Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh

 Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh

Hello Friends!

                            Today I'm going to write about As part of the syllabus, we are studying Contemporary Literature in Semester 4. In this blog, I will discuss the novel "Gun Island" by Amitav Ghosh. This thinking activity is assigned by our professor Dilip Barad sir.

View Teacher's blog on this novel.

Amitav Ghosh

Official Website of Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956)is an Indian writer and the winner of the 54th Jnanpith award, India’s highest literary honor, best known for his work in English fiction. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and Southeast Asia.

His first novel, The Circle of Reason, set in India and Africa and winner of the 1990 Prix Médicis Étranger, was published in 1986. Further novels are The Shadow Lines (1988); The Calcutta Chromosome (1996), about the search for a genetic strain which guarantees immortality and winner of the 1997 Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction; The Glass Palace (2000), and The Hungry Tide (2004), a saga set in Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal.

His books of non-fiction include 3 collections of essays: Dancing in Cambodia and At Large in Burma (1998); The Imam and the Indian (2002), around his experience in Egypt in the early 1980s; and Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times (2005).

His recent novels form a trilogy: Sea of Poppies (2008), an epic saga set just before the Opium Wars, shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Prize; River of Smoke (2011), shortlisted for the 2011 Man Asia Literary Prize; and Flood of Fire (2015), which concludes the story. He has also published The Great Derangement (2016), a non-fiction book on climate change.

Gun Island

Presentation on Gun Island

There are journeys by land and water, diaspora and migration, experiences aboard ships, the world of animals and sea-creatures. Ghosh foregrounds environmental issues like climate change and the danger to fish from chemical waste dumped into rivers by factories, concerns that carry over from earlier books like The Hungry Tide and The Great Derangement. Gun Island is also a very complex novel to understand. You have to read all chapters thoroughly. Otherwise you miss the connection of the story and won't be able to know further. We see the use of three languages in the novel; Bangla, Italian and English. The novel has two parts, the first one is Gun Merchant and the second one is Venice. Let's see some questions about the novel. 1. How does Amitav Ghosh use the myth of Gun Merchant 'Bonduki Sadagar' and Manasa Devi to initiate discussion on the issue of Climate Change and Migration/Refugee crisis / Human Trafficking? - In this novel Amitav Ghosh wants to talk about today's major situation that we are facing today, which is Climate change and migration. Also he talks about the myth of Manasa devi and Gun Merchant. From that reference he wants to talk about Gun merchants that he changed because of climate change and when he changed the places also he faced the problem of Migration. First we see the theme Climate change in Gun Island In Gun Island, Amitav Ghosh makes a spirited foray into the world of climate fiction, a category which has received scant attention from writers, especially in our part of the world – a region, which for economic and other reasons is vulnerable, and will be disproportionately affected by the unfolding climate disaster.

The story of this legendary trader, Deen finds, has many parallels with the Bengali verse epics about Chand Sadagar and Manasa, the Hindu folk goddess of snakes, who is also central to the gun merchant’s story. He learns that the gun merchant has a “dham” or shrine in Sunderbans, the mangrove-covered deltas of south Bengal.(Ghosh)

Miss World Harnaaz Sandhu tallk about Climate Change

While discussing the theme of climate change our Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir gave the current example of wildfires that happened in California that we can connect with the theme of Climate change.

Migration

Deen talks about Animals Mogration in Gun Island

‘You know - temperatures are rising around the world because of global warming. This means that the habitats of various kinds of animals are also changing. The brown recluse soldier is extending its range into places where it wasn’t found before - like this part of Italy.’

- Deen (Gun Island). Pg. 214

Gun Island explores different forms of migration, starting from people and entire communities being uprooted from their native land to the drastic changes recently prevalent in the migratory patterns of different species. Ghosh gives many instances of climate related catastrophes being inductors of such migrations. He talks in detail about the cyclone Aila which hit the Sundarbans in 2009. 

Aila’s long-term consequences were even more devastating than those of earlier cyclones. Hundreds of miles of embankment had been swept away and the sea had invaded places where it had never entered before; vast tracts of once fertile land had been swamped by salt water, rendering them uncultivable for a generation, if not forever.The evacuations too had produced effects that no one could have foretold. Having once been uprooted from their villages many evacuees had decided not to return, knowing that their lives, always hard, would be even more precarious now. Communities had been destroyed and families dispersed. . . (Ghosh 48)

2. How does Amitav Ghosh make use of the 'etymology' of common words to sustain mystery and suspense in the narrative?

-   In Gun Island Amitav Ghosh used many words with it's 'etymology' that,....

1.Gun Island

2.Bhut - Ghost 

3.Possession 

4.Land of Palm Sugar Candy

5.Land of Kerchieves 

6.Island of Chains

Gun Island 

"Island within Island” (Rafi to Deen).

There is one foundry where armaments, including bullets, were cast. And the word used for foundry in Venetian dialect is "getto". And the world "ghetto" is derived from "getto" and it is connected with Jews. 

3. What are your views on the use of myth and history in the novel Gun Island to draw the attention of the reader towards contemporary issues like climate change and migration?

- Yes, in contemporary times we have seen and faced this kind of problems like climate change and migration that is the current situation of today's time and Amitav Ghosh give idea about the current situation and threw that he make aware the people of the world through the work of art.

                                                        
  

4. Is there any connection between 'The Great Derangement' and 'Gun Island'?

-

5. There are many Italian words in the novel. Have you tried to translate these words into English or Hindi with the help of google translate app ? If so, how is machine translation helping in proper translation of Italian words into English or Hindi ?

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

 The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Hello Friends!

                            Today I'm going to write about Thinking Activity Task given by our Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir. We have one paper on contemporary literature and in this blog, I am going to discuss a few questions about a contemporary novel by Arundhati Roy The novel 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'. 

Here is the link to the teacher’s blog. 

https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2021/12/the-ministry-of-utmost-happiness.html?m=1

Arundhati Roy

    Arundhati Roy (November 24, 1961) is an Indian novelist, political activist. She is best known for her first novel The God of Small Things which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. She was also awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2004.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a very fascinating novel by Arundhati Roy. It was published in 2017. It’s a very interesting novel. It discusses issues like political, transgender, social and especially it covers contemporary India. It was her second novel.

• Originally published :- June 6, 2017
• Author :- Arundhati Roy
• Genre :- Fiction
• Publisher :- Hamish Hamilton
• Pages :- 449
• Setting :- India

Here are the questions to ponder.

1. Political issues in the novel.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness paints a portrait of contemporary, postcolonial Indian politics. Through the differing points of view of the story’s characters, Arundhati Roy illustrates the many ways in which various groups of the Indian population have been let down and oppressed by their political leaders after the 1947 partition between India and Pakistan. In particular, through her illustration of the ongoing Kashmir conflict between these two countries, she highlights corruption in all political groups involved: the Indian army, Indian leftists who oppose the occupation of Kashmir, and the Kashmiri locals and militants who apparently resist the military occupation. Each group claims to have a moral or religious imperative behind what they advocate for, and yet they take actions that are often selfishly motivated by monetary gain and therefore out of alignment with their alleged beliefs. In questioning the integrity of each group involved, Roy ultimately sheds light on the ways in which corrupt capitalism undermines the supposedly moral intentions of the groups involved in the Kashmir conflict.

2. Gender concern in the Novel.

The first half of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is told through the point of view of Anjum, a transgender woman and former sex worker who was born intersex—with both female and male genitalia. (Her mother gendered Anjum a boy and named him Aftab, and he/him/his pronouns are used to refer to Aftab at the beginning of his life before he starts identifying as a trans woman.) Through Anjum’s eyes, readers are exposed to the various inequalities and forms of violence that plague the city in which she lives. The Urdu word for transwoman is Hijra, an identity that is very important to Anjum and the other trans women she lives with. Through exploring the ways in which Anjum navigates gender identity and by portraying her trans identity in a positive and nuanced light, Roy challenges not only the idea of a gender binary, but also other artificial forms of social division—particularly nationality and religion. Although Anjum lives in a highly sexist society that privileges the masculine over the feminine, her identity as a Hijra grants her a special social status that sometimes protects her. Traveling to a popular Muslim shrine, Anjum and a host of other pilgrims are attacked by Hindu terrorists seeking justice for Hindus recently killed by Muslim militants. Every Muslim in the area is massacred, except for Anjum, who is spared because, as one of the extremists observes, “killing Hijras brings bad luck.” In this instance, Anjum’s marginalized identity literally saves her life. Although she suffers discrimination in her society for being a Hijra, in instances like this, the folklore surrounding Hijras—that they are “holy souls trapped in bodies”—protects her. While Roy in no way seems to argue that being a Hijra is a privilege, she does highlight some ways in which Anjum’s inability to participate in the gender binary has special, positive effects.

3. Environmental Concern 

In The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Roy has these lines as her opening:

At magic hour, when the sun has gone but the light has not, armies of flying foxes unbinge themselves from the Banyan trees in the old graveyard and drift across the city like smoke. When the bats leave, the crows come home. Not all the din of their homecoming fills the silence left by the sparrows that have gone missing, and the old white-backed vultures…that have been wiped out. The vultures died of diclofenac poisoning.Starting positively with the description of the magic hour of twilight, Roy wasting no time dwells into the negative effects of human greed. It is humans who want to eat ‘more ice cream, butterscotch-crunch, nutty-buddy and chocolate chip’, drink ‘more mango milkshake’.

The harsh reality of how the behaviour of humans is affecting the environment and destroying the lives of birds and animals which are as much a part of the living community in this earth is elaborated by the author. This is the theme which runs through the entire novel.

River in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. As Tilo walks near the riverfront and stopped on a bridge, she ‘watched a man row a circular raft built with old mineral-water bottles and plastic jerrycans across the thick, slow, filthy river. Buffaloes sank blissfully into the black water. On the pavement vendors sold lush melons and sleek green cucumbers grown in pure factory effluent’ (234). Giving a true picture of the havoc caused by the river Jhelum, in Kashmir, during the floods, Roy writes: ‘When the Jhelum rose and breached its banks, the city disappeared. Whole housing colonies went underwater. Army camps, torture centres, hospitals, courthouses, police stations – all went down. Houseboats floated over what had once been market places’ (264).

Narrative Patterns 

The narrative pattern of ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness' is very hard and tough to understand. Because it is not easy to understand Roy’s technique of writing. One of the best parts is here that describes sadness in writing.

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Learning Outcome : Research Methodology Workshop

Hello Friends! 

               Today I'm going to write about Learning Outcome of Research methodology workshop Thinking activity task given by our Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir. 

D. 07/01/2022

We attended a workshop on Research methodology at our department of English - MKBU organised by our Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir. The Chief guest of the session was Majmudar Jagdeep sir. He is a retired Prof. of the department of M.B.A. and he became the first coordinator of the Research Facilitation Centre of MKBU. This centre mainly focuses on Ph.D works. 

- The Workshop divided into three parts : 

Session :- 1

• Importance of Research led by Dr. J.P.Majmudar sir

Session :- 2

• Avoid Plagiarism: Qualitative research in Digital Era - led by Dr. Dilip Barad sir 

Session :- 3 

• Citation: Tools and Techniques - led by Vaidehi Hariyani ma'am

 Importance of Research by Dr. J.P.Majmudar sir

       

The chief guest of today's session was Prof. Jagdeep Majmudar. He is a retired Prof. of the Department of M.B.A and is the first coordinator. He is reappointed by our university to take care of the research facilitated center. This center mainly focuses on Ph.D. works. In the first session, Prof.Majmudar gave very interesting information about research and what is the importance of research. Systematic Scientific inquiry is necessary while doing research. If we conduct any research there must be problems first. And for that, it requires the reading of existing literature of the contemporary period. He also said that good research starts with the gaps in the existing literature. After finding the gap we have to critically read the references and in that who has done what? How did he had done? and the most important is the conclusion of these references. And while doing a literature review we have to give our comments our conclusion to it. The research itself means adding something new to the existing literature. It was a very very fruitful session for us and we are very thankful to Prof. J. P. Majmudar sir.

In the first session Prof. Majmudar sir gave very interesting information about research and the importance of research. He also talked about it's process of research, Scientific inquiry and how we find our problems and clarity of problems. He also said that Research itself means adding something new to the existing literature. 

               

Avoid Plagiarism: Qualitative research in Digital Era - by Dr. Dilip Barad sir 

In the second session Dr. Dilip Barad sir introduced about 'Plagiarism' and how we can avoid it. He also taught us about qualitative research in the Digital Era. Because most of us are all doing CCP (cut,copy,paste) and how we can avoid it. We also learn that the plagiarism spectrum: 10 types of Unoriginal works that,...

- Clone, CTRL C, Find Replace, Remix, Recycle, Hybrid, 404 Errors, Aggregator, Retweet, etc…

We also learn about the Source Educational Evaluation Rubric (SEER) workshop that,...

1. Authority

2. Educational

3. Value

4. Intent

5. Originality 

6. Quality

        All the things will help us in our Research Paper and Dissertation writing. Here I put Barad sir's Blog link. To learn about what plagiarism is and how we find qualitative research. 

https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2022/01/avoid-plagiarism-research-in-digital-era.html

Citation: Tools and Techniques - by Vaidehi Hariyani ma'am

The last session was about Citation by Vaidehi ma'am. In this session we all divided into 5 groups and she gave us group work on various tools of citation and learned about how to do citation. Whole day has become very informative and useful for us. I would like to say thanks to Dr. Dilip Barad sir and Vaidehi Ma'am for giving us very helpful knowledge about research. 

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Workshop on Research and Writing a Dissertation

 

Workshop on Research and Writing a Dissertation

Hello Friends!

Today I’m going to write about the learning outcome : on Research & Dissertation writing workshop. On 4th January 2022 we had a workshop on research and writing a Dissertation at our Department of English, MKBU. In this workshop we learn about how to select a dissertation topic and how to write further. Our resource persons were Dr. Dilip Barad sir and Ndoricimpa Clement sir. 

Throughout the workshop we learn so many things that what is research? What is our area for research writing ? What kind of problems are you identified with ? What is your research ground? Identified each and everything we come to know that research should be in systematic way :

These are objectives of workshop:

• Objectives of the workshop :-

This workshop is intended to help us for Dissertation Writing. 

 

1. Understand what is involved in research 

2.Select an appropriate research topic 

3. Select and define a research problem. 

4. Select appropriate research method and design 

5.Organize and write a Dissertation 

6. Understand the style of argumentation 

 

Research is scientific 

Research is scientific because it uses scientific methods by making an interesting use of inductive- deductive reasoning. 

• Inductive- Deductive reasoning follows the process below 

1. Identification and clarification of the problem 

2. Developing hypothesis Inductively from observation. 

3. Charting is implications by deductions 

4. Practical and theoretical testing of the hypothesis 

5. Rejecting and redefining it in the light of the results. 

 

In workshop mention five steps about the how conduct the dissertation writing 

 Research is systematic 

- Research is systematic because it follows certain steps that are logically connected. 

 

1. Understanding the nature of the problem to be studied and identifying the related areas of knowledge. 

2. Reviewing the  literature to understand how others have approached or dealt with the problems. 

3. Connecting Data in an organized and controlled manner so as to arrive at a valid decision.

4. Analyzing data appropriate to the problem 

5. Drawing conclusions and making generalization 

 

I find it difficult to find research topics and also have difficulty defining and finding the research problem. A research problem is based on a question, curiosity, Uncertainty, Unresolved controversy in the mind of the researcher regarding some current issues. 

 

Writing a dissertation

• The structure of a dissertation

1. Introduction 

2. Literature review

3. Research methods/theoretical framework for literary studies.

4. Interpretation and discussion of the findings

5. Conclusion.

 

1)Introduction:-

The purpose of the introduction is to attract the attention of the reader. The introduction tends to follow a particular pattern of organization. 

- It comprises three stages: 

1)Report of the object of the study/establish territory. In this stage, the writer describes the topic of the study as important and as requiring investigation.

2)Describing previous studies/establishing a niche. In this stage, the writer briefly reviews previous studies to identify gaps. In other words, the writer describes the problem to be investigated.

3)Introducing your own study/occupying the niche. In this stage, the writer states the objectives of the study and formulate research questions or hypotheses.

 

Literature review:-

The review of previous studies is important. In this stage, the writer critically evaluates previous studies. An example of an evaluative literature review is provided above..

Research methods/theoretical framework for literary studies:-

Research methods state the methods employed in the collection and analysis of the data, while the theoretical framework explains the theory within which a literary text is interpreted. 

 

Interpretation and discussion of the findings:-

Read what was discussed earlier

 

Conclusion:-

The conclusion discusses key findings, states the implications of the study and raises questions for further research.

              So it was a good session. And yes it's really helpful to us to write a dissertation. We are grateful to Dr. Dilip Barad sir for arranging such an informative session.

 THANK YOU...