Soumen Chatterjee
Assistant Teacher, Barabeli Junior High School (Govt-aided), West Bengal
E-mail: soumenchatterjee94@gmail.com
Special Issue on Diseases, Death and Disorder, 2020
Abstract
From time immemorial human societies have been regularly hit by epidemics that have taken a heavy toll on human lives. During these moments of crisis each and every individual has to compromise with the situation. Even several royal personages out of their necessities shed their royal ego and compromise with the situation. They undergo a kind of metamorphosis and behave in a totally different way with the common mass during or after these epidemics. In this paper taking Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace (2000) as my case study, I shall try to explore how the royal Burmese family who were exiled in Ratnagiri transformed themselves at the time of the outbreak of plague. The radical transformation of the Queen from a monster to a mother is the focus of this paper. In fact, this paper will show that identity is “a matter of becoming as well as of being”. Apart from this, in this paper I will also critically investigate how due to internal migration during the time of epidemics, villages grow up in an unplanned manner.
Keywords: Epidemic, Plague, Identity, Royal Ego, Transformation
Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace (2000) is a multilayered historical novel that covers the period of one hundred and eleven years: from November 1885 to December 1996, from the time of the Third Anglo-Burmese war that caused the Fall of Konbaung dynasty to the rise of the notion of globalization. Like most of the novels of Ghosh, The Glass Palace is also an epic “family saga” (Thieme 269) that moves between Burma, India and Malay and it mainly concerns itself with the crisscrossing stories of the three families: the deposed king of Burma and his retinue of servants, Rajkumar and Dolly, and the family of Saya John, mentor of Rajkumar. Here, Ghosh, in his own characteristic way, has particularly concentrated on different historical events and their impact on his characters. The novel is indeed a chronicle of how historical events shape and reshape individual and collective identities and it also closely examines the self-fashioning of individuals in the wake of emerging situation. As Anshuman A. Mondal points out, “the novel’s centre of gravity lies in Burma” (15), naturally the fortunes of the royal Burmese family have been meticulously scrutinized here by Ghosh. How the last Burmese king and the queen led their lives in the Glass Palace before their defeat, how they passed their days after deposition in their place of exile, how they transformed themselves in order to cope with the changing situation have been presented here in details.
As far as Ghosh’s presentation of the Konbaung dynasty is concerned, it is not a figment of his imagination. On the contrary it is based on meticulous historical research. There were two Anglo-Burmese wars before and in these two wars the Burmese kings having been defeated, have to shift their capital from Ava to Mandalay. In Mandalay Thebaw’s father, the august King Mindon has been unwilling to make Thebaw king as he was well aware of the limitations of Thebaw as a leader. But fate intervenes in the familiar guise of a mother-in-law, Alenandaw Queen who happens to be Thebaw’s step mother too and she arranges for Thebaw to marry her three daughters. Under the ruthless leadership of Thebaw’s mother-in-law, Thebaw surpasses his forty-six rivals and becomes the King of Burma in the year 1878. Out of his three wives Thebaw falls in love with his middle wife, Supayalat who was the fiercest and most willful of all the princess of the palace. In order to make his throne thorn less Supayalat orders the execution of other princes, the half-brothers of Thebaw mercilessly. Actually under her leadership a heavy carnage has been conducted at that time:
She ordered the killing of every member of the Royal family who might ever be considered a threat to her husband. Seventy nine princes were slaughtered on her orders, some of them are new-born infants, and some too old to walk. To prevent the spillage of royal blood she had had them wrapped in carpets and bludgeoned to death. The corpses were thrown into the nearest river. (GP 39)
The historical documentation of the reign of King Thebaw by Sudha Shah also supports this ruthless episode of execution of the royal family members after the accession of Thebaw. She recounts this episode in her meticulously researched study entitled as The King in Exile in the following way:
For three days starting on15th February 1879, about eighty members of the royal family—princes, queens and princesses—were killed, including Prince Thahgaya (on whom Supayalat had had a teenage crush) and the Thonze and Mekkhara Princes. . . The royal relatives were killed in the traditional manner: princes bludgeoned to death by blows on the back of their neck, and queens and princess by blows on their throat. (Shah 18)
Apart from this there has been strict restriction in the royal family. None has been allowed to enter the royal palace without prior permission. If anyone enters the palace without prior permission, s/he has to face execution: “Just one day earlier the crime of entering the palace would have resulted in summary execution” (GP 34). The audacity of looking at the queen directly in the face will lead a commoner into the prison. The royal family has also put absolute stress on the strict maintenance of the royal protocol: shikos, crawls and others. The Queen has not cared a fig for any breach of royal protocol. Again King Thebaw and Queen Supayalat have no contact with the common people living in their kingdom. The King has not gone out of his palace after his accession: “He’d been crowned at the age of twenty and in the seven years of his reigh had neven once left the palace compound.” (GP 37) On the other hand the Queen being the absolute authority of Burma has been terribly monstrous. The common people of Mandalay hated her for her ferocity, cruelty and ruthlessness: “Through all the years of the Queen’s reigh the townsfolk had hated her for her cruelty, feared her for her ruthlessness and courage.” (GP 34)
After the defeat King Thebaw, Queen Supayalat along with their entourage has been sent to India as their place of exile. Actually being afraid of Thebaw’s “symbolic power to galvanize resistance amongst the Burmese” (Mondal 117) the British colonizers have trapped the royal family by the political logic of imperialism and sent them to India as prisoners. Before being sent to the place of their permanent exile, they have to stay in Madras where “none of the girls felt at home”(GP 51) at the initial shock of displacement and seven Burmese girls have been sent back to Burma. Even Queen Supayalat has to negotiate with her royal identity as she has to accept the ruling of the British officer, Mr. Cox who was in charge of the Royal entourage. Then they have been shifted to Ratnagiri, a spatially insignificant place in Maharastra. The insignificance of Ratnagiri points out to the insignificant stature of Thebaw after dethronement and deposition. In Ratnagiri the King along with his entourage stay at the Outram House that has been located quite far away from the din and bustle of the city dwellers. In Ratnagiri King Thebaw passes his time by looking at the bay watchfully and gradually becomes a legendary figure-“Ratnagiri’s watchful king”. Queen Supayalat also gradually undergoes transformation. As the Royal couple faces financial problems, they have to manage their household with minimal servants. Actually, in Ratnagiri the Royal Burmese family has to stay amid shabbiness and in the midst of extreme poverty. Meenakshi Mukherjee in her review of The Glass Palace has also pointed this fact as she observes, “Forgotten and abandoned, the king and queen led a life of increasing shabbiness and obscurity in an unfamiliar territory…” (Mukherjee, Rev. of The Glass Palace). But they gradually cope with the situation.
This situation becomes gruesome at the outbreak of the plague in Ratnagiri. The motion of the city comes to a halt as a result of this terrible outbreak of the plague: “The streets emptied. Many people left town; others locked themselves into their houses” (GP 81). As the Outram House has been situated far from the city, there has not been any chance of contagion. But as the terror of the pandemic spreads, the local servants, sweepers and coolies who have been working in the Outram House remain absent. Consequently, the drainage system and the water supply system of the Outram House break down:
Outram House found itself besieged with neglect. The bungalow had no sewerage and no water supply. The toilets had to be emptied daily of nightsoil by sweepers; water had to be carried in buckets from a nearby stream. But with the outbreak of the plague, the sweepers stooped coming and the coolies’ water buckets lay upturned beside the kitchen. (GP 81)
As servants have stopped coming in the Outram House, Dolly has to manage the whole household with the help of a few servants who still live on the estate. In these moments of crisis, Dolly fills up the tanks of Queen’s bedroom with the help of the coachman, Sawant, but “there was no water for the king and the toilets were very nearly unusable” (GP 82).Then at the suggestion of Sawant Dolly appeals to the Queen to let the servants build a few rooms around the compound, beyond the walls. The Queen also at once realizes the feasibility of this proposal. She realizes that if the servants stay around the compound, they will not come in contact with the plague victims of the town and thereby will be able to maintain social and physical distance from the victims. Resultantly this disease will not spread in others. In this way the royal family and the servants will lead an insular life, away from contagion. The Queen also realizes that if they stay outside the compound, they will be available to the royal household at any time. Thus the daily schedule of the royal house will be carried out smoothly without any break. So she gives Dolly consent to this proposal: “The Queen turned back to Dolly. ‘I have decided. Let them build their shelters on the hill. Tell Sawant to let them know that they can go ahead’”. (GP 83)
Consequently within a few days the coolies, sweepers, ayahs and cooks come from the town to the hill and build their houses around the compound. The daily routine of the royal household also goes on in its usual motion: “within days a basti arose around the compound, a settlement of shacks and shanties. In the bathrooms of Outram House, water began to flow; the toilets were clean again” (GP 83). This action of Queen Supayalat prompted by the then situation also uplifts her image. The local people deify her and consider her as their guardian, their protector. In fact, “overnight she became a guardian goddess, a protector of the unfortunate, an incarnate devi who had rescued hundreds from the ravages of the plague” (GP 83). Moreover, this deification of Queen Supayalat by the local Indians destabilizes her identity as the cruel Burmese queen and she becomes a benevolent goddess, a kind mother who spreads her helping hands to the helpless and shelter less plague victims. Probably to the local Indians she becomes an emblem of the epidemic goddess, Hariti. In this way Ghosh rejects a fixed or ultimate referent for identity and shows that identity is “a matter of becoming as well as of being” (Hall 224).
Even when this epidemic subsides these people show no signs of returning to their original old homes situated in the congested lanes of the town. As the atmosphere around the Outram House has been favorable and spacious for living they begin to stay there. When Dolly talks this matter with the Queen, she also decides to let the settlers stay there. Just like a mother, she always remains conscious of these people and treats them as her own sons. She also anticipates their condition in case another epidemic breaks out in near future: “What if there’s another epidemic?’ The Queen said” (GP 83). Actually there is now a sea change in her attitude towards the common people as her royal ego has now humbled down and she feels for the people and understands their condition. In fact, in these moments of crisis she frees herself from the narrow confines of ego and wins the membership of a large transnational family. That is how she reinvents and refashions herself and she gives utmost importance to her community. Even the princesses who have to lead their lives within the palace in Burma mix with the children of this basti freely and the Queen does not oppose to this free mixing of the royal princess with the commoners. The invisible bar between the princesses and the commoners melts under the pressure of the situation and new familial ties across culture and class evolve into strongly syncretic features:
They spent their days running around the compound with their new friends, discovering new games. When they were hungry they would run into their friends’ shacks and ask for something to eat; in the afternoons, when it was too hot to play outside, they would fall asleep on the mud floors of the palm-thatched shanties” (GP 83).
In short, the way of life of the royal family is altered with the change of situation and fresh affinities emanate from this cross cultural, cross border mélange. In fact, Ghosh here contests “the concept of the fixity of familial space and focuses on its fluid contours” (Bhattacharjee 145). Actually home making continues even in the context of epidemics and the familiar space is created even in the transnational location. In this way, Ghosh has addressed “the vital problematic of the settling and resettling of communities and individuals amid the confluence of nations and nationalities” (Moral 148).
The premonition of the Queen proves true as after some years there is another outbreak of plague in Ratnagiri and this time more and more people who have been living in the rat-infested town areas moved up the hill and build permanent settlement around the Outram House. To quote Walter Sadgun Desai, “Again, plague had been ravaging for about five years in Ratnagiri and in the surrounding villages. As a result many huts had been constructed in close proximity to Thibaw’s house for the use of those who had to desert their rat-infested homes and also those constructed by Thibaw’s numerous servants” (60). This exodus of people from the town to the hill turns the basti around the compound into “a little village in its own right with winding lanes and corner shops” (GP 84). But this newly formed village has neither any plan of sewage clearance nor any sanitation facility; resultantly here and there heaps of garbage have been dumped that emits foul smell which engulfs the adjacent Outram House: “But the little settlement had no provision for sewage and no other facilities. When the breeze turned, a smell of excrement and refuse engulfed Outram House, wafting up from the ravines on the far sides of the bluff” (GP 84). This is how Ghosh has interlinked the outbreak of an epidemic with the formation of village that is basically man made. Thus outbreak of epidemics also alters the structures of society as new human habitations are formed at the time of exigencies. Epidemiological upheavals actually produce disarray in the social and demographical structures of a location.
In an interview with Frederick Luis Aldama, Ghosh once pointed out:
For me at some point it became very important that this book encapsulate in it the ways in which people cope with defeat, because this has really been our history for a long, long time: the absolute fact of defeat and the absolute fact of trying to articulate defeat to yourself and trying to build a culture around the centrality of defeat. . . But around defeat there’s love, there’s laughter, there’s happiness, you know? There are children. There’s faithfulness. This is what life is and I want my book to be true to that. (89)
So defeat is the common and universal lot of human life; but from time immemorial human beings with their resilience and indomitable spirit have been building their own culture, own identity, own way of life even after facing defeat. Similarly in The Glass Palace at the time of epidemic scores of people die out of plague and the usual motion of life comes to a halt for the time being. But this blow only changes the movement of life in new directions, drastically altering the socio-cultural mosaic of a location. Significantly this blow also provides new perception of realities to some individuals by widening their sensibilities to a great extent. And Ghosh with remarkable sociological insight has delved depth on the impact of an epidemic on the Royal Burmese family in order to point out how epidemics that take a heavy toll on human lives also alter the way of living of human beings and herein lies Ghosh’s uniqueness.
Works Cited
Bhattacharya,Sajalkumar. ““Live My Prince; Hold On to Your Life”: Issues of Transnational Life and Identity in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace.” In Pursuit of Amitav Ghosh: Some Recent Readings. Ed. Tapan Kumar Ghosh and Prasanta Bhattacharya. Hydrabad and New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2013. 143-159. Print.
Desai, W.S. Deposed King Thibaw of Burma in India,1885-1916. Bombay:Bharatiya Vidya Bhaban, 1967. Print.
Ghosh, Amitav. Interview by Frederick Luis Aldama. “An Interview with Amitav Ghosh.” World Literature Today: A Literary Quaterley of the University of Oklahoma 76.2 (2002):84-90. Print.
———-The Glass Palace. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1st Pub 2000. 12th Rpt 2005. Print.
Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. London: Lawrence& Wishart, 1990.Print.
Mondal, Anshuman A. Amitav Ghosh. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Print.
Moral, Rakhee. “ “In Time of the Breaking of Nations”: The Glass Palace as a Postcolonial Narrative. Amitav Ghosh: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Brinda Bose. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2003. 139-154.Print.
Mukherjee, Meenakshi. Rev of The Glass Palace. Web 27th April.2020.
www.amitavghosh.com<http://www.amitavghosh.com/glasspalace_r.html#gpm1_5
Shah, Sudha. The King in Exile: The Fall of the Royal Family in Burma. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2012. Print.
Thieme, John. “Amitav Ghosh.” A Companion to Indian Fiction in English. Ed. Pier Paolo Piciucco. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2004.251-275. Print.
Mr. Soumen Chatterjee is an assistant teacher in Barabeli Junior High School (Govt-aided) situated in West Bengal. He has completed his Post Graduation in English Literature and also completed Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching English. He has qualified UGC-NET in English literature. He has worked in Mahishadal Raj College under Faculty Development Programme for three sessions. He has contributed to some national and international journals and presented papers in West Bengal and other states.