Weekend Listen: Writer Amitav Ghosh on Why India Has Lost Its Way

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3:06Writing, living in this world, you know, very strange things happen in this world. Very, very strange, inexplicable things. And that's what the beauty and miraculousness of this world consists in. Amitav Ghosh, novelist and interpreter of worlds, real and imagined. Do you have to work hard to separate yourself from the real world when you're writing a novel like this one? Yes, I really have to create a kind of little bubble of tranquility in order to be able to write. And that's becoming harder and harder. Before, we were writing about the planetary crisis. But now we are in a circumstance where we have to write from within the crisis.

3:50From Bloomberg Weekend, this is The Michelle Hussain Show. I'm Michelle Hussain.

3:59Many years ago, I read a book called The Glass Palace. It's a sweeping family story set across Burma, India and Malaya from the 19th century. and it really drew me into those places and those times. The writer was Amitav Ghosh. It wasn't his first novel but it was, I think, his breakthrough one and since then he has developed a global following, often for fiction, that is deeply researched. You know somehow as you read that he's been immersed in learning enough to set a context, to prepare a canvas for his characters. Sometimes he's used that knowledge for both novels and non-fiction. There's a trilogy of his, for example, that's set around the colonial era opium trade, and that also inspired a non-fiction book about the history of that business.

4:55Similarly, he's written novels set in the fragile ecosystem of coastal Bangladesh and eastern India, and that too has led to essays on climate threats. So he's always moved between these spaces. But his latest book, Ghost Eye, takes that to a different level because there is something otherworldly about it. You'll hear him explain in his own words in a moment. But we met in New York, where he's lived for a long time. He was born in India, but he's made his home in the United States. And the fact that the plot of Ghost Eye goes back and forth between those two countries didn't surprise me. What did was him revealing just how personal this latest book is.

5:44So here's the conversation I had with Amitav Ghosh. Well, it's lovely to meet you having spent so many years reading many of your books and here we are. Thank you. There's a part early on in Ghost Eye that made me wonder how autobiographical this book is, because your protagonist in Ghost Eye, Dino says, my memories of the city of my childhood had ebbed until they came flooding back half a century later on the other side of the planet, in Brooklyn, during the plague year of 2020. The reason those lockdown days reminded me of Calcutta was that during the pandemic too, there was a sense of darkness closing in, or rather an artificial brightness leaking out of the world.

6:27So did your memories come back to you while you were locked down? Yes, very much, actually. Writing this book helped me reconcile various things that I'd never thought about before. You know, I was in Calcutta in January 2020, and my mother was very sick. And my mother was a very ordinary homemaker. But she was also someone who had very strange sorts of perceptions of things. Odd things would happen around her. And one day when she was in hospital, literally in front of my eyes, she had a near-death experience, you know. And watching that, watching her describe what she was seeing on the other side, it really unlocked something for me.

7:13What did she actually say? What did she articulate? You know, the first thing she did was that she literally said goodbye to me. And my wife, my wife was there too. And she said goodbye in the same way and in the same tone that she used to say goodbye to me when I was going off to boarding school. And then her head sort of snapped back and she began to toss her head from side to side. And she was telling me in Bengali what she was seeing. There was a light. There were people coming towards her, very welcoming figures. And she was not at all afraid. These are all classic near-death experience. People calling you.

7:50That's right. And then suddenly, you know, a doctor came in and gave her this injection. And, you know, so she sort of came out of it. But, you know, the first thing she said when she came out of it is, why did you bring me back? I wanted to go. It was my time. You've put that in the book. There's a scene exactly like that in the book. So it obviously stayed with you. Oh, yeah, very much. I mean, it does sound like an extraordinary thing to have experienced. It was, yes. And as I said, it suddenly unlocked things, you know, in my brain. And I suddenly began to realize that, you know, writing, living in this world, you know, very strange things happen in this world.

8:33Very, very strange, inexplicable things. And that's what the beauty and miraculousness of this world consists in. And then a strong theme in Ghost Eye is this idea of reincarnation and a child who's born with memories of a past life. Where did that thought come from and how long has that been percolating in your mind? I've been thinking of it for a long time. In fact, I touched on it in an earlier book called The Calcutta Chromosome. I don't like to use the word reincarnation because there's a kind of metaphysic involved in reincarnation, you know, because you're implying that there's a whole sort of cycle of karma and so on.

9:10Maybe that exists. I just don't know about that. I'm agnostic. But what I do know is that a very large number of children are born with past life memories. Since this book came out, I've been contacted by, you know, literally dozens and dozens of people, very unlikely people. There are a lot of these inexplicable things like, you know, children being born with a knowledge of another language. And you believe that? It's not people's perception, it's not artifice, it's not children putting it on. There's no doubt in your mind that that phenomenon is real? No doubt whatsoever. Because, you know, the people who've told me about these experiences and memories and so on, they're friends and I trust them.

9:57And what incentive do they have to lie to me? I mean, when there are so many of them saying that. Yeah, I don't mean lying. I just mean that sometimes our perception does sometimes lead us to believe certain things or see certain things that someone else might not. I think the reason I'm particularly interested in your views on this is that I've always been struck by how in your novels, how deeply researched they are. The worlds that you create in fiction, sometimes you've mirrored them in nonfiction. So you've shown the real events that your characters were derived from. And that's why I'm wondering if you're doing something a little different in this book.

10:32You're asking us to suspend our belief and step into a different world with you. Yes, very much so. You know why this interests me, why this phenomenon interests me? Is that I think one of the things that's gone really wrong with the world is that, you know, because of the mechanistic ways in which the most powerful people in the world think about the earth, that it's just a machine, that it's inert, that everything in it can be known by science or by engineers or whatever. The world has lost all its wonder and its mystery, and that's why Elon Musk wants to leave our poor, you know, exhausted world and go to Mars or whatever.

11:19But our Earth is infinitely mysterious, and I feel that we know almost nothing about it. You know, science is great, but you can't use a hammer for every job. The plot of Ghost Eye moves between Kolkata in 1969, it's the city of your birth, and New York in 2020. 1969 in the United States is the year of the Vietnam War protests. In the UK, it's more about the troubles in Northern Ireland, probably. What did 1969 mean to you as a 13-year-old in Kolkata? In 1969, I was mainly in boarding school in northern India, following the news very closely, so North Vietnam and so on. But also, you know, it was a time when really we in India had a huge kind of exposure to American culture through music, most of all.

12:16I think it was the spectacle of what young people were doing in America, you know. I often think it's very common for American politicians to say that people come here for our freedoms and our liberties and so on. But in fact, really what I think the world found so attractive in that particular period was the counterculture. You know, it wasn't the mainstream culture at all. It was actually the counterculture that really made America into a kind of global leader of youth culture, if you like. This reminds me of something I've heard you say about Calcutta in that period, that while there was unrest and it was a politically tense time, there was also a flowering of culture, the writers, the filmmakers, the arts of many kinds.

13:03Absolutely. I mean, that's the really remarkable thing. I mean, if you look at the filmmakers who are working in Calcutta in the 60s and 70s, I mean, it's an astonishing number of the great Indian filmmakers of the past. Most of all, Satyajit Ray, whose work I found incredibly exciting. Take me back to the real story behind the unrest in Calcutta that's part of the book. What was the political climate that surrounded you and how do you think it impacted the writer that you became? Very much. Calcutta, I should explain, was then kind of a hotbed of Marxist activity. There were Maoists, there were Stalinists.

13:40I mean, there were so many varieties of Marxist activists. And they were a very powerful presence. They were there as a political presence, but also as an intellectual presence. I never subscribed to those ideologies really at all, but still, it was there. You had to contend with it. And what made it very interesting in a way is that, you know, Calcutta and New York are like the opposite ends of the telescope. I mean, Calcutta is the antithesis of the modern world. At least it was in that period, you know. And New York is the heart of the modern world. So in a sense, it's such a huge gap to bridge.

14:20Mind you, Calcutta is very different now. I mean, really, New York is the home of capitalism in so many ways. So I guess that's the contrast between the two. Because I've heard you say that there was something about growing up in such contentious times that put you in the mindset of thinking against the grain. that that is the roots of your work. That is absolutely the case, yes. I think that was the main thing about growing up there at that time, that you really learned to be very critical, very skeptical of everything. I really learned to think against the grain, and that stayed with me forever.

14:59You are a writer who's so connected to everyday events and to present-day politics. I can see it from your ex-feed. I can see that you're reposting multiple times a day. How much does it bleed into your fiction? Do you have to work hard to separate yourself off from the real world when you're actually writing a novel like this one? Yes, I really have to create a kind of little bubble of tranquility in order to be able to write. And that's becoming harder and harder. It's becoming impossible now, I would say. You know, before we were writing about the planetary crisis, you know, that's, I mean, it's a political crisis, it's a geopolitical crisis, environmental, so many things.

15:44But now we are in a circumstance where we have to write from within the crisis. And that completely changes your perspective. I mean, you have to write from the point of view of the reality of our time, and it's a time of absolute disruption. And you don't just mean climate, do you? I think you mean the state of the world, the war with Iran, all of these things are exercising you at this moment in time? Very much so. You know, I wrote a book called The Nutmeg's Curse. And there I said that, you know, the mistake that Western experts make when they think about the climate crisis is that they think of it as a technological and scientific crisis.

16:24Whereas, in fact, it's a geopolitical crisis. You know, it's a crisis that's tied to the fossil fuel economy, which in itself is the underpinnings and has been for 200 years of the Anglo-American empire, you know. Are you saying there's a link between that and Iran? Very much so. Absolutely. It's completely straightforward. I mean, the reason why Anglo-America has to try and retain control, most of all of the Straits of Hormuz, is exactly this, to control the flow of fossil fuels. But other parts of the world, not least India, the country of your birth, is highly dependent on that. I mean, how closely are you following how badly India has been affected economically in this period?

17:09I spoke to my sister in Calcutta a couple of hours ago, and she was, people are desperate to find natural gas because, you know, most of the cooking that's done in India is done with canisters of natural gas. And the situation is really very, very bad, and it's getting worse and worse. and the situation in India is actually very serious because the government, unlike China, didn't stockpile enough quantities of fuels. So India is very, very vulnerable. And has not been diplomatically active in this period, it would seem. What can you say, you know? India, in some way, over the last few years, most of all has completely lost its way diplomatically within the region.

17:56And it's very hard to see how it can get back on track. I mean, you know, just a few days before this conflict started in Iran, the Indian prime minister was in Israel, literally hugging Netanyahu and so on, despite the fact that these stands are not at all popular overwhelmingly in India by any means. Can you say that for sure, that they're not popular? Or is it more amongst your group of people? Yes. You know, I'm from a part of the Indian public which is opposed to these policy stands. Look, I mean, even if it's a question of it being popular or not, just prudence requires you to conduct yourself with a certain kind of caution in relation to the big suppliers of oil.

18:44So how would you describe your relationship with both these countries that are part of your life, with India and the United States? Because this is where you live today. I presume it's where you feel much more at home today. But does some of that feel different in the midst of a moment like this? Well, you know, you have to remember that one doesn't live in a large country like the United States and India, as if you were geographically spread across the entirety. I mean, I'm from Bengal. In Bengal, our views are often very, very different from that of other parts, especially of northern India.

19:23So, you know, I'm influenced by that. And here I live in New York. I live in Brooklyn. And I have, for my mayor, a boy I've known since he was a kid. Zoran Mamdani. So you know his parents? You know Mira Nair? Yes, Mira is one of my oldest friends. We went to college together in New Delhi. And so did you ever think that the child you knew might go into politics? Was there a moment where you thought that that's where his future might lie? You know, in our circles, it's so rare for anyone to go into politics, you know. I mean, straightforwardly into retail politics. So we used to say to Meera, Meera, what is he doing?

20:03And Meera would say, well, he's doing it. But really never would I have guessed that he'd turn out to be literally a kind of political phenomenon. I mean, a genius in a way. What was the moment that you realized that he could, you know, he could go all the way in this mayoral race? Was it before he won the Democratic primary? Oh, yes. I would say June or July last year. It was pretty clear. I mean, he just hit such a chord with young people, you know. Do you find yourself worrying that what happens if he can't deliver? Because he has inspired so much political enthusiasm. You know, he has fervent supporters.

20:41That can just quite easily dissipate if people get disappointed. You know, the thing that's been really surprising for me, I mean, of course, we knew that Zoran was charismatic. He spoke well. He's, you know, he's got that killer smile and so on. What's really surprised me, though, is how competent he is. So is that the thing that gives you hope, that you're living in New York, a city whose mayor you not only know, but, you know, you have a great fondness for? And is that essentially your retreat amidst a broader political establishment that worries you? Yes, but I think what that tells us is that there is a huge body of people in the United States, especially young people, who are now just longing for change.

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23:21so can we go back into history Amitav because I mentioned this earlier in the conversation and the fact that so often you've drawn on great moments in history and you know and obviously history is full of difficult moments. And I'm thinking about your charting of the opium trade through your novels. As we're in this process where it feels like power is shifting, that there's a new world order developing, you've thought about India and China a lot for your writing. How do you think that relationship develops? Like, will India end up moving closer to China than the United States? Because the United States is a difficult place to be close to, difficult for its allies these days.

24:03Absolutely. You know, the problem for India goes beyond any one political party or any one political figure. What we are really seeing is an era of maritime power slowly declining and continental power slowly rising to the top, as it were. You know, I mean, China and Russia, Iran, they're the three continental powers now, you know. Within this, where does India fit? India's problem is that it's not a continental power entirely, and it's not entirely a maritime power. Yet it is, in a significant sense, dependent on maritime relations. So where does India go? I mean, its own geography puts it in this double bind, you know, where it has to maintain sort of very close relations with the maritime powers.

24:56And at the same time, it has to try and maneuver within the new emergent order of continental power. It's a huge challenge for anybody to navigate that. And certainly, I think the current dispensation is not proving to be at all good at it. The current political leadership in India. In India. It's interesting to hear you call Iran a continental power and not India one. Well, India doesn't really reach very deep into the Asian landmass. It's cut off by the Himalaya, really. Northern India is, in some sense, very attached to the continent. But if you look at India, it's this huge peninsula that's just jutting out into the sea.

25:40So that maritime aspect of it really has to be balanced against whatever continental ambitions India might have. And this puts India in a terrible position because it's perfectly clear now that China is a world leader in so many different technologies, you know. And Pakistan, which is in some way, you know, maneuvered very well within this system. It's having a diplomatic moment for sure. Oh, absolutely. But in this climate, God knows how long that lasts. Who knows? But at least they've been able to take advantage of Chinese technology, whereas India really has, you know, blocked Chinese technology in India.

26:21So, I mean, just like the United States, I mean, you know, just cutting off your foot to spite your face, you know, because, I mean, look at those amazing Chinese cars that are everywhere now. And actually, even over here in the US, Yes, I feel sometimes like that I'm going back to the India of my childhood, where we drove around in these old, old cars, you know, 20, 30 year old cars. And we envied, you know, the West at that time for having all these fancy things. And now really here, because of tariffs, etc., we are entering that same cycle. And yet this is the country that you've chosen, that you've made your home, of which you've become a citizen.