SMOKING GUN
The only writer to get the Jnanpith
Award for writing in English, Amitav
Ghosh, is out with his new book, The Gun
Island. After his acclaimed Ibis trilogy,
he returns to fiction with a powerful tale
of migration and a world that is con-
stantly changing. Ghosh met Satish
Padmanabhan for a conversation.
Excerpts:
Your new book is in thriller mode, alm
ost Dan Brownesque, sweeping thr o ugh
continents, from the Sundarbans to
Brooklyn to Venice, and there are mys
teries, secret symbols and codes. It’s
written with frenetic energy, isn’t thata new thing for you to do?
Yes, there was a sense of urgency in
writing it. When you look at the state of
the world, when we look at the reality
that surrounds us, I think it is impossi-
ble not to be urgent.
The two important issues the book
addresses are climate change and
migration. On climate change your
book The Great Derangement painted
a bleak picture of the future. Where
are we heading on climate change?
Well, you just look around you. The tem-
perature outside is 46-47 degrees, some
of the highest temperatures recorded in
this city. I lived in Delhi for years,we never saw anything like this. Sim-
ultaneously, there is a cyclone (Vayu)
hitting the coast of Gujarat...there is this
prolonged drought, farmers in villages in
Maharashtra and Karn a taka are without
water. You can see this complete weirding
of the weather acr oss the planet. What is
even more terrifying is the reality that
this is just the beginning. That it is only
going to get worse.
How come reasonable, thoughtful peo
ple still deny climate change? There is
this big lobby, particularly in the West,
which argues that climate has always
changed, it is just that we are able to
record it now so it seems alarming.‘The slow violence of climate
change goes unreported’