'The Greater Crisis -- That Of A Planet In Distress -- Is Still Gathering'

'The pandemic has led to an immense disruption in the world's political, financial, military and geopolitical situation. The pandemic was a warning.'

Amitav Ghosh had just finished an event for his latest book Ghost-Eye at the venerable Royal Opera House, off Chowpatty, in south Mumbai on January 8.

Hardly had his chat with columnist and author Raghu Karnad come to a close -- with the audience getting ready to pose their questions -- and bunches and bunches of people got up to quickly exit.

Later, I realised, they were not rushing home to cook dinner or something. This was a roomful of serious AG fans, who knew there would be a tremendous rush to get books signed afterwards.

The line for the signing snaked in and out of the graceful, 1910-era pillars of the heritage building's glorious interiors, wrapping itself around the pretty ante-lobby and doubling back, twice over. At least 150 people or more waited, clutching a copy of Ghosh's latest book or some other favourite title of his.

It was a happy, patient line. No one jumped the queue and everyone looked peaceful, ready to wait the rest of the evening for his signature.

The author, silver-haired, wearing a spiffy black bandhgala outfit, sat at a desk, set up under the main arch of India's only surviving opera house, relaxed, smilingly signing copy and after copy, posing for selfies and doing a little friendly chitchat with each fan.

An hour or so later he was still signing, and the stacks of books were getting taller and taller. The local bookstore was getting copies signed for various patrons -- a reader from Qatar, someone from Nagaland. One copy was bound for San Francisco. Another was for a senior Bombay high court advocate who could not make it to the event. One fan wanted Ghosh to address the book to just Dear Reader.

As I waited, at the very end of the line, for my copy of Ghost-Eye -- probably the 189th book of the evening -- to get his signature, I popped him a question or two, from behind the pillar, while he was at it.

Ghosh admitted to a fascination with pens and, of late, he had taken a shine to a simple Pilot pen, given by his son, which he discovered had merits comparable to the best pens he had tried like Mont Blanc. He said he often worked on his manuscripts in long hand too.

The Limitations Of Rationalism

While in conversation with Karnad earlier -- it had been quite a contemplative exchange -- Ghosh, 69, said that in Ghost-Eye, a novel from him after many years, he had been able to weave in all his favourite themes, relating to ecology, mindfulness for the fragile planet, that were slowly getting the attention that was their due. Themes as Karnad put it about the "sentience and purpose existing in the natural world that we cannot comprehend".

Ghosh spoke about how it was being gently acknowledged that our ancestors were spot on and places of nature or natural structures had souls too. They were indeed alive and considered living beings. And had rights.

So much so that New Zealand legally recognised -- by a whole court of "old white guys" -- Mount Taranaki, respected by the Maoris as a forbearer, and in a landmark 2025 judgment granted the mountain the same legal rights as a human or "legal personhood".

In India too, a 2024 court ruling protected Gandhamardan Hill in Odisha as a biodiversity heritage site.

An emerging body of legal thinking in Ecuador is giving rivers rights.

Later, while I watched him scrawl out his bold, expansive signature on book after book, I asked him if the Sunderbans was the place where he felt the soul of earth was apparent to him. He nodded.

Where else? "There are many places in the Southwest (in the US) where you feel that."

The premise for Ghost-Eye, which was first published and released in India by HarperCollins, is rooted in an indelible personal experience. "My mother died in the pandemic year when I was trapped in Brooklyn and I could not come to see her."

In the year before COVID, he had visited the elderly Anjali Ghosh in Kolkata. She was, it seems, in hospital and close to death. And at one point it appeared like she had actually passed away.

Ghosh remembers vividly that she was talking in Bengali to someone and was clearly in some place beyond. "It was a bizarre event. She literally said goodbye and went into a strange trance, like she was seeing what was on the other side. It was a classic near-death experience."

When she was medically revived, he said it was as if she had "come back from another realm" and was upset to have been called back to earth: 'Why did you bring me back? I wanted to go.'

He said the occurrence "unlocked something" for him and that near death experiences are in the same realm as reincarnation but do not exist in the same time-and-space continuum. Shortly after he finished writing Ghost-Eye, fittingly, he learned he was going to have a grandson.

Ghosh mused about the intersection or rather the violent collision between rational and irrational domains, with Science trying to "exhaust the world of its mystery" and giving the false idea that we understand everything about the our planet and beyond: When you open the door to the uncanny (it comes flooding in). I was heavily trained in rationalism, so deeply steeped (in it)" but he says he now knows "its limitations" and how it has "brought us to world disaster."

In Ghost-Eye, the tender little daughter of the Guptas, a wealthy Kolkata Marwari vegetarian business family completely disrupts the khandaan's status quo when she suddenly announces militantly that she would like to eat fish and starts recalling an earlier life as the daughter of a Bengali fishing family.

Ghosh explained that "cases of the reincarnation type" usually start, often in India, with food and a child waking up in a vegetarian family demanding meat or vice versa.

Apart from being the space to address his various other passions, Ghost-Eye is a vehicle for Ghosh to write on another of his loves -- food, especially fish. The novelist is known to be an avid foodie and an excellent cook, who likes to putter about his Brooklyn kitchen, as is evident from his Instagram feed.

Karnad asked if there perhaps might be an Amitav Ghosh Cookbook someday, but he said his style of cooking was too "haptic" (about feeling the ingredients, like the fish or the quantities) to put down into book form.

At some point in the evening there was a reference to magic, to which Amitav Ghosh, commented happily, quite off-topic, "Nothing more magical than Zohran Mamdani! A political genius. I have seen him grow up!"

In an e-mail interview to Rediff after the Mumbai tete-a-tete with Karnad, Amitav Ghosh answered questions on food, life after death and god:

'It seems to me profoundly irrational to simply ignore such cases'

For readers and the true Amitav Ghosh fans (like me; The Hungry Tide is my favourite), what do you feel will interest them most about this new book? What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

I am very glad to know of your heartfelt connection to The Hungry Tide. For readers who found a home in that novel's landscape of tides and tigers, I believe this new book offers a different, but related, journey. While The Hungry Tide was about the visible and palpable landscapes of the Sundarban, this book turns inward, to the mysteries within human consciousness itself.

It asks: What currents of memory, identity, and even past lives, shape our present? Is it possible that we are shaped not just by the visible environment, but also by psychic landscapes that are just as powerful and strange?

You have often spoken about the influence ecological environments have had on you. Do you consider Nature a worshipable force on par with other gods?

I would not personally use the word "worshipable." Rather, I would say that it is essential that we recognise that there are many entities in our environment that are sentient and that we are profoundly dependent on them.

To imagine that only humans possess sentience, consciousness and the ability to reason is one of the greatest follies of modernity. But in order to see the world in a different way, we need different kinds of stories. And Ghost-Eye is one such story.

This book is about reincarnation. And you mentioned, in the book event you had in Bombay, that writing about reincarnation was part of your journey from the rational and scientific (you) to the less rational.
What other non-rational themes are you exploring? What are your notions on religion?

Personally, I prefer to avoid the term reincarnation, which is why the phrase 'cases of the reincarnation type' is always apostrophised in the book.

The reason for this is that the term 'reincarnation' implies that there is some kind of mechanism whereby the soul or a spirit migrates between one body and another. Personally, I don't know if that is actually the case; I'm completely agnostic about this.

What I do know is that there are many thousands of documented cases of children being born with past life memories, and children who begin to speak languages that are not spoken by anyone in their family.

There are so many such cases that it is impossible to pretend that this phenomenon does not exist, just because it does not fit into certain conceptions of the world.

In India many, if not most, people are aware of children who had such memories.

I personally know of many such cases. The people who describe these memories have no reason or incentive to lie about them.

Since these cases exist, I think it's important for all rational people to ask what the implications are. It seems to me profoundly irrational to simply ignore such cases and pretend that they do not exist.

When will you be submitting your manuscript for the Future Library Project (that collects unpublished works by well-known authors and stores them in a library in Oslo and will only be unveiled 100 years later)? What might it be about? Whatever you can hint at.

The manuscript for the Future Library project is due at the time of the ceremony, which is in June, so the deadline is a healthy pressure.

What can I hint? It is a text deeply concerned with time and legacy, as the project itself is. It engages with the idea of what we leave behind in a world of rapid erasure.

It will be a story conscious of its own fate -- to sleep for almost a century before breathing again. I suppose it is a letter to the future, and like any letter to an unknown recipient, it is filled with both hope and trepidation.

'Food's role is vastly underestimated'

What kind of role does food play in your life? Do you cook to relax? What do you like to cook? Food has a much larger role in life than most imagine. Would you agree and why?

I have a deep interest in food, not just in how it's made but also in its history and its connection to the environment. And I do like to cook -- it is a creative act with a clear, gratifying conclusion, which writing often is not!

I take great pleasure in the rhythms of chopping, stirring, the alchemy of spices. Unlike writing, cooking is also a manual, physical activity and I take great pleasure in that.

Moreover, food brings people together and creates dense webs of connection which is, in a way, its own reward.

And yes, food's role is vastly underestimated. It is the most intimate ecology. What we eat connects us directly to the soil, the water, the climate, and the labour of countless hands. To be conscious of food is to be conscious of the world.

At the Mumbai book event you remarked about things on the planet getting worse after COVID. Your chief concerns? How did COVID influence your life?

COVID was a stark demonstration of our interconnected vulnerability. For me personally, COVID was, oddly enough, a very productive time. During that year-and-a-half I finished one short book and also wrote a long work of nonfiction, The Nutmeg's Curse. But at the same time I was deeply concerned about the future and what would happen after the end of the pandemic.

Unlike many others, I did not think that things would improve afterwards and indeed it is now clear that the pandemic has led to an immense disruption in the world's political, financial, military and geopolitical situation. The pandemic was a warning.

The greater crisis -- that of a planet in distress -- is still gathering. We did not listen deeply enough.