Frankly, I had reservations about Amitav Ghosh's 'The Glass palace' before I got around to reading it. I have never doubted Ghosh's strength as a writer or for that matter, his skill as an adroit and meticulous researcher.But as a story-teller, he is sometimes a tad slow and dragging, and not always a smooth read. Amazingly, this time, despite the complexity of the material, Ghosh is at his best in terms of readability. I have never had his work so vivid and riveting. Part history and part family saga, it proves to be his magnum opus, and holds the readers' interest almost to the end.
The novel opens in Burma with the British force forcing the King Thebaw out of his country. The king and his family are exiled in Ratnagiri, a small district down in India. From then on, the noble family's ordeal of captivity begins, and it takes the course of being gradually jaded and faded, with wilful neglect from the British Government. The days of glamour and luxury gone, the king keeps idling away his time with a telescope and the queen seething with impotent anger and resentment. Then one day, they hit a low when the eldest of three princesses gets pregnant by the coachman attached to the family.
The poignant part of this episode is, however, provided by the Bengali Collector Mr. Dey who was entrusted with the charge of looking after the king's family. As the scandal of the first princess makes its way to Bombay, the British Government sits up and reprimands the Collector for his dereliction of duty. Dey is also ordered to return to Bombay. The Collector, of course a scapegoat, does not follow the order; instead still smarting under the humiliation, he takes a boat to row out to the near-by sea.
"He rowed once across the bay and turned around. He felt oddly exhilarated. The gap between the two arms of the bay began to beckon...He scarcely noticed that his craft had veered from his trajectory, that its nose had turned westwards, pointing towards the opening of the bay. It was as though the shell had been reclaimed by the spirit of some other, the depated official, as though it were steering itself."
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