The Creative Process: The Arts of War (Spring 2017)

The Creative Process
T
he Glass Palace (novel, 2000) by Amitav Ghosh, offers a
detailed critique on the effects of war and colonialism.
Spanning across three countries and three generations, the
book delves into the personal lives of Ghosh’s characters,
intermingled with a sense of love along with the journey of life. This
aura is much too often broken and interrupted by the horrors
brought in by colonization and the consequent dislocation that it
leads to.
Starting off with an introduction to an eleven-year-old orphaned
Indian boy, Rajkumar, the story proceeds in Mandalay, Burma (now
Myanmar), describing the circumstances that brought him here
along with the sense of belonging he develops to the place.
Rajkumar is introduced to Saya John, who becomes a father-figure
in Rajkumar’s life. Later, the English rampage the city, but the
soldiers are mainly Indians who have come on the orders of their
colonial masters. Thus begins the general sense of chaos, ruin, and
fleet that constitutes a major part of the book. With the invasion of
the British, the residents of the city seek refuge in the Glass Palace,
where King Thebaw and his family used to rule and reside. What
follows is the family’s exile to Ratnagiri (a port town in India),
Rajkumar’s marriage to Dolly, a servant in the King’s household,
followed by the birth of their sons Neel and Dinu and the
intermingling of the families of Rajkumar, Saya John, and Uma in
the three nations of Burma, Malaya, and India respectively. Set
amidst the two world wars and British colonialism, the novel moves
in a direction of establishing and then tearing relationships apart
through death and dislocation, thus describing the ruthlessness and
arbitrariness that war brings along.
Throughout this novel, rich and abundant in details that spanned
the history of the world in those several decades, the themes of war
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