Amitav in Dilli

Amitav Ghosh was in Delhi recently. Highlights, in the Babu's best gossip-columnist-style: he got mobbed by photographers at the launch of his book at a bar called Agni, Khushwant Singh announced we were looking at a future Nobel Prize winner, and he went through one bewildering interview where he tried to talk about his book while the interviewer tried to get him to discuss food and it was only sorted out when they realised she was soundbyting him for the Food, not Books, pages. (What the hell. If you want to know what the man thinks about complicated dals and cooking, go here.)
Indrajit Hazra, who's something of a Rising Young Turk himself in the literary firmament, interviewed Ghosh and asked him questions that--mercifully--had nothing to do with what the author ate for breakfast.
IH: The Sunderbans in West Bengal isn’t only the setting of The Hungry Tide but it actually becomes a protagonist. What is it that brought the marshlands into your book?
AG: Turning the Sunderbans into a character was part of the plan. An uncle of mine lived in the area in the Forties and that was how I came to know the region a bit more intimately than say the tourists on the bhatbhatias (launches) that ply the waters there. The Sunderbans is a fascinating place with its hidden histories. For most of it, there’s not much to see as you pass along the banks of the mangrove forests. But I discovered much about the people living there and their belief systems while I was there before writing this book.
And Rita Bhimani composed a limerick in honour of the man. No, really, she did.
"He makes your circle of reason get to lands so antique
Where your brain’s hungry tide makes your shadow line peak
It’s his charmed chromosome
With its glass palace dome
Where both Imam and Indian can find what they seek."