THE SHADOW LINES
While in London in the early 1980s, the unnamed narrator recounts a series of stories and memories
to his cousin Ila and his uncle Robi. The stories and memories belong to the narrator; his
uncle Tridib; and his grandmother, Tha'mma. The memories begin in the early twentieth century
when Tridib's grandfather, Mr. Justice Chandrashekhar Datta-Chaudhuri, befriends Lionel
Tresawsen at séances in London.
Tha'mma was born in 1902 in Dhaka, British India. As a young girl, Tha’mma’s father and her
uncle, Jethamoshai, begin feuding, so they split their huge communal house in half with a wall. The
two sides of the family stop speaking to each other, and Tha'mma tells her younger sister, Mayadebi,
that Jethamoshai's family lives in "the upside-down house," where they do everything upside down
and backwards. After Tha'mma and Mayadebi marry (Mayadebi marries the Shaheb, Justice Datta-
Chaudhuri's son), they lose contact with Jethamoshai. Tha'mma follows her husband as he works on
the railroad until he dies in 1936. At this point, her son, the narrator's father, is still a child. Tha’mma
becomes a teacher and refuses to accept help of any sort from her family. Though Tha'mma had
been very interested in the movements against British rule in her youth, when the Partition happens
in 1947, it means little to her. However, she never returns to Dhaka since it becomes the capital of
the Muslim country East Pakistan.
The Shaheb is a wealthy diplomat, and in 1939, he ends up needing a special medical operation that
can't be performed in India. Mrs. Price, Lionel Tresawson's daughter, invites the Shaheb and his
family to live with her in London so that he can receive medical attention there. Tridib, who is nine
years old, accompanies his father, while his older brother, Jatin, stays in school in India. Tridib loves
London and is fascinated by Alan Tresawsen, Mrs. Price's brother, and his friends Dan, Mike,
and Francesca. In the time leading up to World War II and the early days of the Blitz, Tridib spends
his days exploring bombsites and listening to Snipe, Mrs. Price's husband, tell stories. In 1940, a
bomb hits Alan's house on Brick Lane, killing him and Dan. Later that year, Tridib's family returns to
India.
Over the next decade, Mayadebi and the Shaheb have a third son, Robi. The narrator's father marries
the narrator's mother, who soon gives birth to a son, the narrator. Jatin marries a woman
affectionately known as Queen Victoria, and the couple has a daughter named Ila, who is the
narrator's age. Mrs. Price, whose daughter May was an infant when Tridib was in London, has a son
named Nick. Ila's parents are wealthy, and she spends her childhood traveling around the world for
her father's work. The narrator, on the other hand, never gets far outside of Calcutta. Instead, he
spends his time listening to Tridib tell stories about London and other faraway lands. Tridib teaches
the narrator to use his imagination and explains that the world in one's imagination can be just as
real as the outside world. Ila doesn't understand this—she sees too much of the world to understand
how one's imagination can be anywhere as good.
For a time, Ila's family lives with the Prices in London. When she's eight, her family visits Calcutta for
a festival. The narrator convinces Tha'mma to allow his family to accompany Ila's to their family
home in Raibajar. When they meet Ila's family in Gole Park, the narrator's mother is shocked that the
narrator, who spent weeks asking after Ila, is too shy to talk to her. The narrator feels as though his
mother betrayed him by making it clear that he needs Ila more than Ila will ever need him.
Regardless, the family piles into the Shaheb's two cars and drive for hours. When they reach the
massive house, Ila leads the narrator into a half-underground storage room, which stores a massive
table that Tridib's grandfather shipped back from London. Ila decides that they're going to play a
game called Houses, which she plays with Nick in London. She informs the narrator of who Nick is,
and the narrator understands that Nick is his competition for Ila's affection. Ila draws a map in the
dust of Mrs. Price's house and adds a room for Magda, her doll, who is the baby for the purposes of
the game. When everything is set, Ila tells the narrator what "happened" to Magda at school that
day: the ugly school bully chased the beautiful blonde Magda home, yelling slurs at her—but Nick
Price saved her from being beaten up. When Ila starts to cry, the narrator is angry and doesn't
understand why she's crying. Finally, Tridib walks in with the children and listens to the narrator tell
Ila's story. He encourages the narrator to not call Ila dumb for crying like the story is real, and he
insists that everyone lives in stories.
In 1959, Tridib and May, who is nineteen at the time, begin writing to each other. They exchange
photos after a year. In 1963, Tridib sends May a very long letter recalling an experience he had as a
boy in London, when he watched two strangers have sex in a bombed cinema. He tells May that he
wants to meet her like those strangers did—as strangers in a ruin. May is flustered, but she makes
plans to visit Tridib in India. Around the same time, Tha'mma, who is retired and has time on her
hands for the first time in her life, receives word that her uncle Jethamoshai, who is in his nineties,
still lives in the family home in Dhaka. She believes that it's her duty to bring Jethamoshai home to
India. Not long after this comes to light, the Shaheb receives a job posting in Dhaka, and he,
Mayadebi, and Robi move there. Finally, Mayadebi invites Tha'mma to visit, and they make plans to
try to save their uncle from the growing unrest in the Muslim-majority city. May makes plans to
travel to Calcutta and then to Dhaka with Tha'mma. Tridib decides to accompany them to Dhaka.
The narrator joins Tridib and his father to pick May up from the train station. Over the next few days,
the narrator accompanies Tridib and May as they drive around and see the sights. He shows her the
table in Raibajar, and she tells him that Ila was a victim of bullying, but Nick never saved her. When
they visit the Victoria Memorial, May becomes suddenly emotional. Tridib tells her that it's their ruin,
which puzzles the narrator. He understands that there's a relationship between May and Tridib that
he won't understand. Not long after that, on January 4, 1964, Tridib, May, and Tha'mma leave for
Dhaka.
A few days later, the narrator experiences a harrowing bus ride home from school as the driver tries
to protect the dozen boys from the angry mobs in the streets. Meanwhile, in Dhaka, the Shaheb
warns Mayadebi and Tha'mma that trouble is brewing there, but Tha'mma insists on seeing
Jethamoshai anyway. Thirteen-year-old Robi is excited to see "trouble" and goes with them to the old
house in Dhaka. There, a Muslim mechanic named Saifuddin greets them and explains that a
rickshaw driver named Khalil cares for Jethamoshai. When Khalil arrives, he leads his guests into the
house. Jethamoshai doesn't recognize his nieces, but he tells Tridib that he's waiting for his family to
return so that he can take them to court and gain full ownership of the house. The driver races to the
door and says that there's trouble, and they have to leave. Khalil agrees to drive Jethamoshai in his
rickshaw to Mayadebi's house. When they're in the car, they turn a corner and come face to face
with a mob. It surrounds the car and breaks the windshield. When the mob descends on the
rickshaw, Tha'mma tells the driver to go, but May gets out to try to save Jethamoshai. Tridib follows
her, but Tridib, Jethamoshai, and Khalil are all brutally murdered by the mob. The narrator's parents
tell him later that Tridib died in an accident. The following year, Tha'mma gives her beloved gold
chain away to fund the war with Pakistan and appears crazy to the narrator. His mother explains that
Tha'mma hasn't been the same since "they" killed Tridib.
In college, the narrator continues to both love Ila and find her frustrating, as she never understands
why he is so insistent on remembering Tridib's stories or their own childhood antics. Once, during a
summer holiday, she convinces the narrator and Robi to go with her to a nightclub. Robi doesn't want
to go, but at the club, he forbids Ila from dancing with another man. She screams at them that she
lives in London so she can be free of this kind of oppression. The narrator tells this story to Tha'mma
on her deathbed, and it makes her extremely angry: she doesn't think Ila's kind of freedom is real. In
her anger, Tha'mma writes a letter to the dean of the narrator's school the day before she dies,
telling the dean that the narrator visits prostitutes and should therefore be expelled.
After seeing a lecture in Delhi, the narrator realizes that although he never connected the events as a
child, the riot he experienced in Calcutta and the riot that killed Tridib in Dhaka was part of the same
political uproar. As he studies Tridib's atlas, the narrator discovers that borders are meaningless and
actually helped create the climate that brought on the riots in the first place. The narrator goes on to
pursue an advanced degree in London. At one point, Ila takes Robi and the narrator to visit Mrs. Price
and introduces them to Nick. The narrator shows off the power of Tridib's stories by leading his
friends around London and through Mrs. Price's house based off of the mental maps Tridib created
for him. Ila, Robi, and the narrator have dinner at an Indian restaurant afterwards, and Robi admits
that he has a recurring nightmare about the riot in Dhaka in which he can never keep Tridib from
getting out of the car. The narrator also reconnects with May, who plays oboe in an orchestra. They
spend Christmas with Mrs. Price, and May suggests that Nick is lying about leaving his job in Kuwait:
she believes he embezzled money. There's a blizzard that night, so Ila and the narrator stay at Mrs.
Price's house in the cellar. Ila undresses in front of the narrator, not realizing his feelings for her, but
she spends the night with Nick.
Back in London a few years later, Ila marries Nick. At their party, the narrator gets very drunk and
May offers to take him home and put him to bed. The narrator assaults May but feels horrible about
it in the morning. She takes him with her while she collects money for her "worthy causes," and on a
break, she talks about her relationship with Tridib. As the narrator prepares to return home a few
months later, Ila confides in him that Nick is cheating on her, though she refuses to leave him. The
night before the narrator leaves, he has dinner with May. At dinner, May tells the narrator about the
riots and asks if he thinks that she killed Tridib. May tells him that she used to think she did, but she
knows now that Tridib sacrificed himself and knew he was going to die. She asks the narrator to stay
the night and he accepts, glad to finally understand the mystery of Tridib's death.
2
Published in 1988, The Shadow Lines is a novel by award-winning Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. It
recounts the story of the narrator's coming of age in Calcutta and the sweeping impact of political
violence on his life.
The novel is told from a single point of view, but does not follow a straightforward chronology.
Instead, the narrator captures the looseness of memories, leaping back and forth through time,
following his recollections as they come to him. In doing so, he paints a vivid picture of his family and
the events of his times, including the Swadeshi movement, the bombing of London in WWII, the
Partition of India, and the communal riots of 1963-64 in Dhaka and Calcutta. He pays particular
attention to his uncle Tridib, grandmother Th'amma, and cousin Ila. In addition, he shows their
relationship with the Price family, in particular the romance between May Price and Tridib as well as
Ila's marriage to Nick Price. He also portrays events in the life of Lionel Tresawsen, the Price family
patriarch with whom Tridib lived as a child. He describes how Tridib's worldliness left a big
impression on him at a young age and shaped his ideas about the parts of the world he hadn't seen.
He writes about his painful, unrequited feelings for Ila. He depicts his grandmother as stubborn and
set in her opinions about the world around them. Her decision to return to Dhaka in search of her
uncle, and attempt to bring him home with them, brings about their violent encounter with a mob
and causes Tridib's death. In the first section, the narrator provides individual portraits of the
members of his family and their social circle, ending with Ila's realization that the narrator has been
in love with her. In the second section, he shows the events leading up to the riots and Tridib's
murder. The narrator encircles this main event, continually forestalling the climax of the story, while
making it very clear that Tridib died. The novel ends with May recounting Tridib's death at the hands
of a mob, as he attempted to save her.
In recognition of the novel, Ghosh received the 1989 Sahitya Akademi Award for English from India's
National Academy of Letters. The novel explores many of the themes in Ghosh's other work including
the reliability of memory, the scope of history, and the lingering impact of violence. Like many of his
other novels, it examines these ideas in the context of actual historical events.
