About ‘The Hungry Tide’
ChrestomatherBon Bibi & Shah Jongoli, Sundarbans, 2000 Dear Amitav, I have no idea if you will get this message or if I will get a reply-but as…
A Picture from ‘Lataifa’
I recently received this request from a university student who wrote to say that she was writing a paper on In An Antique Land: 'It would mean a…
A Conversation on Sustainability & Collapse at Stanford
On Dec 3, 2012, I visited a class on Sustainability and Collapse at Stanford. The course is taught jointly by Dr. Mark Zoback (Geophysics), Dr. Russell Berman (Comparative…
Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 11 of 11
Amitav GhoshDespite the mutual contempt and hostility, the tensions on the Lady Campbell remained within the bounds of what might have been described, in the English of the day,…
Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 10 of 11
Cadet Robert Ramsay's diary§ entry for January 4, 1825, describes further trouble on the Lady Campbell: “A lascar having struck the Serang was placed on the Poop; another…
Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 9 of 11
What was the texture of daily life aboard a ship with a large complement of lascars? The library of Western nautical fiction, vast as it is, has little…
Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 8 of 11
If a ship was a living thing for lascars, was it always conceived of in the feminine, as was the case with European sailors? It is impossible to…
Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 7 of 11
The Laskari dialect was profoundly eclectic in its influences, as befits a language that was used by such a richly varied assortment of people. Consider the names…
Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 6 of 11
By the time Lieutenant Thomas Roebuck compiled his lexicon of the Laskari language (An English And Hindostanee Naval Dictionary, first published in Calcutta in 1811) the dialect…
Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 5 of 11
Sampan, Sundarbans, 2005 Sailing vessels are perhaps the most beautiful, most environmentally benign machines the world has ever known. …