Amitav Ghosh's Blog, page 17

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 2 of 11

    So what then did the word ‘lascar’ mean in 19th century English? When placed beside a crew list like that of the William Stewart, the Oxford English Dictionary’s terse definition (‘East Indian Sailor’) would seem to be no less misleading than that of those well-known 19th century lexicographers, Albert Barrère and Charles Leland [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 1 of 11

    [This is an extended version of a talk delivered at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 2007. It was later published in the Economic and Political Weekly and is also reprinted in Eyes Across the Water: Navigating the Indian Ocean, ed. Pamila Gupta, Isabel Hofmeyr & Michael Pearson, Unisa Press, 2010]     [...]

Another Country: Writers and Censors in Burma, 15 years later – part 2 of 2

    On Nov 17 this year, the Burmese writer Ma Thida and I went to visit the offices of the Press Scrutiny Board in Yangon, the seat of the country’s once-feared censorship authority.       I was curious about the building because I had heard so much about it from Burmese writers,   [...]

Another Country: Writers and Censors in Burma, 15 years later – 1 of 2

      On November 14 this year, I returned to Burma/Myanmar after 15 years. During my time there I thought often of the opening sentence of L.P.Hartley’s novel The Go-Between: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. I had last visited Burma in 1997 and the trip did not end [...]

The Well-Traveled Banyan: 2 of 2

          The robes  known as ‘banyans’ were not the only garments of that name  in the 18th and 19th centuries: there was another such, just as unlikely as the British Nabob’s princely vestment.                         No less an authority than Admiral [...]

The Well Traveled Banyan: 1 of 2

        No garment lies closer to the heart of the Indian male than the banyan.¶ Yet, despite its hundreds of millions of adherents, the ubiquitous undervestment of the subcontinent gets little attention and even less respect:         designers scorn it; dudes despise it; its mere outline, were it to be [...]

Letters from Venice

      Dear Mr Ghosh, I honestly “discovered your name” only few weeks ago, just by and for a lucky casuality. While walking in front of bookshop window, a cover photo attracted my vision, Mandaly wood bridge, I entered into shop, read the brief story in back of cover book, and because I have [...]

Armenian retreats

              In 301 C.E. Armenia became the first kingdom to adopt Christianity as the religion of the realm. This history has endowed the country with some spectacularly beautiful monasteries.       One of the oldest is Khor Virap, which played an important part in the country’s conversion.   [...]

‘Crossing the Bay of Bengal’ with Sunil S. Amrith

    Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants Sunil S. Amrith (to be published by Harvard University Press in the fall of 2013)     I am frequently asked why the Bay of Bengal figures so often in my work. These two paragraphs from Sunil Amrith’s Crossing [...]

‘Sea of Poppies’ in Chinese/Memories of Hangzhou

    ‘Sea of Poppies’ has just been published in Chinese, by the publishing house Shanghai 99. The translators are Dr Guo Guoliang and Dr Li Yao.           Seeing the cover reminded me of a trip  in 2011 when Debbie and I           visited Dr Guo Guoliang [...]