Amitav Ghosh - Incendiary Circumstances - A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times

[>] We know: The lines of Dante's from which the title of this essay is taken are thought to be based on a passage from Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy: "Among fortune's many adversities the most unhappy kind is once to have been happy" (Dante, The Inferno, p. 99).

At a certain point: Agha Shahid Ali, "Farewell," in The Country Without a Post Office, pp. 22–23.

[>] At the heart of the book: I have described this event in detail in my book In an Antique Land (New York: Vintage, 1994), pp. 204–10.

[>] Ranajit Guha: Ranajit Guha, History at the Limit of World History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), lecture III.

[>] It is for this reason: It is not without interest that the corresponding administrative term — handed down from the Raj — is "civil disturbance." "Everything is finished": "The Country Without a Post Office," in The Country Without a Post Office, pp. 49–50.

"For his first forty days": Ondaatje, "The Story," in Handwriting.

[>] "With all the swerves": Ibid.

"THE GHAT OF THE ONLY WORLD"

[>] At a certain point: Agha Shahid Ali, "Farewell," in The Country Without a Post Office (New York: Norton, 1997), pp. 22–23.

[>] "Imagine me at a writer's conference": Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English, ed. Agha Shahid Ali (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), pp. 1, 3, 13.

[>] "A night of ghazals": Agha Shahid Ali, "I Dream I Am at the Ghat of the Only World," in Rooms Are Never Finished (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 97. It was Shahid's mother: Ibid., p. 99.

"I am not born": Agha Shahid Ali, "A Lost Memory of Delhi," in The Half-Inch Himalayas (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), p. 5. I would like to thank Daniel Hall for bringing this poem to my attention.

[>] "I always move": "I Dream I Am at the Ghat," p. 101.

"It was '89": "Summers of Translation," in Rooms Are Never Finished, p. 30.

[>] "and I, one festival": "Lenox Hill," in Rooms Are Never Finished, p. 17.

"Nothing will remain": "The Country Without a Post Office," in The Country Without a Post Office, p. 50.

"I will die, in autumn": "The Last Saffron," in The Country Without a Post Office p. 27.

[>] "Yes, I remember it": Ibid., p. 29.

[>] "Mother, they asked me": "Lenox Hill," in Rooms Are Never Finished, pp. 18, 19.

COUNTDOWN

[>] In the course of writing this piece I talked to many hundreds of people in India, Pakistan, and Nepal. The impossibility of severally listing these debts serves only to deepen my gratitude to those who took the time to meet me. The book would be incomplete, however, if I were not to acknowledge my gratitude to the following: Smt. Krishna Bose, M.P., Madiha Gauhur, Shahid Nadeem, Najam Sethi, Dr. Dursameem Ahmed, Eman Ahmed, Dr. Zia Miyan, Dr. M. V. Ramanna, Kunda Dixit, Kanak Dixit, Pritam and Meena Mansukhani, Radhika and Hari Sen, and my infinitely forbearing publisher, Ravi Dayal. Dr. Sunil Mukhi, Dr. Sumit Ranjan Das, Dr. Sourendu Gupta, and other scientists at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay were generous in giving of their time to discuss various aspects of the nuclear issue, from many different points of view: I owe them many thanks. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Ananda Bazaar Patrika, Himal, and The New Yorker. I am particularly indebted to Nandi Rodrigo, who did an astonishingly thorough job of fact-checking my New Yorker piece, and to Bill Buford, who saw it to press. Madhumita Mazumdar contributed greatly to the background research and provided invaluable logistical support: I am deeply grateful to her.

"Countdown" owes its greatest debt to my wife, Deborah Baker. But for her urging, I would never have committed myself to the many months of labor that went into the writing of this piece; nor would I be in a position to publish it today, in this form, if it were not for her editing. I owe her many, many thanks.

THE MARCH OF THE NOVEL THROUGH HISTORY

[>] "It has to be pointed out": Nirad Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch! (New York: Addison-Wesley 1987), p. 155.

[>] "To be up to date": Ibid., p. 156.

[>] These stories left their mark: C. E. Dimock, in The Literature of India, an Introduction, ed. C. E. Dimock et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).

[>] "Those who are familiar": Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Essays and Letters, in Bankim Rachanavali (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, n.d.).

[>] "Notwithstanding all that has been written": Ibid., pp. 192–93.

"obtain some knowledge": Ibid.

[>] "The house of Mathur Ghose": Rajmohun's Wife, in Bankim Rachanavali, ed. Jogesh Chandra Bagal (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, n.d.), pp. 52–53.

"Madhav therefore immediately hurried": Ibid., p. 17.

THE FUNDAMENTALIST CHALLENGE

[>] "As far as the Vietnamese": This quotation is from an anonymously authored UNTAC document entitled "Interview with Khat Sali, Sihanoukville (9–10/1/1992)."

[>] "at present several dozen people": Amnesty International, "Pakistan: Use and Abuse of Blasphemy Laws," July 24, 1994.

"In a number of cases": Ibid.

[>] "In a refugee camp": Internet report, n.d.

THE GHOSTS OF MRS. GANDHI

[>] "began with the arrival": People's Union for Democratic Rights and People's Union for Civil Liberties, "Who Are the Guilty?: Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November 1984," New Delhi, 1984, p. 2.

"Some people, the neighbors": Veena Das, "Our Work to Cry, Your Work to Listen," in Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South East Asia, ed. Veena Das (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990).

[>] "The decision to perceive": Dzevad Karahasan, "Literature and War," In Sarajevo, Exodus of a City (New York: Kodansha, 1994).

DANCING IN CAMBODIA

[>] The account of the royal dance troupe's visit to France with King Sisowath is based on reports in Le Petit Provençal, Le Petit Marseillais, and Le Figaro; on the Rapport-Général, Exposition Coloniale National de Marseille, 15 Avril–18 Novembre 1906 (1907), and its accompanying volume, La Chambre de Commerce de Marseille et l'Exposition Coloniale de 1906 (1908), published by the Chamber of Commerce, Marseille; and on the following letters and documents in the Archives d'Outre-Mer at Aix-en-Provence: Résident-Supérieur in Phnom Penh to Hanoi, May 30, 1905 (re. princes' scholarships to study in France) (GGI 2576); Governor-General to the Minister of Colonies in Paris, April 5, 1906 (GGI 5822); report, F. Gautret, July 1906 (GGI 6643); Minister of Colonies to F. Gautret, Paris, July 18, 1906 (GGI 6643); Fête du 5 Juillet, 1906, en l'honneur de SM le Roi du Cambodge …(Ministry of Colonies, 1906); F. Gautret, to the Governor-General, Hanoi, August 20, 1906, Saigon (GGI 6643); itinerary, Sejour de Sa Majesté Sisowath, Roi du Cambodge en France (GGI 6643); Résident-Supérieur to Governor-General, January 18, 1907, containing a French translation of the royal proclamation on the king's voyage, issued under the signatures of King Sisowath and five ministers (GGI 5822); Minister Thiounn to Résident-Supérieur, July 9, 1907 (GGI 2576); correspondence between the Cour des Comptes, Paris, Saigon, and Phnom Penh on expenses of the royal entourage (1901–11), including Minister Thiounn's response (August 13, 1910) (GGI 15606). The quotations in section 8 are from Rodin et l'Extrême Orient (Musée Rodin, Paris, 1979), and from Frederic V. Grunefeld's Rodin; A Biography (New York: Holt, 1987). Biographical and other details on Cambodian politics and history are mainly from Milton E. Osborne's The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia: Rule and Response (1859–1950) (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969); David Chandler's Brother Number One; A Political Biography of Pol Pot (Westview, Conn.: Oxford University Press, 1992); Ben Kiernan's How Pol Pot Came to Power: A History of Communism in Kampuchea, 1930–1975 (London: Verso, 1985), and Elizabeth Becker's When the War Was Over: The Voices of Cambodia's Revolution and Its People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986).