Amitav Ghosh In an Age of Algorithms: Why the Past Still Matters

DR. ASOKE K. LAHA
Chairman-Emeritus and Founder, InterraIT

I have a special liking for the novels of Amitav Ghosh and eagerly look forward to his works. In the Internum period of his last work and the anticipated one, I am imbued with a thought as to what would be the novel’s theme. His favourite topics are environment, migration and trade, particularly involving the erstwhile opium trade between India and China. The pathos built around his novels are discernible and opens the lid of both known and unknown factors in all aspects of human lives.

Ghosh’s trilogy on opium trade has been gripping and characters lived through the trilogy as if he was narrating a saga which is continuous and move from one book to the other. Yet, each volume has been a somewhat voluminous one, going by the number of pages. I recall having written about those books in this column when they were published.

I do not want to write about the whole creations of Amitav. Let me flag only the trilogy -Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011) and Flood of Fire (2015). Together, the trilogy depicts diverse characters connected to the 19th century opium trade in British India and China. Themes revolved around in denture labour, colonial hangover and maritime history. Narratives were spun around the characters of those ages, how they traded, lived and interacted. The British policy of opium trade, which said that one is free to export opium and its derivatives to anywhere in the world, except Great Britain instructs us how discriminatory the policy was.

Amitav fired that feelings in the heart of his readers using context, narratives and characters who invoked the malaise of social systems and orders of that point of time. The love that he explained in the trilogy was more around destiny rather than spontaneous love at first sight. Yet, readers liked it because of their social context. While opium traders were getting richer with every shipment, the poor farmers and others dependent on the opium trade led a life of extreme poverty and destitution, which forced some to seek better pastures as indented labourers in alien lands. They also faced a arduous life. Yet, the author unwittingly explains to us how their progeny had risen from extreme poverty to affluence, at least for some of them.

The  last  book  which  I  read  and  had written about in this column, is about is Gun Land {2019), a beautifully woven story that transcends time and space. The story line is fascinating, setting in multi-locations including Sundarbans of Bengal and in alien countries. Yet, his descriptions have made the locations were apt.
Amitav Ghosh follows Dinanath "Deen" Datta, a Bengali-American rare book dealer, on an unplanned, mystical journey  from the Sundarbans in India to Venice, via Los Angeles. The story blends folklore, climate change, and the global migration crisis, focusing on  Deen's  transformation as he interacts with characters experiencing displacement.

A search for the roots of a Bengali legend about a merchant (Bonduki Sadagar) fleeing the goddess of snakes (Manasa Devi) leads Deen into a journey through the modern world's challenges. The book deeply explores the climate  crisis,  migration,  the  impact of capitalism on the environment, and the blurring lines between myths and reality. It moves across continents and time, bridging the Sundarbans, Los Angeles, and Venice, illustrating interconnected global crises.

It is described as a "surreal" yet urgent, "thought-provoking" novel, blending magical realism with contemporary, pressing realities. The novel explores the idea that myths can be allegories for the ecological disasters we face today, emphasizing hope through human connection and environmental awareness.

Amitav Ghosh’s latest book is Ghost- eye: A Novel, released in December 2025/ January 2026. The story explores themes of reincarnation and climate change, following a three-year-old girl in 1960s Calcutta who remembers a past life in the Sundarbans. It also explores environmental themes across generations.

About Ghost-eye   December   2025, my knowledge is limited to the extent of reading excerpts that appeared in different newspapers and magazine columns. Recently, I checked up its availability in the bookstore, I visit regularly. The shopkeeper repeatedly told me that it was out of stock all the time I asked him. My request to keep one reserved for me fell on deaf ears. I can understand his dilemma since he cannot say no to his regular customer and to keep apart a copy for me is most unwise for a businessman, since my visits these days are not regular. I could have easily procured a copy from Amazon or Flipkart; but frankly speaking I do not like that. Visiting a book stall make me touch and feel and other creations.

During my latest visit to the book store, I tried to procure a copy of Arundhati Roy’s latest book Mother Mary Comes to Me. But I got the same answer from the book store owner that it is out of stock. I had two minds to order through Amazon or Flipkart, which I abandoned for I do not want to break my old habits. Let me come back to Ghost eye to explain its setting and thematic sequence.

A young, strictly vegetarian girl in a 1960s Calcutta mansion, begins remembering a past life involving catching and cooking fish in the Sundarbans, leading to a investigation by a psychiatrist. Ghosh traverse through the known Bengali psyche that revolves around reincarnation, environmental change, memory, and the "time of monsters" in a post-pandemic world. The setting moves between 1960s Calcutta and contemporary Brooklyn.

There is a special reason for  me  to write on the theme. Can his novels, short stories and other creations be termed as an anachronism in the present world driven by frontier technologies? We hear now more about AI, and the like. Predictions are that it would be a different world altogether, when man makes journeys to the outer world, set up habitats there and attempt to supplement the rare earth supply chains from the mined from minerals having higher configurations than found in Planet Earth.

The paradigm shifts that are taking place in our world and the insurmountable quest for acquiring knowledge will not eclipse our power to look back and to bring changes in the present. The two mindsets are not at loggerheads, but complementary to each other. The scientific community will take us forward to the newer horizons of possibility and infinite areas of exploration vetted by imagination and sharp intellect. Creations of Amitav Ghosh will take us to planes of history and fortitude that shaped our destiny. Future is not delinked from the past, but runs in continuum with a clarion call that any state of development, there is the need for an equilibrium where past and present merge with the future as distinct links of humanity. The moot question is: should we keep quiet and accept everything that comes to us in its own way. No, we have to work for the future with hope and imagination for the welfare of the humanity and not for hegemonism of one country, ideology or individuals or set of individuals. That is what history teaches.