thinking activity is important.’ 

So in this video, we come to know why universities insist students do thinking activities. Thinking and writing is the process that makes you more perfect about your thoughts. Critical thinking is the important thing and one of the most important things is to give a perfect shape of your words. It makes you perfect, it will create a lot of opportunities, it enhances your own character, make make a more perfect. So, it is brief about why thinking activities are important.

About Amitav Ghosh 

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956, and studied at Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexandria and Oxford.

He was awarded a doctorate from Oxford University. He has written for many publications including The Hindu, The New Yorker and Granta, and taught in universities in both India and the US.

His first novel, The Circle of Reason, set in India and Africa and winner of the 1990 Prix Médicis Étranger, was published in 1986. Further novels are The Shadow Lines (1988); The Calcutta Chromosome (1996), about the search for a genetic strain which guarantees immortality and winner of the 1997 Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction; The Glass Palace (2000), and The Hungry Tide (2004), a saga set in Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal.

His books of non-fiction include 3 collections of essays: Dancing in Cambodia and At Large in Burma (1998); The Imam and the Indian (2002), around his experience in Egypt in the early 1980s; and Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times (2005).

His recent novels form a trilogy: Sea of Poppies (2008), an epic saga set just before the Opium Wars, shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Prize; River of Smoke (2011), shortlisted for the 2011 Man Asia Literary Prize; and Flood of Fire (2015), which concludes the story. He has also published The Great Derangement (2016), a non-fiction book on climate change.

In 2007 Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian Government, for his distinguished contribution to literature. ( British Council )

The Gun island:-

"Gun Island is Ghosh’s ninth novel, and is set in the same Sundarbans that he describes in his 2006 novel, The Hungry Tide—an untamed and complex ecosystem of canals and low-lying wetlands in Ghosh’s birthplace of West Bengal that is home to a rapidly disappearing wildlife. Its population of cyclone and flood ravaged people are always on the lookout for a storm on the horizon, always one disaster away from ruin. In Gun Island, we return to the Sundarbans, where there is a sense of lost hope and helplessness, of being unable to salvage a land devastated by ecological damage." ( Arushi Sinha & Shilvi J Shah) 

Points to Ponder

1. How does Amitav Ghosh use the myth of Gun Merchant 'Bonduki Sadagar' and Manasa Devi to initiate discussion on the issue of Climate Change and Migration/Refugee crisis / Human Trafficking? 

Answer:- 

‘The Gun Island ‘ is very interestingly discussed the issue of  Climate change Migration and human trafficking. Amitav Ghosh very intellectually used this myth of The Gun Merchant and Manasa Devi.  According to Trina Bose “This climate-induced human displacement from the Sundarbans in contemporary times resembles that of the Gun Merchant in the ancient legend of the Gun Merchant used in the text, who fled his homeland to save his life from the destructive forces of climate change symbolized by the fury and revenge of the Goddess Manasa whom the Merchant disrespected. Cinta who is an Italian historian in the text offers a pragmatic interpretation of the ancient legendary story of the Gun Merchant. The parallel journey of the climate-driven migrants of the past (the Gun Merchant) and the present (the underprivileged from the Sundarbans) elucidates that the legend is “an apocryphal record of a real journey to Venice” (Ghosh, 2019, p. 138). According to Cinta, the Merchant’s “homeland, in eastern India, is struck by drought and floods brought on by the climatic disturbances of the Little Ice Age; he loses everything including his family, and decides to go overseas to recoup his fortune” (Ghosh, 2019, p. 141). Pia despondently describes the present environmental condition of the Sundarbans and the world, “We’re in a new world. No one knows where they belong any more, neither humans nor animals” (Ghosh, 2019, p. 97). It is portrayed that the outcomes of anthropogenic environmental devastations like global warming, sea-level rise, and water pollution pose an existential threat to all living beings on earth during the climate apocalypse.”

So here in this article, we come to know that the cause of the migration of Bamduki Sadagar was climate change and after a decade it become one myth about the shine of Manasa Devi. so at the beginning of the story, we come to know that our protagonist Dinanath also migrated because of climate change, another

2. How does Amitav Ghosh make use of the 'etymology' of common words to sustain mystery and suspense in the narrative?

Answer:-

Amitav Ghosh in his work ‘ The Gun Island’ Very significantly used this ‘etymology’ of common words to sustain mystery and Suspense in the narrative. From the beginning, the whole novel is about the myth of Mansa Devi and Banduki Saagar but it was Cinta who unfolded the mystery of this. With the help of the character of Cinta Amitav Ghose did beautiful use of etymology. It’s Cinta who reveals the whole meaning of Gun Island. In the book, we came to know the name of some places like The Land of  Palm Sugar Candy, Land of Kerchief Island of Chains, and Finally The Gun Island. 

So here The Land of Palm Sugar Candy means “Land of Palm Sugar Candy” was Taal-misrir-desh. Desh is “country” in Bengali, and taal is a kind of palm tree that produces a sugary syrup which is used to make all kinds of sweets including a crystallized candy. I translated the phrase as “palm sugar candy” because the Bengali word for “sugar candy” is misri.’ “Misr” is but the Arabic word for Egypt. So here ‘ The Land of Palm Sugar candy’ means Egypt. 

‘The Land of Kerchieves? In the legend it was called Rumaali-desh. In Bengali rumaal is a handkerchief . . .’‘On the outskirts of Istanbul, where the Turks built their first stronghold in Europe. Rumeli comes from “Rum”, “Rome” – which is how Constantinople, the Byzantine “Rome”, was known in Arabic and Persian. The Rumaali of Gun merchant’s story is probably just a corruption of some version of “Rum” – does it not make sense that the Gun Merchant and Captain Ilyas would have gone from Egypt to Turkey. 

The Land of Chains. In Bangla, it means ‘Shikol-dwip.’  ‘the Arabic name for Sicily is “Siqillia” – the resemblance to shikol. 

The Gun Island:- Banduki dwip, Getto in Venice where Gun factory was there. So in this way Amitav Ghose Unfolded the mystery of The Gun Island. Here Gun Island means Venice where our Banduki Sadagar was gone. 

3. What are your views on the use of myth and history in the novel Gun Island to draw the attention of the reader towards contemporary issues like climate change and migration?

Answer:- 

As we know “The Gun Island’ has the theme of Myth and History, so here we can see the direct connection between climate change and migration. Amitav Ghose is Ecologist and with help of Mystery and history, he drew attention to this kind of issue. So many people migrated from #Sunderban because of floods and sinking. 

So this is one of the examples of Land sinking. In the novel, ‘The Gun Island’ Tipu, Bilal, Kabir, Palash were the victim of climate change and migration.

 4. Is there any connection between 'The Great Derangement' and 'Gun Island'?

Answer:- 

Yes here is the connection between ‘The Great Derangement and ‘ The Gun Island’. 

Gun Island is the response to the queries raised in ‘The Great Deregment’.

  “Both these books deal with the significant issues of the current moment that are the unexpected changes in weather conditions in the environment and human migration. The extremity of temperature and flood had made people abandon their homeland and migrate to other places. Amitav Ghosh presents in both these books the incompetence of the present generation to grasp the scale of climate change in the spheres of Literature, History and Politics. He is really conscious of the environmental destruction that the world faces today, and the condition of impossibility to retain the ecological balance of the environment. “ ( Keerthy Gopinadh, Varsha K. ) 

So in this ‘The Gun Island’  Amitav Gosh answered the questions from ‘ The Great Derangement.’

5. There are many Italian words in the novel. Have you tried to translate these words into English or Hindi with the help of Google Translate App? If so, how is Machine Translation helping in proper translation of Italian words into English and Hindi?

Answer:-

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yHQFGPn5W04u8Eo1dZE8ewBSjsrFKgFujpsUka7K8qc/edit?usp=drivesdk

Here is the sheet which has translated words. yes, the translation machine helps proper for translating Italian words into English and Hindi.

References:

1. Bose, Trina. "The Crisis of Climate and Immigration in." Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies (2021).

2. Ghosh, Amitav. The Gun Island. 2019.

3. Gopinath, Keerthy. "What Makes Human an Ecological Refugee: A Study on the Issues of Climate Change in Gun Island and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable." International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation (2020): 7.

4. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/amitav-ghosh  

5. Sinha, Arushi. "Review: Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh." Columbia Journaal (2019).

 

Difference between MLA 7th and 8th Edition

 Hello everyone! 

I am Nidhi jethava and I am a student of MK Bhavnagar University department of English. In this blog, I am going to differentiate between the two editions of books. It is our thinking activity and in this, I have to give the difference between MLA Handbook 7th and 8th edition.  

Research Writing Workshop

 I am Nidhi Jethava and I am a Student of MK Bhavnagar University. We had a session on Friday. This blog is about the learning outcome of three sessions in a workshop conducted on 7th Jan 2022. 

Here is the link to the teacher’s blog. https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2022/01/avoid-plagiarism-research-in-digital-era.html

The chief guest of the session is Dr. J.P. Majmudar. This workshop was in three sessions. It's very helpful in our research and writing. 

1. Importance of research by professor j.p. Majumdar 

2. Avoid plagiarism: qualitative research in the digital era by Barad sir 

3. Citation: tools and techniques by Vaidehi Ma'am 

So let's discuss three sessions in detail. 

Importance of research by professor j.p. Majumdar 

This session helps us most about understanding research and writing. As we know that research should be systematic and scientific. We can not get any authentic information about anything without research. Dr. Majmudar is connected with the market and management so he mostly gave examples of research connected with the market and MNF's survey. Actually, it's very necessary for any field. Research is a very necessary thing and one can not do research without knowing the proper way or we can say systematic way of it. This workshop helps a lot for our dissertation writing and research. As we know that research should be systematic and scientific. So we can understand the value of authenticity and how much reservation helps us in various fields like marketing strategy, management, and literature. In short, research is an important part of any study. 

Avoid plagiarism: qualitative research in the digital era by Barad sir.

The second session was taken by prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir. He also talked about plagiarism. How to pronounce, how to identify plagiarism, the importance of citations, at which level it's acceptable. What are the measurements? How to identify CCP ( cut, copy, paste). So it's also very useful for us. Nowadays plagiarism is becoming the talk of the town. So many cases result in this kind of thing. Many people have to leave their high positions and medals because of it. Ex. The president of Hungary, Pal Schmitt, resigned from his largely ceremonial post on Monday amid a storm of criticism over what he called “unfounded allegations” of plagiarism in his 1992 doctoral thesis.(Palko Karasz, The Newyork Times)

Here I am putting the link to the worksheet, which helps us to understand which source is authentic. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KYq7WA02rRD3u5vlnmb9BxeVcfeQ27b0/view?usp=sharing

Citation: tools and techniques by Vaidehi Ma'am

Last session was taken by Vaidehi Hariyani  ma'am. In that we all students practiced various tools of citations. We all were divided into five groups and we did the practice citation. Madam also helped us and gave more information about citations. It was a very fruitful day. It enhances our knowledge and also makes us aware of plagiarism, the importance of research, and citation.  

Thank you.

Here are the glimpses of the workshop. 

 

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

  Hello everyone! 

I am Nidhi Jethava and I am a student of MK Bhavnagar University department of English. We have one paper on contemporary literature and in this blog, I am going to discuss a few questions about a contemporary novel by Arundhati Roy 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. 

Here is the link to the teacher’s blog. 

https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2021/12/the-ministry-of-utmost-happiness.html?m=1

So first I would like to give a brief introduction about Arundhati Roy:

“I have never been particularly ambitious. I am not a careerist, I am not trying to get anywhere in a career. It is more important to engage with society, to live it, to have different experiences”, said Roy, addressing the audience at Sharjah International Book Fair.

Arundhati Roy (November 24, 1961) is an Indian novelist, political activist. She is best known for her first novel The God of Small Things which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. She was also awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2004. read further about Roy.

About 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

 

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a very fascinating novel by Arundhati Roy. It was published in 2017. It’s a very interesting novel. It discusses issues like political, transgender, social and especially it covers contemporary India. 

Here are the questions to ponder. 

1. Political issues in the novel.

Answer : 

The novel discusses political issues such as Godhra kand, when Anjum went to Ajmer and riots were broken like anything. Another issue is the Kashmir issue. It's very horrible. It's connected with territories and the Indian Military. Another major issue was discussed at Jantar Mantar in Delhi and in an emergency in 1975. Where all stats people are gathered for various issues. In this, all Godhra kand and Kashmir issues are major things.

2. Gender concern in the Novel. 

Answer.

Gender concern is another important thing. While discussing female, male and transgender conflict. The identity issue is the most important controversial issue. At the beginning of the novel, we face the same thing in the case of our protagonist Anjum. Anjum was born as a baby boy but as an adult, he came to know that he is 'Hijra'. And her mother at the beginning was not able to understand this. 

Another important thing is male and female conflict.

Indian culture is a male dominant society in which women are slaves to male monopolies. They are the victims of discrimination against women and men. The plexus of male-dominated society consists of stereotypes that support the superiority of men over women. Women are still the miserable dolls who move in alienation without their own identity. They stay in the male oppression

surrounding, bearing the anxiety that masculine authority endorses. They are harassed and raped viciously, deprived of their rights and opportunities without their own identity. Women constantly attempt to express their suffering, but they are silent. Such discrimination against women not just stifles their voice in society but takes them away from employment, economic freedom, and equitable political participation. They are isolated from the public and national discourse and are never recognized for their effort as well. They struggle with a sense of uncertainty and experience the pain of bigotry and identity crisis. (Denish Suleman)

3. Environmental concerns in the novel / Ecofeminist study

Answer:-  

Arundhati Roy is also known as ecocritic. At the beginning of the novel ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,’ We come to know about environmental concerns. 

At magic hour, when the sun has gone but the light has not, armies of flying foxes unhinge themselves from the Banyan trees in the old graveyard and drift across the city like smoke. When the bats leave, the crows come home. Not all the din of their homecoming fills the silence left by the sparrows that have gone missing, and the old white-backed vultures, custodians of the dead for more than a hundred million years, that have been wiped out. The vultures died of diclofenac poisoning. Diclofenac, cow-aspirin, given to cattle as a muscle relaxant, to ease pain and increase the production of milk, works – worked – like nerve gas on white-backed vultures. Each chemically relaxed, milk-producing cow or buffalo that died became poisoned vulture-bait. As cattle turned into better dairy machines, as the city ate more ice cream, butterscotch-crunch, nutty-buddy and chocolate-chip, as it drank more mango milkshake, vultures’ necks began to droop as though they were tired and simply couldn’t stay awake. Silver beards of saliva dripped from their beaks, and one by one they tumbled off their branches, dead. Not many noticed the passing of the friendly old birds. There was so much else to look forward to.(The Ministry of Utmost Happiness)

4.  Narrative Patterns in the novel

Answer:- 

The narrative pattern of ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness' is very hard and tough to understand. Because it is not easy to understand Roy’s technique of writing. One of the best parts is here that describes sadness in writing. 

Thank you. 

References: 

Roy, Arundhati. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. 2017.

Suleman, Danish. "political and Gender issues in Arundhati Roy’s "TheMinistry of Utmost Happiness"Masalah Politik dan Gender dalam Arundhati Roy "The Ministryof Utmost Happiness"." ReserchGate (2020): 8.

 

Research and Writing workshop Understanding

 Hello everyone!

I am Nidhi Jethava and I am a student of MK Bhavnagar University. As a part of the syllabus, we have dissertation writing and on Monday we had a workshop on research and writing workshop. The resource person was Dr. Clement Ndoricimpa. After completing any unit and workshop we have to do a thinking activity and this blog is part of the thinking activity and in this blog, I am going to talk about my learning outcomes. 

What is research writing? 

“Research” is an organized, scientific and systematic investigation of truths about a particular subject or about things that no-one else knew (Walliman, 2011). It simply means hunting for new knowledge. Research also means a scientific investigation to solve problems, test hypotheses, and develop new knowledge. Research is scientific because it uses scientific methods by making an integrated use of inductive-deductive reasoning.

It means research is very systematic and scientific. For research writing, one should work in a scientific and systematic way. 

Throughghout the worshop we learn so many things. What is research? What is our area for research writing? What kind of problems you are identified? What is your resech ground? Identified each and everything we cone to know that research should be in systematic way.

According to Walliman (2011), this inductive-deductive reasoning follows the process below:

1. identification or clarification of the problem;

2. developing a hypothesis (testable theory) inductively from observation;

3. charting their implications by deduction;

4. practical or theoretical testing of the hypothesis;

5. rejecting or redefining it in the light of the results.

Research is systematic because it follows certain steps that are logically connected. These steps are:

• understanding the nature of the problem to be studied and identifying the related areas of knowledge;

• reviewing the literature to understand how others have approached or dealt with the problem;

• collecting data in an organized and controlled manner so as to arrive at a valid decision;

• analyzing data appropriate to the problem; 

• Drawing conclusions and making generalizations.

There are different types of research.

Historical	Descriptive
Correlation	Cultural

Research has the following characteristics:

1. It is based on the works of others;

2. It can be replicated (duplicated)- reliability;

3. It is generalizable to other settings (external validity);

4. It is based on some logical rationale and tied to a particular theory (content validity);

5. It is doable;

6. It generates news questions;

7. It is important;

8. It advances the frontiers of knowledge.

- Besides this most important thing is how to select a topic and the most important thing is the selection of the topic and its process. Selection of topic and its reason are the most important thing. Besides this what kind of question arises in your mind and how you will shape it is the most important thing. In research writing, another important thing is Literature overview. 

1. The structure of a dissertation

1. Introduction

2. Literature review

3. Research methods/theoretical framework for literary studies.

4. Interpretation and discussion of the findings

5. Conclusion.

So these are some of the important things for research writing. 

Reference:-

Williman, N. (2011). Research Methods: The Basics. London & New York: Routledge. 

Some of the glimpses :-