CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN

AMITAV GHOSH’S THE HUNGRY TIDE

Project work submitted to Government Arts and Science College, Gudalur in partial

fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

to be awarded by Bharathiar University, Coimbatore

Submitted by
ELWIN T SAM
(Reg. No.2331F0378)

Under the guidance of

Mr. S. SELVAKUMAR, MA., BEd., MPhil.,

Assistant Professor

Post Graduate Department of English

GOVERNMENT ARTS AND SCIENCE COLLEGE

GUDALUR-643212.

MARCH 2025
CERTIFICATE
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project entitled CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

IN AMITAV GHOSH’S THE HUNGRY TIDE, submitted to Department of English,

Government Arts and Science College, Gudalur in partial fulfilment of the

requirement for the award of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH

LITERATURE to be awarded by Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, is a record of

original work done ELWIN T SAM (Reg. No. 2331F0378) during 2024-2025 and

project work has not formed any basis for the award of any Degree/ Diploma/

Associateship or any other similar title to any candidate in any candidate.

Viva-Voce Examination held on:

INTERNAL EXAMINER EXTERNAL EXAMINER

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT SIGNATURE OF THE PRINCIPAL

DECALRATION
 DECLARATION

I, ELWIN T SAM, hereby declare that the project entitled

CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN AMITAV GHOSH’S THE

HUNGRY TIDE, submitted to Government Arts and Science College, Gudalur in

partial fulfilment for the award of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH

LITERATURE to be awarded by Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, is a record of

original and independent research work done by me under the supervision and

guidance of Mr. S. SELVAKUMAR, MA., BEd., MPhil., Assistant Professor,

Department of English, Government Arts and Science College, Gudalur and it has not

formed the basis for the award of any Degree/Diploma/ Associate ship/Fellowship or

any other similar title to any candidate in any University.

____________________

Place: Gudalur Signature of the Candidate

Date: ELWIN T SAM

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT SIGNATURE OF THE PRINCIPAL

ACKNOWLEDEMENT
 ACKNOWLEDEMENT

I express my humble gratitude to The Lord for his gracious blessings which

enabled me for the successful completion of this project.

I owe my sincere obligation to our principal Mrs. S. SUBHASHINI, MCA,

SET, Government Arts and Science College, Gudalur for giving me an opportunity to

do my Post Graduation in Government Arts and Science College, Gudalur.

I wish to emphasize thoughtful gratitude to Mr. A. PORKO, MA, MPhil,

SET, Head and Assistant Professor, Department of English, Government Arts and

Science College, Gudalur for his constant suggestions.

I impart my deep indebtedness to my guide Mr. S. SELVAKUMAR, MA,

BEd, MPhil, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Government Arts and

Science College, Gudalur for his constant support, valuable guidance and suggestions

given at every stage of this project.

I express my sincere thanks to all the faculty members of the Department of

English, Government Arts and Science College, Gudalur for their motivation and

support.

I thank my parents, well-wishers and all my dear friends those who have

helped me to complete this project successfully.

CONTENTS
Chapter Contents Page No

I Introduction 01

II Cross Cultural Communication in

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide 17

III Conclusion 41

Works Cited
CHAPTER-I
 1

Introduction

“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes

our life in harmony with all existence”

-Rabindranath Tagore

Literature is regarded as a mirror of life, reflecting human experiences,

language, customs, and culture. Literary works can be classified into two broad

categories: factual texts, including journalism, biographies, and reflective essays and

imaginative texts, such as fiction, poetry, and drama. Novels a dominant form of

fiction, not only present fictional character but also explore truth from multiple

perspective.

The evolution of literature can be traced through various historical periods,

including Old English, Middle English, the Renaissance, the Elizabethan era

(notably the Shakespearean period), the Restoration, the Enlightenment,

Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism. Additionally, intellectual movements

such as Feminism, Postcolonialism, Psychanalysis, Structuralism, and Marxism

have significantly influenced literary discourse.

Fiction, as one of the most powerful literary forms, has attained a prestigious

position in literature. The novel is a relatively modern literary form, emerging

prominently in the twentieth century. As Jane Austen famously wrote in Northanger

Abbey, “The person be it gentleman or lady, who has no pleasure in a good novel,

must be intolerably stupid.”

 2

A novel is a long prose narrative that presents fictional characters and events,

typically in a sequential storyline. The genre has deep historical roots, with early

examples including The Satyricon by Petronius, The Golden Ass by Apuleius, and

Kadambari by Bana Bhatta in the 17th century. Other foundational works include

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (11th century), Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn

Tufail (12th century), and Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong (14th

century).

India has a rich literary tradition, with its early works composed in Sanskrit,

Tamil, and Pali. Indian Literature, deeply rooted in oral tradition, dates to The Rig

Veda (1500-1200 BCE), followed by the great epics The Ramayana and The

Mahabharata. Over time, regional literature flourished in Kannada. Telugu,

Marathi, Bengali, Hindi, Persian, and Urdu. The literary landscape of India reflects

its diverse cultural heritage.

With British colonial rule, English was introduced to India, leading to the

emergence of Indian Writing in English (IWE). Initially adopted by the elite,

English gradually gained prominence as a literary language. Indian English

literature, often classified under postcolonial studies, explores themes of identity,

cultural conflict, and historical narratives. The Writers Workshop collective,

founded by P. Lal in the 1950s, played a crucial role in promoting Indian Writing in

English, publishing authors such as Pritish Nandy and Sasthi Brata.

Indo-Anglican writers started using the novel forms about 60 years ago.

Since then, the number of first-rate novels emerged. Alaler Gharer Dulal written in

1854 in Bengali is the first novel in English. In India, it is virtually twice-born as the

novelist must express the Indian ethics in alien forms. As mentioned earlier,
 3

literature is the mirror of contemporary, society, and one can find Indianness with

cynics in the novels of Indian authors.

As India grew out of her obsession with freedom, the Indian theme of

writing began to change. Now with Indian diaspora being a reckoning force in the

publishing world, Indian English speaks a global tongue, unconfined to any culture

or heritage. The language of the displaced intellectual. As Amar Nath Prasad has

noted in his Indian Writing in English: Critical Appraisal: “In order to understand

the history of art and literature of any country one must study the changes that have

taken place in the situation of its inhabitant.”

The first major thrust came in the mid 1930’s when “trio” R.K Narayan,

Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao appeared in the scene and made the real beginning of the

Indian novel in English. R. K Narayan’s literary career began with Swami and

Friends (1935, which was followed by other novels namely The Bachelor of Arts

(1937), The Dark Room (1938), The English Teacher (1945).

He Won numerous awards and honour which include Sahitya Akademi

Award, Padma Bhushan award, AC Benson medal by The Royal Society of

Literature and he also received Padhma Vibushan, India’s Second highest critics

award. His stories were grounded in a compassionate humanism and celebrated the

humour and energy of life. Critics have considered him to that be the ‘Indian

Chekhov’ because his style was simple and unpretentious with a natural element of

humour about it and pedestrian style. And his short story writing is compared to that

of Guy de Maupassant, as they both have ability to compress the narrative without

losing out the elements of the story.

Mulk Raj Anand, Another founding father of Indian English novel, notable

for his depiction of the lives of the poor castes in his novels namely The Village
 4

(1939), Across the Black Water (1940), The Sword ant The Sickle (1942), Coolie

(1945). Mulk Raj Anand has made a great contribution to Indian writing in English.

He has involved in forming Dalit literature, which is used to refer to the

untouchable, casteless sects of India. Anand was among the first Indian writers to

render Punjabi and Hindustani words into English. Anand was deeply touched with

pathetic socio-economic condition of deprived and downtrodden classes of Indian

society. Beside other literary achievements, he can be considered as a great

champion of the social cause in India and an early proponent of Dalit Literature.

Raja Rao is one of the triumvirates of the pioneering Indian novelist in

English. His contribution to the growth of the English novel in India is enormous

and his novels are deep The Cow and The Barricades and The Other Stories (1947)

The Serpent and The Rope (1960), Raja Roa’s involvement in the nationalist

movement is reflected in his early works. Raja Rao’s position in modern Indian

fiction is considered as a writer of floating lyrics.

Rabindranath Tagore was a polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and

music. He rejuvenated the Indian art with contextual modernism. Tagore has

contributed enormously to the fields of poetry, short stories and drama. Among his

works novels are least acknowledged which includes Noukadubi (1906), Gora,

Chaturanga (1916), Ghare Baire (1916), Biroher Kobita (1929). Rabindranath

Tagore, being a great freedom fighter, has got a great sense of patriotism. He wrote

national anthem for India and Sri Lanka too.

Bhabani Bhattacharya, one of the major Indian novelists, who has fiction and

non-fiction to his credit. He is considered as a conscious artist who has sensitive

understanding of the problems of the contemporary Indian society who has used

realism to communicate his humanistic vision of life. His novels appeared at

 5

intervals 1947-1978 which include So Many Hungers (1947), Music for Mohini

(1952), He who Rides the Tiger (1954), A Goodness Name Gold (1960), A Dream in

Hawaii (1952). Bhabani Bhattacharya received Sahitya Akademi award for his work

Shadow from Ladakh in 1967.

In 1980’s, Indian English writing received international recognition mainly

through the writers who settled abroad. The twentieth century saw a set of writers

emerged with a notion of internationalizing our Indian language. Several Indian

writers have distinguished themselves not only in traditional languages but also in

Englis, a language inherited from the British. In the last two decades of the 20 th

century, Indian English fiction was witnessed the new themes and techniques. With

their new found confidence, the Indian writers have boldly experienced with

language and techniques. The most perceptible change however is to be found in the

use of language by these writers. The writers of the Indian diaspora have been in

contact with the English language. Thus, their English is not silted, customized

language. There is a vigour and flow in their language. The contemporary English

novelists have made a very evocative use of language by breaking, inverting and

twisting the language.

A talented generation of novelists is emerging now in Indian English have

made an emphatic entrance by writing coveted award-winning novels. The new

generation of Indian English novelist is not trying to write in British English or in

American English but they write in living English which can evoke the aroma of

Indian fire. More recent major writers in Indian English who are either Indian or

Indian origin and drive much inspiration from Indian themes are R.K Narayan,

Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Chandra,

Mukul Kesavan, Raj Kamal Jha, Khushwant Singh, Nayantara Sagal, Anita Desai,
 6

Shashi Deshpande, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kamala Markendaya and many more. These

writers of the contemporary Indian society have acted as the voice of the Indian

society through their works.

Shashi Deshpande, an award-winning Indian novelist, presents a social world

of many complex relationships. Shashi Deshpande has presented modern India

women’s search for the definitions about self and the society and the relationships

that are central to women. In presenting women’s point of view Deshpande is

mainly in the clash of tradition and modernity as reflected in the generation-gap and

conflict between women. As a women writer, her dilemma was to give voice to

women concern and be as is or male narrative voice. Shashi Deshpande has

emphatically dealt with the problems of rape in her novel. Her major works are The

Dark Hold No Terror (1980), That Long Silence (1989), The Intrusion and the Other

Stories (1993). She won Shatiya Akademi award for her novel That Long Silence.

Salman Rushdie, is a British-Indian novelist and essayist who has achieved

notability with his second novel Midnight’s Children which won Booker Prize in

1981. This novel shaped the course that Indian writing in English would follow over

the next decade, and is considered as one of the great books of the last 100 years.

Rushdie’s books often focus on the role of religion in the society and the conflicts

between faiths and in between the religion and those of no faiths. His works include

Grimus, a part of science fiction (1975), Shame (1983), The Jaguar Smile (1987),

The Satanic Verse (1988), Haroun and The Sea of Stories (1990).

Aravind Adiga is an Indian journalist and novelist who has attracted the

attention of the whole world, particularly in the literary circles, His debut novel The

White Tiger, won him Man Bokker prize in 2008. Adiga is the fourth Indian-born

author to win this prize, after Salman Rushdie, Arunthathi Roy and Kiran Desai. He
 7

also produced short stories through online. His second book Between the

Assassinations in 2009 has featured 12 interlinked short stories. Adiga’s works are

marked by a linguistics and thematic destiny that sees him weave complex

narratives and multiple narrators into his tales, which combine to create a vivid

portrayal of rich mosaic of Indian life.

Vikram Seth is an Indian novelist, poet and a travel writer who has been in

the field of writing for more than three decades and regarded as one of the most

influential writers of the modern era. His first work, a collection of poems, titled

Mappings did not get much attention, but he came into limelight with his second

book From Heaven Lake. His novel The Golden Gate published in 1986 made him

one of the most highly acclaimed novelists and the book won him plenty of accolade

from readers as well as critics. However, his novel A Suitable Boy, that really

catapulted him into the league of the most well-known novelists of his time and

remains as his most famous work. This novel is one of the longest novels written in

English language and is regarded as a modern classic due to the range of topics that

it touched upon.

Anita Mazumdar Desai is an Indian novelist and short story writer, especially

noted for her sensitive portrayal of the inner life of female characters. Several of

Desai's Novels explore tensions between or among the members of the family and

the alienation of middleclass women. Anita Desai is considered as one of the most

accomplished novelists. She is primarily interested in the portrayal of female

protagonists as living in separate closed sequestered worlds of existential problems

and passion. The tale told by Anita Desai, her treatment of man-women

relationships, her feminist viewpoints are artistically, aesthetically and

psychologically sound. Some of her works include: The Zigzag Way (2014), Cry the
 8

Peacock (1963), Fire on the Mountain (1977), Games at Twilight (1978), Clear

Light of Day (1980), She received Sahitya Akademi award for a novel Fire on the

Mountain in 1978.

Kiran Desai is one of the most highly acclaimed writers of her generation,

despite only releasing only two novels thus far in her career. Her first work

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was released in 1998 won widespread praises for

its sensitive portrayal of rural life in India. Its success dwarfed by her second novel

titled The Inheritance of Loss which won Man Booker Prize in 2006 and The

National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 2007. These novels deal with the

themes of post-colonization and globalization as they relate to the modern India.

Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American author, who often focuses on the Indian

diaspora in her works, has become one of the most prominent among several

American writers who harken back to the south Asia of their predecessors. Her

works are plangent portrayals of the experience of immigration, and the attempt to

bridge the cultural and social gap between her adopted America and India of her

ancestors. She depicts the slow process of cultural assimilation for second

generation and how much these issues are shaping modern societies both in West

and in Asia. Her works include: Interpreter of Maldives (1999). The Namesake

(2003), Unaccustomed Earth (2008), The Lowland (2013), where she received

Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and Man Booker Prize in 2013 for The Interpreters of

Maldives and The Lowland respectively.

Contemporaries of these above-mentioned writers are Jayanta Mahapatra,

Gieves Patel. A.K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolhatkar, Adil Jussawalla, Dilip Chitra,

Aravind Krishna Mehrotra, Kamala Das and several others. The future of Indian

writing in English is not bleak but very bright. The writers especially in the field of
 9

fiction are seriously devoting themselves to the cause of creativity to "make India a

new nation and a new people wedded to the task of national reconstruction and

international harmony".

In the recent times, a great body of historical fiction has emerged on the

literary scene. Many Indian English novelists have turned to the past as much to

trace the deepening mood of the nationalism as to cherish the memories of the

bygone days. A close study of the contemporary novels reveals writers'

preoccupation with our historic past and the unabated interest of the readers in the

novels that depicted in the works of writers like Nahal, Shashi Tharoor and Amitav

Ghosh amply illustrate this point of view.

Amitav Ghosh is perhaps the finest writer in Indian English fiction. Ghosh's

fiction is characterized by strong themes that may be somewhat identified with post-

colonialism but could be labelled as historical novels. His topics are unique and

personal; some of his appeal lies in his ability to weave "Indo-nostalgic" elements

into more serious themes. Amitav Ghosh is respected across the globe as one of the

strongest critics of the exclusionist nationalistic discourse which often ends up

repressing the moorings of its own people. As Nishat Zaidi has quoted from Patricia

Gabriel, the primary engagement of all his novels is "to disturb the stable

boundaries and the epistemological conception of culture as fixed and homogeneous

systems."(107).

Amitav Ghosh works can be divided into fiction and non-fiction, where

novels like The Circle of Reason, his debut novel (1986). The Shadow Lines (1988),

The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glace Palace (2000), The Hungry Tide

(2004), Sea of Poppies (2008) come under fiction. The first volume of Ibis trilogy,

set in 1830's, just before the Opium war, which encapsulates the colonial history of
 10

the east. His River of Smoke (2011) is the second volume of the Ibis trilogy. The

third, The Flood of Fire (2015) is the third volume of trilogy. And his non-fictions

are: In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in the Cambodia and at Large in Burma

(1998), Countdown (1999). The Iman and the Indian (2002) and Incendiary

Circumstance (2006). His most recent non-fiction book is The Great Derangement:

Climate Change and the Unthinkable was published in 2016.

Amitav Ghosh's works have been translated into over 20 languages and he

had also translated some short stories of Rabindranath Tagore from Bengali to

English in 1995 under the title The Hungry Stones. He has served on the Jury of the

Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland and the Venice Film Festival in 2001. His

essays have been published in The New Yorker. The New Republic and The New

York Times. Amitav Ghosh has taught in many universities in India including Delhi

university and in Columbia university. Queens college and Harward college. In

January 2007. Amitav Ghosh was awarded Padma Shri, one of the Indian highest

honours, by the President of India. In 2010, he was awarded honorary doctorates by

Queens college, New York and the Sorbonne, Paris. Along with Margaret Atwood,

he was also a joint winner of Dan David Award for 2010.

The Circle of Reason, the first novel of Amitav Ghosh, was published in

1986 when he was teaching at the Delhi School of Economics. This novel has been

translated into many European languages. Its French edition received the Prix

Medici estranger, a prestigious literary award in France. This novel is a skilfully

constructed novel with the folktale charm of Arabian Nights and includes magic

realism and picaresque elements in it. Stretching from a remote village in Bengal to

the shores of Mediterranean, it marks a break from the traditional themes of the

Indian English novel and the form and structure of a well-made novel.
 11

The Shadow Lines, is a book that led him backward in the time to the earlier

memories of riots, once witnessed by him in childhood. This novel, by a common

consent is, Ghosh's the best work. It is an impressionistic family saga which is also a

roller-coaster ride through the currents of history. The novel rejects the very concept

of partition. The implication of the story is the need for co-existence and the strong

humanitarian ties across cultures, overlooking personal, regional and political

considerations. This novel won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda

Puraskar award.

In his next novel The Calcutta Chromosome, Ghosh makes a unique

experiment by combining various themes and techniques. This novel comes under a

melange of detection and science fiction genre. The novel has two major strands of

story line and is divided into two sections "August 20. Mosquito Day" and "The Day

After". In this novel, Amitav Ghosh uses different cinematic techniques to present

the non-linear progression of the three different strands of the story line. He uses the

impressionistic technique of Henry James and Joseph Conrad where the emphasis is

on the "showing" rather than on the "telling". This novel won the Arthur C. Clarke

Award in 1997.

The Glass Palace is the next novel in which Amitav Ghosh has dealt with a

real historical theme. The plot spans a century from the fall of Konbaung dynasty

through the second world war to the modern times. The name of the novel derives

from the Glass Palace Chronicle, which is an old Burmese historical work

commissioned by King Bagyidaw. It explores broad range of issues, ranging from

the changing economic landscape of Burma and India, and pertinent questions about

what constitutes a Nation. This novel won the international e-book award at the

Frankfurt Book Fair in 2001.

 12

The Hungry Tide is the fifth novel and sixth substantial book by Amitav

Ghosh. It tells a very contemporary story of adventure and history set in the eastern

most coast of India, where lies the immense labyrinth of tiny Islands known as the

Sundarbans. For settlers, life is extremely precarious here. Attacks by deathly tigers

are common without warning, at any time, tidal floods may rise and surge over the

land. In this place of vengeful beauty, the lives of three people from three different

worlds collide.

Piyali Roy is a marine biologist of Indian descent is in search of a rare

endangered river dolphin, Orcaella brevirostris. Her journey begins with a disaster

when she is thrown into crocodile-infested waters and rescues comes from Fokir, an

illiterate fisher man. Although they have no language between them. Piya engages

Fokir to help her in her research and find a translator, Kanai Dutt. As three of them

launch into the elaborate backwaters, they are drawn unawares into the hidden

currents under of these isolated worlds, where political turmoil exacts a personal toll

that is every bit as powerful as the ravaging tide. In January 2005, The Hungry Tide

was awarded Crossword Book Prize, a major Indian award.

Communication is a main trait of all living beings. Each species

communicates among themselves in their own, unique way. Human race being a

well-developed, advanced community uses language as a means of communication.

Language is nothing but a set of signs which encodes a particular meaning and

therefore, a word from one language does not mean the same in another language.

And the significance of this project is to explain how language does not affect

communication, and how cross-cultural communication paves a way for new form

of communication. This theme is to be proved by the source from The Hungry Tide

by Amitav Ghosh.
 13

The aim of this project is to investigate how three people from totally three

different cultures, background get along well to fulfil their different goals. The

technique used in this project is analytical method. Mostly all the necessary sources

which are relevant to the topic are used as a support. The limitation of this project is,

it is very narrow. That is cross cultural communication is a new and widely

spreading theme and many writers have produced works on the same theme. Even

Amitav Ghosh has dealt with the very theme in his other novels such as In an

Antique Land, Shadow Lines and so. Limiting the study of novel is like restricting a

vast ocean into a single stream.

The project consists of three chapters. The first chapter deals with a brief

introduction to literature, native Indian literature, pioneers of Indian writing in

English, contemporary writers and introduction to Amitav Ghosh. The second

chapter focuses on cross cultural communication displayed in the novel The Hungry

Tide. In the third chapter, the conclusion as well as the thesis statement of the

project is given.
 Abstract

The project explores the theme of cross-cultural communication as depicted

in Amitav Ghosh's novel The Hungry Tide. It examines how language, as a primary

means of communication, both enables and limits human interaction, particularly

when individuals from different cultural backgrounds come together. The novel

highlights the complexities of linguistic diversity and the significance of non-verbal

communication in fostering understanding between individuals who do not share a

common language.

The chapter begins by discussing the theoretical framework of cross-cultural

communication, emphasizing that language is more than a set of signs—it is a socio-

ideological tool that reflects cultural experiences. The novel’s central characters—

Piyali Roy, a marine biologist from Seattle; Kanai Dutt, a multilingual translator

from New Delhi; and Fokir, an illiterate fisherman from the Sundarbans—serve as

representations of varied cultural and linguistic identities. Through their

interactions, Ghosh demonstrates that communication is not solely dependent on

spoken language but is also facilitated by gestures, shared experiences, and mutual

understanding.

Amitav Ghosh’s narrative technique effectively portrays the intersections of

culture, language, and social hierarchy. Piya’s scientific work requires her to

communicate with local fishermen, despite her inability to speak Bengali. Her

interactions with Fokir illustrate an alternative mode of communication that

transcends linguistic barriers. Kanai, who prides himself on his linguistic skills, acts

as an interpreter, yet his role is often undermined by the organic and intuitive

connection between Piya and Fokir, demonstrating the novel’s theme that

communication extends beyond verbal language.

 The chapter also delves into the symbolic aspects of language and translation

within the novel. The juxtaposition of written and oral traditions is evident through

Nirmal’s diary, which serves as a bridge between past and present, linking personal

history with collective memory. Additionally, the use of Bengali folklore, such as

the legend of Bon Bibi, further highlights the novel’s engagement with cultural

hybridity.

Furthermore, the novel critiques globalization and its impact on

communication. Piya, despite being of Indian descent, is disconnected from her

heritage due to her Western upbringing, demonstrating how globalization shape’s

identity and language. Her relationship with Fokir, based on mutual respect and

shared objectives, challenges traditional power dynamics and suggests that genuine

communication is rooted in empathy rather than linguistic proficiency.

In conclusion, the study emphasizes that The Hungry Tide is a compelling

exploration of cross-cultural communication, illustrating that understanding can be

achieved through non-verbal means and shared human experiences. Ghosh’s work

underscores the necessity of transcending linguistic barriers to foster meaningful

connections, making a significant contribution to postcolonial discourse on

language, identity, and communication.

CHAPTER-II
 17

Cross Cultural Communication in Amitav Ghosh’s

The Hungry Tide

Language is the main source of communication. As mentioned in the first

chapter, language is the set of signs which gives a definite meaning. Among many

other forms of communication, language is the most easy and reliable means. But

language fails to deliver its purpose when the sender and the receiver do not share a

common set of signs between them. That is, language becomes of no use when there

is no common trait between the people. Languages are not simply linguists but

‘socio-ideological’ idioms and forms, voices from different state of cultural

experience.

Communication is the important means of expressing oneself. It exits in

different ways of expression and so different kinds of communication depending on

the culture, backgrounds and proficiency one belongs to. The way of

communication may not be the same for all countries and it is important to know

about the values of other countries and assumption must be avoided.

Cross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at how people

from different cultural backgrounds communicate in similar and different ways

among themselves, and how they do endeavours to communicate across culture.

Cross-cultural encounter is one of the most important themes of Indian English

fiction, as the genre itself is a product of Indian’s encounter with the west as how it

takes place in most of the novels, Bakhtin identified them as the ‘open ended’

literary form of modern age reflecting and bringing together many languages

(heteroglossia).
 18

Amitav Ghosh is a writer who has interest in cross-border movement. In an

interview with Elleke Boehmer and Anshuman A Mondal titled Networks and

Traces; an Interview with Amitav Ghosh, he accepted it and he said: “The most I got

drawn into the idea of sail ship as a technology which could not function without a

common, comprehensible language. I pondered over the thought of “How does it

work? How is it possible that an officer will give an order and the crew will

understand it?’. And later I found Laskari dictionary written in 1812, printed in

Calcutta by Thomas Roebuck.” Later when Amitav was at Harvard university, he

found nearly 5-6 Laskari dictionaries going up until 1920s.

In the same interview Amitav Ghosh has registered his opinion about cross-

border as,

To me what’s most interesting about the idea of borders is not just the

crossing of nation-states boundaries but also that, underneath the as-it was

dome of empires, there’s so much happening once you begin to look at it

from other point view; There are people who were, eluding it, who were

eluding borders and creating their own realities. To me that’s incredibly

empowering, thinking of these people who somehow create their own

worlds, their circumstances, who are self-inventors.

In his novels, Amitav Ghosh has delineates the world of imagination and

explores various boundaries that confine the readers. These boundaries may be

political, cultural, linguistic, racial, communal, spatial or even temporal. As said by

G. J. V. Prasad in his article Nebulous Boundaries. “All these boundaries are

constructed, and all meant for crossing.” Amitav Ghosh’s works introduces several

languages including those of Indian folk-tale, The Mahabharata, journalism and the

memory patterns of the extended family and radically deconstructing tradition novel
 19

norms. Ghosh shows the readers, how the peaceful coexistence of different cultures

which existed in the middle of East during the medieval times was broken by the

hegemony of the colonial powers.

The Hungry Tide is another addition to Ghosh’s project of establishing the

heteroglossia national identity and here he does this by using a large realistic

framework around a geographical space which itself is unrealistic with the co-text of

history. Amitav Ghosh has given much priority to nature and environment in this

novel. In his interview with Elleke Boehmer and Anshuman A Mondal titled

Networks and Traces: An Interview with Amitav Ghosh, Ghosh has explained why

he wrote such novel as follows:

When we look at the writers of the Thirties and Forties ‘we ask where did you

stand on fascism?’ In the future they will look at us and say ‘Where did you

stand on the environment?’ I think this is the fundamental question of our

time.

And in The Hungry Tide, Ghosh highlights the moral dilemma of

environmental conversation, questioning whether preserving forests for wildlife

should take precedence over human habitation. And this is the main theme of the

novel.

In keeping with the theme and the mood, the novel is divided into two parts

“The Ebb-Bhatta” and “The Flood-Jowar.” Being a keen anthropologist, Ghosh has

made an intensive study on this region and he says that this place is not named after

Sundari tree but after a tide (Bhatti). To quote from the novel under study: “This is a

land half-submerged at high tide: it is only in falling that the water gives birth to the

forest. To look upon this strange parturition, midwifed by the moon, is to know why

the name ‘tide country’ is not just right but necessary.”

 20

The story of The Hungry Tide centres on two visitors to the tide country,

Kanai Dutt and Piyali Roy. In the beginning of the novel, Kanai is on his way to

Lusibari where he meets Piya, an American but Indian by origin. Piya is a cetologist

who has arrived in Sundarbans to study an endangered species of dolphins, Orcaella

Brevirostris found in the backwaters where Kanai has been invited by his aunt

Nilima Bosh, a non-governmental organisation worker in Lusibari. Nilima wants

Kanai to collect a diary left by his dead uncle, Nirmal Bosh. From the diary of

Nirmal, the author has given the details about the migration of people to

Morichjhapi and about the death of Kusum, Kanai’s only childhood friend in

Lusibari.

At the same time, Piya will meet Fokir, a fisherman who takes her to Nilima

who is fondly called by the villagers as Mashima where Piya stays and continues her

research. Piya engages Fokir to help her in research and they hired bhotbhoti of

Haroon, distant relative of Fokir. They were accompanied by Kanai since he can act

as a translator between them. By the course of time, Piya went alone with Fokir to

the backwater where a cyclone was about to hit. Piya and Fokir were left alone in

the river when Kanai and Haron returned to Lusibari. When Kanai was on his way

to Lusibari, he lost his uncle’s diary in the tide. Meanwhile, Piya and Fokir were

struck in the cyclone. They both tie themselves to a branch of a tree and Fokir dies

when a heavy log hit his back. Fokir’s body acted as a shield to Piya till the cyclone

was pacified. After being rescued by Kanai and Haroon, Piya left to Seattle and

Kanai went back to New Delhi. In the end of the novel, Piya losses all her

equipment and priceless data in the storm, just like Kanai lost his most valuable

possession the diary which his uncle has left for him. Later Piya comes back to
 21

Lusibari to start a project about her marine dolphins and she planned to name the

research after Fokir and the novel ends with that.

In the novel, the story spins around three major characters Piya, Kanai and

Fokir and the interaction between themselves and the community at the large. In this

novel, Ghosh takes it as the task of exploration of a vast field of human

communication, testing both its possibilities and its limit as the characters seek to

cross multiple barriers- the barriers of language, religion and social class.

Another real but almost forgotten, incident in the core of the novel are the

ruthless suppression and massacre of the settlers in Morichjhapi. As said by Purabi

Panwar in his essay The Review of The Hungry Tide,

“The theme of immigration, sometimes voluntary, sometimes forced, along

with its bitter sweet experience, runs through most of Ghosh’s works and one relates

to it no matter where one is located geographically”.

In this novel, the concept of globalisation is shown through the character Piya

who belongs to the present generation. She is a cetologist, a rare profession for

women. She is an Indian by birth but settled in Seattle. Though she is from a

Bengali family, Piya did not know Bengali. The author has shown this in many

places in the novel. For instance, from the novel under the study, when Kanai saw

Piya for the first time, she was enquiring about the arrival of the train to the nearby

passenger and when he replied in Bengali, the reaction of Piya in the novel is:

She stopped the man with a raising hand and said, in apology, that she knew

no Bengali: ami Bangla jani na. He could tell from the awkwardness of her

pronunciation that this was literally true: like strangers everywhere, she had learned

just enough of language of the language to be able to provide due warning of her

incomprehension.
 22

And in one situation Kanai says that he knows six languages and Piya replies

as “I’m afraid English is my only language. And I wouldn’t claim to be much good

at it either.”

And when Piya was conversing with Nilima, she says that though her mother

wanted her to learn Bengali, she did not learn it. This shows that Piya knows only

one language. And moreover, Piya’s profession does not require much language.

When Kanai asks her how is she going to do her research in Canning with knowing

only English Piya replies as:

“I’ll do what I usually do’, she said with a laugh. I’ll try to wing it. Anyway,

in my line of work there’s not much talk needed. My work takes me out on the water

for days sometimes, with no one to talk, no one speaks English anyway.” (11)

And Piya was not a person who is so much into Indianness. Though she was

born in a Bengali family she was not into the system of India. One such incident is

quoted below:

When Piya was in graduate school, people had sometimes asked if her interest

in river dolphins has anything to do with her family history. The suggestion never

failed to annoy her, not just because she resented the implication that her interests

had been determined by her parentage, but also because it bore no relation to the

truth. And this was that neither, her father nor her mother had ever thought to tell

her about any aspects of her Indian heritage that would have held her interest – all

they ever spoke was history, family, duty, language.

Kanai Dutt, a man of forty years old runs an office of translation in New

Delhi. He is one of the characters along with Nirmal and Nilima in the novel, who

knows both English and Bengali along with which he knew four more languages.
 23

Kanai was attracted towards Piya whose proposal was neglected by her. Kanai was

very much interested in languages and he was proud of his skills in languages.

Kanai is portrayed as an intellectual character. During train journeys he reads

English newspaper and reads a diary which is written by his uncle. Even when he

first visited Lusibari, Kusum first sees Kanai when he was reading. In the novel, the

author has used this character Kanai as a bridge to connect past and present (to

know what has happened to Kusum and history of that place) and to take the plot. It

was because of Kanai, Piya came to Lusibari and the author has used Kanai as the

translator not only for his profession but also to support the flow of the story.

Fokir is an illiterate fisherman who saves Piya. It is known later that he is the

son of Kusum and husband of Moyna. Fokir is characterized as a man who is not

very spoken out. Fokir and his wife, had got a wide difference of opinion. When

Moyna wants Tutul to go to school, Fokir takes him with him for fishing. And when

Piya and Kanai approach him seeking his help for Piya’s research, Fokir speaks less

and Piya sees him as a different person. To quote, “Glancing at Fokir, Piya saw there

was a grin on his face now, and for a moment it was as though he had become, once

again the man she had known in the boat, not the sullen, resentful creature he

evidently was on land”

Piya had a great admiration for Fokir’s talent for observing the river. During

the trip, when Fokir points her the first dolphin of that day, Piya says to Kanai.

You saw how he spotted the dolphin back there, didn’t you?” said Piya. It’s like he’s

always watching the water even without being aware of it. I’ve worked with many

experienced fishermen but I’ve never meet anyone with such an incredible instinct:

it’s as if he can see right into the river’s heart.

 24

Fokir is portrayed as a mysterious character, and he says that he had a dream

in which he saw his death mother, Kusum.

As explained above, all the three characters are unique in their own ways.

But when situation brings them together, cross-cultural communication takes place.

The contrast between the two makes their conversation almost interesting. When

Fokir who is with through knowledge of the region, particularly the sea, comes into

the despite language barrier. The first interaction between themselves was exchange

of names. This happens when Piya was relaxing after being saved by him. It is

quoted by the author in the novel under the study:

Slowly as her shivering passed, his face relaxed into a smile. With a finger on his

chest, pointing at himself he said, ‘Fokir’. She understood that this was his name

and responded with her own: ‘Piya’. With a nod of acknowledgement, he turned to

the boy and said, ‘Tutul’. Then his forefinger moved, from himself to the boy and

back again, and she knew he was telling her that the boy was his son.

And moreover, when Piya wanted pay him as advance to take her to

Lusibari, the following happens: “When she attempted to protest, he pointed

towards the horizon and repeated the word she herself has uttered earlier: ‘Lusibari’.

She recognized he was deferring the matter of payment until they arrived at

Lusibari, and there she was content to let the matter rest.” Similarly, when Piya

wants to recollect the name of the cloth material, “She persisted, making signs and

gestures until finally he understood. ‘Gamchha”

Piya has developed a kind of feelings for Fokir which may not be of physical

attraction. The main cause for this was that Fokir was the one to save her life from

drowning and he was the first person to take her to river dolphins. This happens

when Piya hears the sounds made by dolphins. She says:

 25

Fokir!’ She said his name in urgent whisper, to make sure that he had heard the

sound. . . ‘Listen’ she cried, holding a hand to her ear pointing in the direction of the

exhalations. He nodded, but without this encounter and he had known all along that

they would be there.

And Piya liked the song of Fokir. When they were about to sleep on the day

Piya was rescued, Piya noticed that Fokir was humming and she responded by

making an upwards gesture with an open palm and asked him to sing aloud. The

narrator says: “She would have like to know what he was singing about and what

the lyrics meant but she knew too that a river of words would not be able to tell her

exactly what made the song sound as it did right then, in that place.”

Piya felt a kind of comfort with Fokir and she thought that Fokir would be a

great help for her research. Along with Kanai, Piya goes to Fokir’s house seeking

Fokir’s help. When Moyna asks Piya through Kanai that why a scientific like Piya

needs help of her illiterate husband Piya replies as “Could you please tell Moyna’,

Piya said to Kanai, ‘that her husband knows the river well. His knowledge can be

help to a scientist like myself.”

All these things made Piya to believe that she and Fokir shared some

common traits. When Piya was appreciating to work with Fokir, Kanai grew in

jealous and he said, “A sudden stab of envy provoked Kanai to make a mocking

aside. And all that while, you couldn’t understand a word he was saying, could

you?’ No, she said with a nod of acknowledgement. ‘But you know what?’ There

was so much in common between us that didn’t matter.”

But this attitude of Piya changes when she witnessed an invading tiger set on

fire by the villagers, and she is horrified and shocked at Fokir’s approval of killing

the tiger. She admits to Kanai as: “You know’, said Piya. ‘What you said about there
 26

being nothing in common between?’ ‘You and Fokir? Yes, said Piya. ‘You were

right. I was just being stupid. I guess it took something like this for me to get it

straight”

This change of attitude of Piya did not matter much. When they took Haron’s

bhotbhoti. Piya still used Fokir’s boat to go through the narrow waters. Even when

the cyclone hit, Fokir was very particular about the safety of Piya. First, they were

seated in a branch of a tree which was facing opposite side of the cyclone. But when

the direction of the cyclone changed, a heavy log hit him and Fokir died. His body

was acting as a shield for Piya, till the cyclone was over. Just before his death there

is a moment of closeness, evocatively described by Ghosh. According to the author:

Their bodies were so close, so finely merged that she could feel the impact of

everything hitting him, she could sense the blows raining down on his back.

She could feel the bones of his cheeks as if they were superimposed upon her

own it was as if the storm had given them what life could not; it had fused

them together and made them one.

This made a great impact on Piya and when she returned to Lusibari with a

plan of building a research centre, she decided to name the centre after Fokir

because she thought that Fokir played a major role in her research. Piya’s reason to

name the centre after Fokir is as the follows: “Fokir took the boat into every little

creek and gully where he would ever see a dolphin. That one map represents

decades of work and volumes of knowledge. It’s going to be the foundation of my

own project. That’s why I think it should be named after him.”

The author has described the communication between the two, Piya and

Fokir through the words of Piya. That is, after being rescued from the cyclone,

Piya’s thought process was

 27

She recalled the promises she made to him, in the silence of her heart, and

how, in those last moments, with the wind and the rain still raging around

them, she had been unable to do anything for him other than to hold a bottle

of water to his lips. She remembered how she had tried to find the words to

remind him of how richly he was loved and again, as so often before, he had

seemed to understand her, even without words.

This narration shows how rich was the understanding between Piya and

Fokir even when the words failed to help them. But still, the communication

between them was with much significance right from the beginning to the end.

As said by Ph. Sanamacha Sharma in his Different and Ethics of the other in

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.

In all complex communication a threat of different is always present. A

different exists between the two parties, it is the result of a conflict over genre.

In the narrative, there are several cases where communication between

individuals or groups is marked by different and end in one silencing the other.

For Piya, Fokir is the person who shares similar traits to her. One can assume

they know each other’s alterity and this very knowledge connects them. They

communicate in silence. They find themselves obligated to each other without

resource to explanation or justification. Only with the entry of Kanai as a translator

who used words for communication, their difference came out. Words did not

disturb their connectivity of silence. The author has described this in the novel,

That it had proved possible for two such different people to pursue their own

ends simultaneously people who could not exchange a word with each other

and had no idea about what was going on in another’s head was far more

than surprising: it seemed almost miraculous.

 28

Piya thought, “Wasn’t it better in a way, more honest, that they could not

speak? For if you compared it to the ways in which dolphins’ echoes mirrored the

world, speech was only a bag of tricks that fooled you into believing that you could

see through the eyes of another being”

Kanai himself is a translator and interpreter by profession. Kanai she does not

in fact need his services, apparently supposing she can communicate intuitively with

her guide Fokir: “I think you’ll be able to manage perfectly well without a translator”.

Piya has already shown an attitude for Fokir that supposes that two can communicate

intuitively across the language and cultural divide that separates them: ‘And all that

while, who couldn’t understand a word he was saying, could you?’ No … ‘but you

know what? There was so much in common between us it didn’t matter”.

What is involved here is an essentialist world view, based on unexamined

motions of a common humanity, that may see as either enticingly utopian or

dangerously native. At one point, Piya asks Kanai to explain the content of a

traditional song that Fokir is chanting, asking him “Can you translate?” and Kanai

replies: “I’m sorry Piya. But this is beyond my power, he is chanting a part of Bon

Bibi legend. The metre is too complicated. I can’t do it.” Later, he writes Piya what is

intended a farewell letter in which he focuses on the impossibility of (adequate)

translation or interpretation: “You asked me what Fokir was singing and I said I

couldn’t translate it: it was too difficult. And that was no more than the truth, for in

those words there was a history that is not justice own but also of this place, the tide

country”

Rather than considering translation unnecessary, Kanai seems here to despair

of it as impossible, because cultural barriers are too wide. Yet paradoxically, in the

moment of appearing to give up, he appends an approximate translation rendered in

 29

verse presented as prose, in an act of generic hesitation that seems both to reflect and

overcome Kanai’s translator’s doubt space of the Bengali folk poem that Piya had

heard Fokir sing. Indeed, Kanai even ends his letter reclaiming the translators place in

the scheme of things, curiously echoing the polemical ideas of the translation theories

Lawerence Venuti, in first affirming the stock notion of the good translator’s

invisibility and then turning things round to demand his visibility after all. The author

says this through the words of Kanai as: “Such flaws there are in my translation I do

not regret for, perhaps they will prevent me from fading into sight as a good translator

should: for one’s, I shall be glad if my imperfection renders me visible.” Against

Piya’s essentialist willingness to dispense with translation then, Kanai stands as

conscious of both its limitation and its necessity.

Kanai’s role as translator and interpreter is also significant in the sense that his

work straddles the divide between the written (translation) and the

oral(interpretation). This is of interest in the light of the wider interplay or

counterpoint, that operates across the text between written and oral modes. Kanai

comes to terms with his past through a written text, his uncle’s journal; Piya’s

scientific work relies on written reports and data sheet; Fokir is illiterate and his

illiteracy is a long-standing curse of tension between him and his upwardly mobile

and literate wife, the nurse Moyna.

The alteration between Kanai’s here and now experiences and his reading of

his uncle’s journal brings past and present in a symbiotic encounter.

The text of The Hungry Tide repeatedly employs ‘translate or translator’ to

refer to the practice or practitioners of what is technically interpretation, the

conceptual confusion is added and share equally by Ghosh’s reviewers. It is though

the character Kanai, Ghosh has explained about the concept of translation. Kanai
 30

himself says, “I’m a translator you see, and an interpreter as well, by profession”. It is

often confused that the role of translation and interpretation is the activity of

transposition of meanings between cultural systems translation, or it is, by its very

nature, a rewriting or recordings of others messages interpretation. Both translation

and interpretation may theoretically be considered as forms of linguistic transfer, but

it remains important not to occlude the dialects of similarity and difference between

the two activities.

The Hungry Tide offers concrete evidence for such as a textual model, as

Kanai is shown across the novel cumulatively reading extracts from his uncle

Nirmal’s Sundarbans journal: the extracts are reproduced in the full and in English,

but the reader is asked to imagine that Kanai is reading them in Bengali. Significantly,

Kanai himself is a translator/ interpreter by profession. In this novel, the art of

translation is shown through the character Kanai. Kanai by profession is a translator

who knew many languages. This said by Kanai himself when Piya asks how many

languages do Kanai know and he replied as: “Six, not including dialects.”

In one incident, when Piya asked him how did he find out that she is an

American, Kanai replied as, “I’m very wrongly about accents. I’m a translator you

see, and an interpreter as well, by profession. I like to think that my ears are tuned to

the nuances of spoken language.” This shows Kanai’s skill in language.

As Ph. Sanamacha Sharma says, in his Differend and Ethics of the Other in

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide: Such moments may be equated with Lyotard’s

incommensurability which is a disruption in communication across theories,

vocabularies, or perspectives that makes rational assessment difficult and impossible.”

Lyotard’s radical incommensurability at the heart of all linguistics practice. For

instance, interlocutors indulge in a dialogue in response to some utterance within a

 31

particular regime and genre, and they are free to respond in any number of ways that

may or may not be in accord with the speaker’s intention. Thus, by responding with a

phrase within one genre, several other possible genres are ignored, giving rise to what

Lyotard calls as differend: “A case of differend between two parties takes place when

the ‘regulation’ of the conflict that oppose them is done in the idiom in one of the

parties while suffered by the other is not signified in the idiom”

Thus, in this chapter the cross-cultural elements in this novel The Hungry Tide

is explained with relevant citation from both primary source and the secondary

source.
CHAPTER-III
 33

Conclusion

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide masterfully explores the complexities of

cross-cultural communication, illustrating how individuals from diverse backgrounds

can transcend linguistic and social barriers. Through the characters of Piyali Roy,

Kanai Dutt, and Fokir, the novel presents a compelling narrative of human

connection, emphasizing that communication is not solely dependent on language but

also on shared experiences, gestures, and emotions.

The novel challenges the notion of fixed cultural identities by portraying the

fluidity of interactions between its characters. Piya, a scientist from the West, finds an

unexpected bond with Fokir, an illiterate fisherman, despite their lack of a common

language. Kanai, an educated translator, serves as a bridge between them, yet his

structured understanding of language proves insufficient in capturing the depth of

their connection. This interplay highlights the limitations of verbal communication

and the power of non-verbal expression in fostering understanding.

Furthermore, The Hungry Tide raises significant questions about

environmental conservation, displacement, and social hierarchies, reinforcing the

novel’s postcolonial concerns. The Sundarbans, with its unpredictable tides and

untamed wilderness, serves as both a literal and metaphorical backdrop to the

characters’ struggles, symbolizing the ever-changing nature of identity and

communication.

In conclusion, Ghosh’s novel is a profound commentary on cultural fluidity

and human resilience. It urges readers to look beyond linguistic boundaries and

appreciate the deeper, universal aspects of human interaction. By weaving history,

ecology, and interpersonal relationships, The Hungry Tide stands as a testament to the

necessity of understanding and coexistence in a fragmented world.

 34

WORKS CITED
 35

Works Cited

Ghosh, Amitav. The Hungry Tide, Penguin Random House India, 2019.

Hawley John C. Amitav Ghosh: An Introduction, New Delhi: Foundation Books,2005.

https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hungry-tide/study-guide/summary.

Mukherjee, Meenakshi. Melding of current, The Book Review, Vol. 28, No.9, Sep-2004.

Panwar, Purabi. Review of The Hungry Tide, Indian Literature. 48.6, (2004): pp. 217-

219.

Sharma, Ph. Sanamacha. Differend and Ethics of the Other in Amitav Ghosh’s The

Hungry Tide. The Quest 26.2, (2012) pp. 1-11.