Amitav Ghosh's Blog, page 15

Shared Sorrows – 4

  Shared Sorrows: Indians and Armenians in the prison camps of Ras al-‘Ain, 1916-18 – 4     In the first few months of the campaign, the British-Indian forces met with little resistance from the Ottoman army. The going was so smooth that the campaign was decribed as a ‘river picnic’.     But just [...]

Shared Sorrows – 3

  Shared Sorrows: Indians and Armenians in the prison camps of Ras al-‘Ain, 1916-18 – 3   When Sisir Sarbadhikari volunteered for the Bengal Ambulance Corps, in 1915, he was in his early twenties and had just earned his Bachelor’s degree in law. Such was his eagerness to join the BAC that he actually pulled [...]

Shared Sorrows – 2

  Shared Sorrows: Indians and Armenians in the prison camps of Ras al-‘Ain, 1916-18   As a writer of fiction I am accustomed to creating characters and inventing stories. But I also often deal with historical sources, and every now and again I come upon something that serves to remind me that reality often exceeds [...]

Shared Sorrows – 1

    Shared Sorrows: Indians and Armenians in the prison camps of Ras al-‘Ain, 1916-18.   [In August 2012 I received an invitation from Neery Melkonian, co-founder of The Blind Dates Project, to deliver a keynote address for a conference to be held in Yerevan, in Armenia. There was an element of synchronicity in this [...]

Navsari – Home of Indian Zoroastrianism & Hub of the China Trade

        The town of         Navsari, near Surat in Gujarat,               is the ancestral home of many eminent Parsi families (of which several were prominent in the China trade). The First Dastoor Meherjirana Library     was founded and endowed by a prominent [...]

Review: ‘Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection’

      Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection by Felix Padel, Ajay Dandekar and Jeemol Unni   Felix Padel, is a British anthropologist who has spent many years living in the forest areas of Odisha. He is now a professor at the School of Rural Managament, Indian Institute of Health Managament Research, [...]

A Picture and an Update

      From Alessandro Vescovi, who compiled the bibliography on my website, a picture of the Lascar war memorial in Kolkata:       and an update of the bibliography covering the last six months. Alessandro has not included entries in Bangla or Hindi but would be glad to do so if the details [...]

About ‘The Hungry Tide’

      Dear Amitav,  I have no idea if you will get this message or if I will get a reply-but as they say-those who dare…. My name is Yasmine Thebault, I was born in 1952 in Dar-es-salaam, in  Tanzania. My parents came from the Gujarat, but we Ismaili originate from the middle east. [...]

A Picture from ‘Lataifa’

    I recently received this request from a university student who wrote to say that she was writing a paper on In An Antique Land: ‘It would mean a lot to me if you can send me a photo of you in the filed or as a  young anthropologist; i was looking but, didn’t [...]

A Conversation on Sustainability & Collapse at Stanford

    On Dec 3, 2012, I visited a class on Sustainability and Collapse at Stanford. The course is taught jointly by Dr. Mark Zoback (Geophysics), Dr. Russell Berman (Comparative Literature), Dr. Nicholas Bauch (Lecturer, Thinking Matters) and Dr. Katrinka Reinhart (Lecturer, Thinking Matters) [in the Thinking Matters program, distinguished professors give lectures, but the [...]