Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh

Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh is about lines drawn on the ground that start casting their shadows on the hearts of people. Besides this, the author also explores small behavioral aspects like stories and how they could be healers and feelers.

In these times of COVID 19, I’m sharing what my 10yr younger version thought about some of the books that took me to times and places without a time machine.

The basic plot is about a boy born and brought up in kolkata and traces his life which to a great extent is made up of memories and stories of some of his cousins.These cousins of his, travel all around the world and bring back with them the stories of their experiences which become the reality of those places for this boy. When he goes to those places he relives their memories and stories. As a part of these stories come the stories about division and how effect on people of the lines drawn on the land is same on people all over the world. How shadow lines actually transcend time and space.  In one of the incidents, a cousin of this boy, who he looks up to and aspires to be like in some form, is killed due to the Pakistan Bangladesh division riots. That incident stays with him for the rest of his life and comes back to him on various different occasions. The book also reflects that riots no matter how inconsequential to those who only read about it in the newspaper, can mean the difference between life and death to those who experience it. But primarily, the book deals with the fact that when lines are drawn on land, somehow the past stops existing as the home doesn’t remain home anymore and somehow roots then stop bearing a meaning. That somehow the same people suddenly turn against you and how suddenly, the concept of nation states becomes fuzzy, the whole concept of loyalty for a nation becomes questionable. What you stood up for and belonged to just yesterday is where you now become a foreigner, an outsider.

According to me, shadow in the book has been used in the context of both time and space. Space – as the lines drawn to define the nation cast a lifelong shadow on the hearts and divides the people in myriad ways and Time – because memories and stories sometimes are healers in time and cast their shadows on the lives of others in un-explainable ways.

All in all, a very nice read and for the first time, I read something about partition which was not solely around India – Pakistan.