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.’
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:-
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).
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