Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma: Amitav Ghosh

I confess I read books in particular order. Sometimes I spot something in a bookstore and decide to pick it up for reading. At other times I read about a book and am curious about that writer or the theme. I think there has been such a hiatus in my active reading of books that I suddenly find myslef with a ton of unread books and authors, many of them Indian. Of course, many classics still remain unread, yet, it seems a little tantalizing when books by current or recent authors go by unread -- book after book...day after day...

Also, it is no secret that reading books becomes quite a challenge what with this business of earning a living which seems to interfere with so much, especially living itself...I can hardly read 20-30 pages a day, that is, if I get the time and have the inclination to read after work...

I picked up Amitav Ghosh's Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma because I have been quite fascinated by Indian travel writing; I had also started on his other book set in Egypt, In An Antique Land.

This is a book of three essays, two set in Cambodia and one in Burma. The first essay, called Dancing in Cambodia begins with an event in May 1906, when the king of Cambodia, King Sisowath, sailed to France acompanied by a troupe of dancers. The details are fascinating and the reconstruction of the event classic. Obviously this must have been a result of some painstaking research and some evidence of cotemporaneous journals and articles consulted is available in the dense page of notes at the end of the essay (which mentions various publications as Le Figaro, Le Petit Marseilles among others and a study of many correpondances between various parties). There are some charming details of the extravagances of the king, his indulgences and the incredulous reactions of the French, and of course the effect the slender, wispy and aesthetically appealing dancers had on Rodin, who attempted to capture their fluid movements on paper.

The king and the dancers provide the link to Cambodia's modern history and its misfortune of having suffered at the hands of Pol-Pot. Ghosh meets Chea Samy, a dance instructor in Phnom Penh in the School of Arts, who also happened to be Pol Pot's sister-in-law. He later goes to visit her at her home and sees her husband, Pol Pot's brother. There is nothing extraordinarily revelatory in such meetings, as later, with another of Pol Pot's brother in his ancestral village in Kompong Thom. Hardly any wonder that Pol Pot's family, from whom he had been apart for several years, did not know that the head of the Khmer Rouge was young Saloth Sar, which was Pol Pot's original name.

Another interesting link between Sisowath and the Khmer Rouge exists in the form of the Lycee Sisowath that Sisowath had established to educate the Cambodians on the French pattern. Many of the future funcionaries and leaders of the Khmer Rouge had studied at the Lycee. These people had later gone one for further studies, where they had been influenced by the French Communist party. Ghosh outlines some of the figures and incidents that were instrumental in the formation of the Khmer Rouge philosphy. Ghosh also meets a brother of Khieu Sampan, Khieu Seng Kim. Sampan was an important spokesperson of the Khmer Rouge and a trusted lieutenant of the party. When the Khmer Rouge cadres first marched into Phnom Penh, Seng Kim literally throws himself on the procession, announcing that he was their leader Khieu Sampan's brother, but was brusuqely told that the revolution did not recognize families. So he and his family too were herded off the city to work in work-sites like everyone else...

The next essay, Stories in Stones, has the the grand temple-complex of Angkor Wat as its setting. Ghosh befriends a conservation worker called Kong Sarim who, other than providing some details of Angkor Wat, also shares his experience during the rule of the Khmer Rouge, how he had to survive by his wits...none too pretty, such accounts...

The final essay is set in Burma, a place which has some familial associations for Ghosh. It was a country very highly spoken of by his relatives, praised for its unstinted courtesy and warmth towards foreigners and for its general prosperity ("It was a golden land."). In an attempt to get an answer to the question how it slid from being such a wonderful country to one that closed itself to the world and almost went backwards in time. The answer, provided by an ex-functionary in the Burmese bureaucracy ( a Burmese-Bengali) shed light on Burma's recent political history. It charted the rise of charismatic general Aung Sang (father of Aung Suu Kyi), his assasination followed by the leadership of U Nu and then by General Ne Win. But popular uprising against the military rule in 1988 resulted in a reprisal by the top military brass, asnd since then Burma has been ruled by a causus of generals. Ghosh meets with Aung Suu Kyi, who was put under house arrest by the ruling caucus. Quite obviously she is a force to be reckoned with and highly popular.

While in Burma a news item of the Burmese Army's fight with an ethnic group called the Karennis caught his eye. It made him wonder, "What is Burma?" He wanted to understand the divisions within the country, the distances and the unifying factors. (This seemed a little starneg to me because Ghosh does not draw any parallele with an Indian nation-state identity here...I mean, the same question can be asked about India...maybe he had that at the back of his mind...) At any rate, it is the hallmark of thinkers such as Ghosh that there is a very short distance between their thought and action towards a resolution of that thought. He travels east wards towards the Burma-Thai border in the mountanous zone which is the homeland of the Karennis. These people have been fighting a battle for their independance for more than 40 years now. What emerges from his meeting and stay among the Karennis is their fierce independance and their almost "normal" lifestyle amidst all the fighting.

One does wonder what Ghosh is searching for? Is this merely a quest to understand Burma's ethnic and national composition or is there a larger question he is following? I could not discern anything beyond the humanistic nature of Ghosh that prompted him to go into the jungles with the Karennis. I beleive that for such people, even the exploration of specific incidents somehow ties into larger patterns, even if this is not a conscious process.