‘Climate change is our greatest crisis’
Amitav Ghosh teams up with artist Salman Toor to retell the legend of Bon Bibi, Shah Jongoli and Dokkhin Rai
1 How would you describe the allure of the Sundarban as a landscape and a literary muse?
As a mangrove forest, the Sundarban is unique in its vastness and changeability. There are no clear dividing lines between freshwater and salt, river and sea. The tides reach more than a hundred miles inland and every day thousands of hectares of forest disappear underwater only to re-emerge hours later.
2 What are some of your earliest memories of the place? Why do you keep returning?
An uncle of mine was a schoolteacher in the Sundarban, so we used to visit him there when I was a child. My memories of those visits led me to write The Hungry Tide, and I suppose they are largely responsible for bringing me back there again and again.
3 What is the story behind the title of your book?
There are two well-known textual versions of the Bon Bibi legend, written by Munshi Mohammad Khatir and Abdur Rahim Sahib in the late nineteenth century. They are both called Bon Bibi Johura Nama – or the Narrative of Bon Bibi’s Glory. So that was where the nama came from. The Bon Bibi texts belong to a very old genre of popular Bengali wonder tales. The great Bengali literary scholar Dineshchandra Sen described this genre as “ballad literature”. Orthodox Hindus and Muslims alike tended to frown upon the genre so it flourished particularly among marginalised communities.
4 What inspires you to address issues of climate justice in your work?
I think it is increasingly apparent today that climate change is the greatest crisis that humanity, as a species, has ever faced. I think it should weigh heavily on the mind of every thinking person in the world.
5 How did your collaboration with Salman Toor help you envision and craft Jungle Nama?
My intention, right from the start, was to create an illuminated text, in the old sense, in which word and image have parity, as in palmleaf manuscripts, or the exquisite illuminated Bhagavad Puranas of Rajasthan, or Persian texts like the Razmnama or Shahnama, with their profusion of miniatures. This meant that the book would have to be a collaboration, and this was exactly what I wanted. Since I have known Salman since his student days, it was a particular pleasure to collaborate with him. He is an artist of prodigious talent.
6 Do you believe the publishing industry will adopt sustainable business practices rather than only commission more titles about the climate crisis?
In comparison to others, the carbon footprint of the publishing industry is tiny, and it is shrinking because of e-books. I would say that on the whole, the publishing industry is pretty low-impact.