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As he sees it

Fact and fiction Author Amitav Ghosh

Tutankhamen. Get it? You won’t if you are a student of Egyptology. You will if you were a contemporary of Amitav Ghosh at Delhi University during the 1970s. That was when the Delhi Transport Corporation launched a new bus service between Central Secretariat and the University. “I still remember when the 210 was started,” grins Ghosh. “The university was full of 210 jokes, like 210-khamen!”

Looking at the city now, says Ghosh, he feels people would never believe how it used to be — like a small, sleepy town. Hauz Khas was the furthest point of the city. You could hire a bicycle for a day, visit all your friends and return it in the evening. “It was an unrecognisable Delhi,” muses the smiling Ghosh, who lived here first from 1972 to ’78 as a university student and then from ’83 to ’88, when he taught at DU.

Ghosh has lived around the world. But Kolkata remains his pivot. “I always think of my life like a compass, and one point is always set in Kolkata.” Ghosh even puts down his expertise in tea to his being Bengali.

“In Bengal people generally know about tea,” he says, infusing a pot of Muscatel for precisely five minutes. Five minutes later, he looks at the colour of the steaming brew with satisfaction. So much for home base!

But every city has its own uniqueness. And Delhi, despite its chaotic traffic and its high prices, also impressed him for its “incredibly vibrant intellectual community.” The St. Stephen’s alumnus – and earlier, Doon School in Dehra Dun – gives India’s education system a pat on the back when he recounts how “Oxford was a lot of fun, but intellectually it was way behind Delhi.”

Oxford had lots of good libraries and other facilities, but, he says, “what students were reading when I went there, I had read way back.” This was not because he was a celebrated writer in the making, but because “in some ways our education system is so rigorous.”

As a student, “what I learnt was, the learning process never stops,” he says. Not surprising. With contemporaries like Ramachandra Guha, Mihir Shah, Piyush Pandey and Harsh Mander, Ghosh is not alone in being the toast of the town. “I feel extraordinarily blessed,” says Ghosh, pointing out how rare it is to find a group of cohorts who have made such an impact on their environment.

Another event that shook Delhi was the assassination of Indira Gandhi. “I was taking a class that day, and somehow I made myself go on with the class,” he recalls. “I’ve written at great length about the ‘84 riots,” says Ghosh. “To be teaching at DU at that time was incredibly demanding. It taught you a certain stoicism.”

That brings us back to today’s Delhi. The pall of those days lifted, one can go freely about the streets again, and that is one of the big changes, notes Ghosh.

Ghosh, here to promote his latest novel, ‘Sea of Poppies,’ published by Penguin, must find his periodic resurfacing with a book and the ensuing whirlwind book tours like the storm after the silence. But he is not given to cribbing, it would seem. “This time it’s not so hectic,” he avers. “Four days.”

Four days, and only one direction: Ever upwards!

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