HyperCultura (Aug 2021)
Amitav Ghosh and the ‘Pizza-Effect’: Re-discovering Shared Littoral Literature and Heritage
Abstract
This article focuses on two cartographically estranged places which continue to be historically concomitant—lower deltaic Bengal and Burma. The aim of the paper is to do a comparative ‘pizza effect’ study using contemporary Anglophone writings by Amitav Ghosh. Within the methodological perspective, the theoretical framework of the paper stems from the discussions of ‘self-orientalisation’—a phenomenon in which a community’s comprehension of native culture is determined by its acceptance in foreign lands. The paper argues how the writings of Amitav Ghosh have triggered a ‘pizza effect’ in two modes: on the one hand, they have led to the re-discovery of ‘folklores’ by a new generation of Anglophone readers for whom these were lost, on the other hand they have led to the re-finding of a shared history between Bengal and Burma. The first of these modes of ‘pizza effect’ is studied through the literary analysis of a folktale from the Sundarbans—Bonbibi͞r Johura͞nama͞—and its representation and adaption in Amitav Ghosh’s novel—The Hungry Tide (2004). The second case of ‘pizza effect’ is evaluated by comparing Padma͞va͞ti, a seventeen-century composition by A͞la͞ol, a Bengali poet in the Arakanese court and representations of Burma and Arakan in contemporary works of Amitav Ghosh—The Glass Palace (2000), Sea of Poppies (2008), and Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (1998).
