Representation of Time and Space in Amitabh Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines is a novel that chronicles three generations through the current of history with a family saga that spreads over Dhaka, Calcutta and London. The book is divided into two parts, “Going Away” and “Coming Home”. This novel is considered as one of best creations of Amitabh Ghosh which deals with a favorably two new things in literature that are time and space. In Plain English, time is the indistinct continued progress of existence and events in the past and present. It is regarded as a whole and space is considered as an open rational thing for expansion of movement that is deeply connected with our existence. Time and space are deeply interlinked with each other. These two things cannot be separated since space is deeply rooted by time in our life. However, this paper is going to examine time and space in The Shadow Lines through the lens of Michel Foucault and David Harvey’s concept of these two elements.

If we closely look at the name of the novel, we observe that ‘Shadow’ and ‘Lines’ are closely related with time and space. Moreover, in The Shadow Lines, we observe Foucault’s vision of utopia and heterotopias of time and space. The Shadow lines is considered as a utopian novel since of the Thamma’s (narrator’s grandmother) conception about Dhaka as an ideal place in comparison to Calcutta and London. The novel is also considered as heterotopic since of the juxtaposition of many places, as well as   because of the failure of  Thamma to see Dhaka behind the surface .Then,  David Harvey’s conception of time of space is also being applied in The Shadow Lines who categorized  time and space into three divisions. In The Shadow Lines, we observe absolute time and space because of the narrator understands of space, relational time and space because of the different characters relation to different places, and relative time and space through comparison of different places.
              If we closely examine the title of the novel The Shadow Lines, then we observe that ‘line’ is something that separates or closet some people into the same category, and this is the category which is known as ‘space’.   In The Shadow lines, we observe that lines and borders which are being drawn by the people to divide nations and these boundaries only subsist in one's imagination. We also find the narrative in The Shadow Lines is continuously trying to transcend the men made boundaries of space and time ,thus signifying the novel its title, as the lines that separate places and even times are being portrayed to be easily transgressed The Shadow Lines.

Then, if we consider the other juxtaposed word of the title, we find that ‘shadow’ is heterotypic since it is hanging between the reality and unreality like a mirror. In shadows, we can find ourselves, but in reality we are absent there. The word shadow also reflects binary opposition-darkness and light and thus, it is considered as the illusionary space of both the reality and unreality. However, this paper is going to look at The Shadow Lines through the lens of the Michel Foucault’s concept regarding time and space.  First of all Foucault has talked about utopian space which has no real existence. In his article he says,

            “Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.”(Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias, Foucault, pg 3).

In The Shadow Lines, we find that Thamma used to consider Dhaka as an ideal place. Dhaka is the place, where she was born and brought up. Thamma’s Dhaka has remained very alive and colorful in her memory. She used to recall her beautiful experiences in Dhaka ,the stories of his grandmother’s childhood spent in Dhaka, in a big joint family, “everyone living and eating together, her grandparents, her parents, she and Mayadebi, her Jethamoshai– her father’s elder brother – and his family. When my father was about six, both my grandmother’s parents died, a months of each other. My grandmother returned to Dhaka only twice after that, and then only to make sure that the rooms she and Mayadebi had inherited were still in intact. On both occasions she decided to go across and talk to her uncle and aunt but the house was full of painful memories now and both times she fled back to Mandalay after spending barely a day in Dhaka.” (The Shadow Lines, pg 135). After all, to Thamma, Dhaka was the ideal and perfect place to live with peace and harmony.  Dhaka exists as a utopian space in terms of her inverted relationship within the reality.

Then, in Plain English, heterotopias mean many. It is identified as many places which are side by side or juxtaposed and a combination of actual/real and utopia space.  “The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.” (Foucault, pg- 6, Third principle) The narration of The Shadow Lines revolves around Dhaka, Calcutta, and London end elsewhere.  Different places are being portrayed side by side or juxtaposed. The story starts about thirteen years before the birth of the narrator and ends on the night preceding his departure from London back to Delhi. He spends less than a year in London, researching for his doctorate work, but it is a London he knew very well even before he puts a step on its pavements. Two people have made London so very real to him - Tridib, the second son of his father's aunt, his real mentor and inspirer, and Ila his beautiful cousin who has travelled all over the world but has seen little compared to what the narrator has seen through his mental eye. London is also a very real place because of Tridib's and Ila's friends - Mrs. Price, her daughter May, and son Nick. Like London comes alive due to the stories related by Ila and Tridib, Dhaka comes alive because of all the stories of her childhood told to him by his incomparable grandmother who was born there. The tragedy is that though the narrator spends almost a year in London and thus has ample opportunity to come to terms with its role in his life, it is Dhaka which he never visits that affects him most by the violent drama that takes place on its roads, taking Tridib away as one of its most unfortunate victims.  Foucault compares hetarotopia with a mirror where

“I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal…” (Foucault pg, 4)

In The Shadow Lines, Dhaka is represented by Thamma as a utopian space   but at the same time beyond the surface it has turned into a violent space. After her migration to Calcutta, she even considers herself to be the part of Dhaka but actually she is absented herself from that space. We can say that Dhaka appears as a shadow which has been experienced by Thamma as an ideal place but at present, in reality she cannot experience that idealness of living with peace and harmony anymore; it exists as a utopia space only in her imagination. Thus, Dhaka appears as a “space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory……”( Foucault; pg 8, sixth principle). She considers Dhaka as better than Calcutta or London or any other place of this globe, but it is merely an illusion of her mind. In this regard Foucault also proclaims, “Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled.”(Foucault; pg 8, sixth principle).   We observe that though Thamma considers Dhaka   as a utopian space but after re-arrival at Dhaka after twenty years of exile her perception has been changed. She questions “Where is Dhaka?” Tha’mma question reflects her ideal place has been changed within the flow of time. Even Jethamoshai believes that Bangladesh is an ideal place and thus, he would never be hurt by the people of this country but in reality every day the minorities (Hindus’) were being killed by the same people. But, this perception is proved wrong when he was being killed by the people of his own country.

 

In this regard, we can quote Foucault,

“There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places—places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society— which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.”

Even Thamma’s conception about Dhaka as an ideal has been turned into dystopia after Tridib and Jethamoshai were being killed by the rioters in Bangladesh. She too becomes a victim of aversion for those Pakistanis. Indians (undivided) who live side by side for generations had suddenly turned on watch other in a frenzy of killing. Troubled by the death of Tridib’s amidst riot, she gives away her only gold chain to the war fund of 1965. ‘For your sake; for your freedom”, she tells her grandson “we have to kill them before they kill us, we have to wipe them out”

  David Harvey also talks about time and space but quite differently from that of Foucault, which is going to discuss in this paper with relation to the novel The Shadow Lines. First of all, Harvey talks about absolute time and space; time and space are considered as separated categories and distinct in absolute time and space. According to Harvey, “Absolute space is fixed and we record or plan events within its frame.”(Harvey, pg 2) and he refers to the book In Social Justice and the City, published in 1973 and quotes,
            “If we regard space as absolute it becomes a “thing in itself” with an existence independent of matter. It then possesses a structure which we can use to pigeon-hole or individuate phenomena.”(Harvey, pg 3). After all, absolute time-space is identified as determined identifies essences, where a particular thing is taken place in a particular time or we can say that fixed things can also be happened in a particular space and time. There is a single fixed history, which is self-consistent and unchangeable. Everything happens on a single timeline which does not contradict itself and cannot interact with anything potentially outside of it. In the narration of The Shadow Lines, we  find the indefinite examples of absolute time-space, where several incidents have taken place in a particular space-time for example, Thamma’s absolute conclusion in the part ‘Going away’, that Dhaka is the ideal place to live with peace and harmony, Thamma recalls the things which she had done  at Dhaka, in the part, ‘Coming Home, we also observe that After Tridib’s death in a riot, Thamma’s absolute conclusion about Dhaka as a ideal place has turned reverse and thus, she no longer considers it as her home. Foucault also claims, “

‘There are absolute spaces all around us and we cannot evade their significance.”- (Foucault, pg 6’). We also see certain incidents took place in a certain period that cannot be reversed, like 1947s partition of India and Pakistan and thus bloody riots between Hindus’ and Muslims’ have also being culminated following this partition, the narrators remembrance of Mu-i-Mubarok incident, things that had been taken places in London and Calcutta, Tridib’s death in the midst of riot and so on are the absolute examples of absolute time-space, which cannot be changed. Moreover, we find Ila’s conclusion about Pakistan and India; she thinks that she doesn’t belong there. It took those people a long time to build that country; hundreds of years, years and years of war and bloodshed. Everyone who lives there has earned his right to be there with blood: with their brother’s blood and their father’s blood and their son’s blood. They know they’re a nation because they’ve drawn their borders with blood. Hasn’t Maya told you how regimental flags hang in all their cathedrals and how all their churches are lined with memorials to men who have died in wars, all around the world? War is their religion. That’s what it takes to make a country. Once that happens people forget they were born this or that, Muslim or Hindu, Bengali or Punjabi: they become a family born of the same pool of blood. That is what you have to achieve for India, don’t you see? [Foucault, pg13]   

 In effect, Ila’s notion of liberation is tied to a notion of space and time that places other ways of thinking about those notions in the space of the non-coeval. To be opposed to the current structure of things, to think of the space as being overlaid with its own histories, its own “netherworld” magic, means to fill the role of the ‘third-world tapioca farmer”, one step, perhaps from the figure of the peasant.  

Harvey also talks about the idea of relative time-space, which has been derived from the notion of Einstein. Harvey sums up that time and space are relative and we think about time and space in relation to other things in relative time-space something happens in relation to another thing. After all, exchanges are being taken places in relative time-space. In this regard, Harvey proclaims,

” The view of relative space proposes that it be understood as a relationship between objects which exists only because objects exist and relate to each other.” Relative time-space juxtaposes two things in relation to something else and thus, this time-space compares different things. In The Shadow Lines, we observe relative time-space when Thamma compares Calcutta with Dhaka and comes to the conclusion that Dhaka is better than Calcutta. But later, after Tridib’s death in the riot of Bangladesh, Dhaka, after all the whole Bangladesh becomes the country of her hatred. She has aversion for the inhabitants of the other side of the border. This is why gives away the most cherished gift of her husband, a necklace to the fund of the war.   Moreover, Ila also compares India to London and thinks that India cannot ensure her freedom and the facilities, which she can taste in London. This is why, Ila shouts at Robi by saying, “‘‘Do you see now why I've chosen to live in London? Do you see? It's only because I want to be free” (SL 88).When the narrator asks, 'Free of what?' She replies: “Free of you! Free of your bloody culture and free of all of you” (The Shadow Lines, pg 89). Then the narrator shouts back: “You can never be free of me, I shouted through the open window. If I were to die tomorrow you would not be free of me. You cannot be free of me because I am within you.  Just as you are within me” (The Shadow Lines, pg 89).   The Shadow Lines juxtaposes Calcutta and London and thus, we find comparison of two cities. This novel deals with crowded, shabby, and traffic torn Calcutta with road side vendor and petty shopkeepers to picturesque and clean London; from traditional matriarchs to liberal and friendly prices; giving snippets of war torn Germany and England. It captures the swinging moods, whims and fancies of the people of scenic Kashmir and inhabitants-innocent and pure.

Finally, Harvey talks about relational time-space that comes from the idea of living experience. It is an understanding of time and space in relation to the world. Harvey proclaims, “…in specific processes or things through time (much as my mind absorbs all manner of external information and stimuli to yield strange patterns of thought including dreams and fantasies as well as attempts at rational calculation). An event or a thing at a point in space cannot be understood by appeal to what exists only at that point. It depends upon everything else going on around it (although in practice usually within only a certain range of influence). A wide variety of disparate influences swirling over space in the past, present and future concentrate and congeal at a certain point to define the nature of that point.” (Harvey, page 4). As we know that time and space cannot be separated and relational time-space invokes both time and space as inseparated enties.

In our life, each moment changes along with changing our experience. It is the feeling of gaining experience from a particular moment and space from any incident. It is the experiences of the human-beings or agents and their relation to a particular space and time. In relational time-space, we understand things differently without any comparison. Thus, most of our experiences are being stored in our memory, and thus our memory is related to the relational time-space. After all, it is a dialectical or connected relationship with each other. In The Shadow Lines, relational time-space has been explored. It breaks free from the logic of chronological time and a chunk of particular moment. All the events or incidents are connected with the death of Tridib and thus, it becomes the central point of the particular moment.  The Shadow Lines is a novel which is told by a nameless narrator; the narrator recollects the memories of the characters. It is a non-linear tale told in a way as if putting everything and incident from the memory of the narrator in a zigzag   way.  The narrator remembers the memories of London- streets, places, and names and so on when he went to England on a year’s research grant to collect material from India Office Library and brings those to light. He also recollects every character’s experience and memory in certain places and time memory and sketches these in the storyline. We also find Tridib’s memory about mingling with different characters in different places like Gole Bazar, Dhaka, London, and so on. Thamma’s memory also plays a crucial role on The Shadow Lines. We see a sense of binary memory of Thamma before and after the riot. The space is the same but two different times have culminated two distinct experiences.

In the novel The Shadow Lines, Ghosh has intermingled history with fleeting memories of facts and fiction within time-space. Ghosh in his novel captures the perspective view of time and space. He draws a line to bring people together and embrace them a part. He works on multiple time scales for showing temporal cessation in the individual and social spheres, and underlying the ambiguity regarding any relevant portrayal of past and future. Time and space have been so closely interwoven and discharged in The Shadow Lines that they seem to be in seamless continuity and thus, it is quite difficult to differentiate past present, and future in the smeared lines.