Of guns, cobras and stories that don’t pop

Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island, an ode to an unliterary storytelling tradition, ends up sacrificing insight and feels facile

A cobra that guards a secret shrine, two heroes with a homoerotic friendship, a heroine so petrified by thunder that she plasters herself upon the conveniently-located bachelor beside her, a climax set in Europe that includes miracles and snarling White racists — if you’re trying to remember which bad ’80s’ Bollywood film all this is from, I’ll have you know this is the stuff of the literary fiction that is Amitav Ghosh’s new novel, Gun Island.

Amitav Ghosh’s new novel Gun Island is the sequel to The Hungry Tide. (HT FILE)

Gun Island is the sequel to The Hungry Tide. Much like its author, the book divides its time between America, India and Europe. The narrator of this tale is a bookish Bengali named Deen, a seller of rare books and seeker of rarer love. As is the way for all diasporic Bengalis, the answer to the meaning of his life is found when he comes to Kolkata one winter and, through the generous offices of an elderly aunt meets Piya, the cetologist whom fans of Ghosh’s writing will recognise from The Hungry Tide. While it brings back a few characters like Piya and Fokir’s son Tipu, the focus of this sequel is the climate crisis, the goddess Manasa and her curiously-named devotee, Bonduki Sadagar, or Gun Merchant.

The legend of the Gun Merchant says he travelled the world trying to effectively ghost Manasa, but the lady was having none of it. Finally when he agrees to build her a shrine, she is pacified. The shrine is believed to be in the Sunderbans and for something meant to be a secret, Deen finds it quite easily.

At the shrine is a cobra that has clearly watched too many B-grade cinema (what else is there to do when you’re waiting around for The One to show up?) because the moment Deen lands up, out comes the snake, puffs out its hood and then strikes. Its fangs find Tipu, who is with Deen. At this point, for reasons inexplicable, Ghosh goes full-tilt into pulp territory. A local boy, Rafi, clamps his mouth over the snakebite to suck the venom out, even though that’s the last thing you should do in case of a snakebite (I regret to inform you, dear reader, human saliva is not an anti-venom). Thus connected by legend, snake venom and superstition, Deen, Rafi and Tipu embark on an adventure that can’t handle all the wonderful details at its disposal.

Ghosh’s love for history and concern for environment are evident in Gun Island. The novel is at its best when Deen is analysing the Gun Merchant’s myth to find unexpected threads connecting seemingly distant cultures, like the fact that the word bandook (gun in Bengali) is derived from al-Bunduqqiya, the Arabic name for Venice. Gun Island goes on to connect 17th century history and ancient legend to the present-day crisis of migrants seeking livelihoods and refuge in Europe in a way that teeters between fanciful and thought-provoking. Also rumbling through the novel is the climate crisis, which is depicted as the stuff of miracles. It’s almost as though Ghosh thought if science doesn’t convince the reader that there are signs to heed, why not try the language of faith? Unfortunately, the storytelling doesn’t do justice to the ideas informing the narrative.

Had an author of popular fiction written Gun Island, critics would have gone hammer at tongs at them for the factual inaccuracies, the casual privilege of the narrator and profusion of coincidences and clichés that propel the novel forward (and rightly so). Everything and everyone exists for the sole purpose of helping a bookish Bengali hero tell a tall tale in Gun Island. Rather than conflict, the novel teems with facilitators. Ghosh also chooses to make his characters deliver long monologues recounting dramatic episodes instead of following the action so that the reader can witness it. As a result, Gun Island feels static despite practically all its lead characters undertaking many journeys.

It’s obvious Ghosh tried to write Gun Island in the style of popular fiction and folktales. However, this ode to an unliterary storytelling tradition ends up sacrificing insight and feels facile. What we get is the quickest, hastiest of all of Ghosh’s books so far and that’s a shame because with climate crisis being a very real issue, we could have done with the magic realist fiction that Gun Island wants to be.