Wishes and more, Amitav Ghosh - Pooja Sandhyatara Mitra
Amitav Ghosh, what should I call the man, an artist who brings shadow lines into life? He, perhaps, is the male version of Lucy of the Lucy poems, oh well, no hullabaloo please, that’s my personal opinion about the man! A man who aged 58 gracefully on the 11th day of August has a life which, if turned into a novel, would be worth a reading.
Amitav came into being in our own city Calcutta; this makes me all the more proud about my city. Oh wait! Do you expect me to write his entire biography?! Hell, no! Google it if you want, proviso you don’t know his biography and are in need to know it! This piece of writing is a small note a day after his birthday, a note which thanks him to be what he is, for what he writes, and for what he is. We all know that he is an established name in the field of contemporary literature. Awards and respect of the highest orders are in his kitty. He is said to be the gem of Eurasia. Oh who doubts that!
While he keeps on writing books after books on topics varied, essays after essays on issues as grave as fundamentalism and subjects alike, and speaks his mind on everything he thinks he should speak about, I am left awestruck by a man who is tall not by his height or recognition, but by his vision and the channelization of the same.
With each book of his, I journey to some distant and unknown lands and to some which are known but have not been seen the way he does. He travels time, makes abstract come into shape, asks nature to turn alive and living, creates characters that turn into people like me yet much unlike me; and all I can do all of these years is to read, dream, realize, understand and live, live with his words.
Amitav Ghosh, I don’t’ know if you’ll ever get to know about me and many like us who live on your books, I don’t know what life has in store for me and if ever, luckily enough, I’ll stumble upon you. But if I do or if I don’t, you’ll be a man cherished, loved, and an author read time and again. Happy Birthday, author!