Amitav Ghosh's Blog, page 20

Aatish Taseer’s ‘Stranger to History’

  I met Aatish Taseer     in New York last year, at the prize-giving ceremony of the National Book Awards of the USA                 (my wife’s book, The Convert,         was on the short list).                   [...]

Pankaj Mishra’s ‘From the Ruins of Empire’

    A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal (Asia) wrote to me asking for a short recommendation of a soon-to-be-published book. My pick was Pankaj Mishra’s From the Ruins of Empire.   From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia By Pankaj Mishra (Farrar, Strauss, 2012) [...]

Turkish POWs in India and Burma: First World War – Part 2

  Guest post by Vedica Kant:   The Turkish POW camp at Sumerpur was a self-sufficient camp on a large plain bordered by rocky hills and intersected by a river that dried up in the heat, held 3,366 prisoners, mostly Mesopotamian Arabs, and Christians (the Greek Consulate in Calcutta confirmed that the camp had Orthodox [...]

Turkish POWs in India and Burma: First World War – Part 1

    Guest post by Vedica Kant:     A number of posts on this blog over the last few months have focussed on the experience of Indian soldiers and army officers in foreign lands during the First World War. The most recent posts have looked at the experience of two Indians in the Mesopotamian [...]

A Kolkata Tragedy

  On Saturday, February 11, 2012, the Telegraph, a Kolkata daily, carried this report:   The body of a Class XI student of La Martiniere for Boys was found in the Rabindra Sarobar waters on Friday afternoon, two days after he was reported missing. Riju Basak, 17, did not return home on Wednesday after setting [...]

Letter from Guangzhou/Canton

      August 12, 2012 Dear Mr. Ghosh, After reading Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke consecutively this summer, I am greatly delighted by your stories about Canton back in the 19th century. As a current resident in this modern city, I am enchanted by your use of those pidgin English.  As a [...]

Poem inspired by ‘Sea of Poppies’ and Agha Shahid Ali’s Ghazals

        Sent: Saturday, 14 July 2012 8:34 AM Subject: Poem inspired by your work and my English Ghazal’s based on Agha Shahid Ali’s ‘Real’ Ghazals Dear Mr.Ghosh, Greetings Sir! I am a medical graduate from Mysore ,Karnataka and am an ardent fan of your writing. Sir, I recently discovered your wonderful blog [...]

‘On to Baghdad’: The Road to Captivity

      General Charles Townshend, the commander of the British-Indian force at Kut al-Amara, surrendered to the Ottoman commander, Khalil Pasha, on the 29th of April 1916. The force had been under siege since early December, 1915, and their stocks of food were completely exhausted. This is Sisir Sarbadhikari’s description of what happened next.§ [...]

‘On to Baghdad’: Surrender at Kut al-Amara

      After the first week of November 1915, some 10,000 British and Indian troops were pinned down in the town of Kut al-Amara in Iraq, by an Ottoman force of some 11,000 men. The British made several attempts to relieve the town, but the attacks were all repelled.           [...]

‘On to Baghdad’: The Siege of Kut al-Amara

    After its defeat at the battle of Ctesiphon, in November 1915, the British-Indian 6th Division, retreated southwards, towards Kut al-Amara. During the retreat the usual order of battle was reversed and the medical staff, like Sisir Sarbadhikari, found themselves in the thick of the action.                 [...]