Page 198 - EW October 2025

Books

Baudelaire, he explored foundational principles of
modernism, the mysteries non-conscious intentional- WILD FICTIONS
of life, death and darkness ity in the plant world. Amitav Ghosh
associated with time and JAYATI GUPTA FOURTH ESTATE/ HARPERCOL-
timelessness. LINS
All told, the intellectual Rs.799
culture of Bengal of the Sweeping Pages 469
earlier half of the 20th cen-
tury was shaped by versa- compendium
tile litterateurs and artists.
Satyajit Ray is placed in a ESPITE THE wariness that environmen- Themes of
family tradition that made remarkable range tal catastrophes are hardly colonialism, imperial
the best of a heritage of Dand volume of his sudden, unfolding along violence, ecology,
plant thinking — Brahmo work over the years, the the undulating terrains of migration and loss are
and Vaishnava, folklore core concerns of Amitav inequality and capitalist evident in all Amitav
and fantasy, whimsical and Ghosh’s writings have re- power. Ghosh’s works.
humorous that “challenges mained consistent. Themes It is not just humans Wild Fictions is no
human logic and colonial of colonialism, imperial that populate Ghosh’s exception
science”. As film directors, violence, ecology, migra- narratives; many of the
Satyajit and Ritwik Ghatak tion, and loss are evident essays carry poignant
used a tapestry of ever- in all his works, and Wild empathy for non-human nation to comprehend the
green trees, vegetation, in Fictions is no exception. lives. He laments the slow intelligence of the rooted.
their cinematic frames to These preoccupations re- disappearance of the Ir- It is not difficult for the
comment on a fast chang- turn with renewed urgency rawady Dolphins, Marco historian to trace the arc
ing landscape towards a in this collection of essays Polo sheep of Hunza, and of colonial violence across
culture that alienates itself of over two decades. Olive Ridley turtles which the landscapes of the global
from plant-life. Any reader familiar once populated the eastern South. The afterlives of
The conclusive chap- with Ghosh’s oeuvre will coast. He turns his atten- Empire leave their marks
ter is the poignant tale of recognize that migration tion to the botanical as everywhere: etched into
Maya Mashi, a sick, ne- and movement are founda- well, not as silent witness- soil, folded into language
glected and marginalised tional themes. It is fitting es to human ambition, but and embedded in law.
woman remembered like then, that Ghosh begins as subjects caught in cycles The exploitation of clove
a tree, even if she likens his text with migration: of imperial disarray with trees in the Moluccas, the
herself to a weed. he ponders the fate of the protracted consequences Indian state’s bureaucratic
The takeaway from this South Asian migrants in for the future. indifference to the Anda-
compendium is a phi- Europe who left in pursuit The essay ‘Spice Is- man and Nicobar Islands
losophy of vegetal life that of a better life. But Ghosh lands’ is a good example, in the wake of natural
raises several ontological unsettles the reader by tracing the journey of disaster, the sleek lexicons
questions. It focuses on the questioning what are the cloves and nutmeg from of multilateral institutions
concept of ‘plant thinking’ parameters of a ‘better life’ the volcanic islands of that preserve the asymme-
— intuitive, non-cognitive that drive so many to risk Indonesia to the markets tries they claim to redress,
behaviour of plants that everything in South Asia of Europe where trade are all fragments of a world
highlights temporality, for dreams abroad, only to became synonymous with reordered by the greed of
freedom, non-violence, be met with precarity. dislocation. Commerciali- capital.
inter-personal interaction. Ghosh also remains sation of such botanical History is where Ghosh
The thinkers featured here one of South Asia’s most commodities is often is undeniably at his most
have a heritage of human perceptive chroniclers of inseparable from the dis- compelling. The section
cognition that chronicles environmental concerns. placement of people and titled ‘Witnesses’ draws
changes in the ecologi- While through fiction in reordering of ecosystems. the reader into the sel-
cal history of Bengal. The Junglenama and The Hun- One of the collection’s final dom heard voices of two
obvious limitation of gry Tide, he explored the essays brings this line of Bengali men in the medical
the book is the regional implications of ecologi- thought to a contemplation corps of the Mesopota-
perimeter within which the cal devastations wrought on the life of plants, their mia campaigns of 1915-16
study confines itself even by human disregard, the capacity for sentience, and during the First World
while it establishes the essays here enunciate the limits of human imagi- War. Through excerpts

198 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2025