9.5-day-late deep-fried shit on a stick

[tsukikage]

Nastassja A.K. Riemermann

Professor Steigman

English Composition 1012

10 March 2007

Unconventional Rhetorical Approaches in The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi

In the composition classes that most every college-educated person was at some point required to take, we are taught a few basic concepts which are taken to be more-or-less infallible, such as that you should not do things to reduce your credibility in the eyes of the reader, and that you should not directly contradict your thesis. In some ways these concepts are a matter of common sense. However, if a writer has mastered these basic concepts and skilled enough to effectively move onto more subtle approaches, acknowledging these as being simply “rules of thumb” and occasionally deviating from them can enhance their argument.

In the essay The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi by Amitav Ghosh, the author tells of his experiences in during the extremely violent anti-Sikh riots in late October and November of 1984. The point of his essay is that writers have made an artistic decision “to perceive literally everything as an aesthetic phenomenon”, rather than documenting the relatively undramatic resistance to violence that occurs every day. Because people are significantly influenced by the literature they read, many have come to believe that the world’s violence is inevitable, and have become indifferent to it. He admits that it is quite difficult for a writer to determine how exactly to go about writing about violence, both because if one were to write carelessly it could potentially cost lives, and because modern artistic conventions expect violence to be portrayed as spectacle, belittling resistance to it “mere sentimentality”. Basically, he believes that many authors have trouble figuring out how to “accommodate both violence and the civilized, willed response to it”.

However, part of how Ghosh shows that writing of violence as spectacle is detrimental to properly recognizing the resistance to such violence is by making careful use of such spectacular, and impersonal, descriptions of what he witnessed in 1984. The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi is essentially organized chronologically, describing the progression of events from the time shortly before Ghosh heard of Indira Gandhi’s death to the end of his time volunteering with the relief effort, until the time at which he was writing the essay. Throughout the essay, Ghosh slowly transitions from focusing on impersonal descriptions of the violence he directly or indirectly witnesses to focusing on very personal, human descriptions of resistance to this violence. One of the best examples of his impersonal descriptions of the violence is when, in paragraphs 32 and 33, he describes the sight as he is on his way to his friend’s house to use his phone.

In every direction, columns of smoke rose slowly into a limpid sky. Sikh houses and businesses were burning. Sikh houses and businesses were burning. The fires were so carefully targeted that they created an effect quite different from that of a general conflagration: it was like looking upward into the vault of some vast pillared hall.

The columns of smoke increased in number even as I stood outside watching.

Honestly, this is an eerily beautiful scene, but it is also incredibly impersonal, as if he is the only person in the world at that moment, walking through an art museum filled with pictures of war; with no mobs to stop or lives to save.

However, as he starts describing the times that he or those around him work to save Sikhs from being murdered, he stops describing his surroundings as much and starts focusing on the people who are intervening and who are receiving intervention: their clothes, their stature, their bravery. In paragraph 78, for example, he describes one particular march in which he participated. He says that he has forgotten most of the details of this march, except for one scene when it seemed it was inevitable that they would be attacked, but somehow they were saved.

And then something happened that I have never completely understood. Nothing was said; there was no signal, nor was there any break in the rhythm of our chanting. But suddenly all the women in our group – and the women made up more than half of the group’s numbers – stepped out and surrounded the men; their saris and kameezes became a thin, fluttering barrier, a wall around us. They turned to face the approaching men, challenging them, daring them to attack.

The thugs took a few more steps toward us and then faltered, confused. A moment later, they were gone.

Later in the essay Ghosh comments “When I think of the women starting down the mob, I am not filled with a writerly wonder. I am reminded of my gratitude for being saved from injury. What I saw at first first hand […] was not the horror of violence but the affirmation of humanity.” As we can see, at the times that Ghosh is most affected by the humanity of the situation, he focuses the least on violence and awe.

Another unconventional approach Ghosh uses in The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi is to occasionally discredit himself, or make himself seem like he is not in the position to say the things he does. As early as the third paragraph, he portrays himself as naive and passive. He describes a time that he read a passage by V.S. Naipaul, who he considers a truly first-rate author. The passage speaks of a time Naipaul was in a hotel room, looking down on marchers on the street below, and thinking about how it is simply not in his nature to join crowds, no matter how much he longs to. Ghosh then writes “I remembered that passage because I believed that I, too, was not a joiner”. At another point in Ghosh’ essay he admits that his role in the Citizen’s Unity Front (the organization created to bring relief to the victims of the anti-Sikh riots) was minor, and that he left the Front relatively early on.

Both of these to some extent make us wonder “Well, if you didn’t do much to help, then why should we?” But he avoids this final conclusion by showing us the small ways in which he did help. He did distribute supplies to those in need. The small group of protesters that he did join caused a mob to back off. The Front he joined published a pamphlet that he believed would do no good eventually played its role in the Indian government compensating some of the survivors. So in the end, rather than discrediting Ghosh, his occasional belittling of himself works to show readers that even if they think they cannot do anything to help – even if they assume that they cannot possibly be joiners – that “if Ghosh did it, so can we”.

Although it is important for budding writers to master conventional writing approaches before moving on to more tricky and subtle approaches, I think it is important to expose beginning writers to pieces of writing that use such approaches so that they do not become mistaken and come to believe that basic approaches are the only good approaches. If they become too solid in the methods they have always used, they will become unable to turn away from them and further develop their writing abilities. Because Ghosh makes careful and effective use of such rare and counter-intuitive rhetorical devices, such as going against his own thesis that writers should not write of violent spectacle and aesthetic, and belittling himself to the point of near-discreditation, I believe that The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi would make an excellent example for a high-school English class.

If that is not the biggest piece of shit I have ever written, I don't know what is. Plus, I automatically lost *counts* 27 or 30 points (depending on if she docks me another day for turning it in a few minutes after midnight) out of 80 for turning it in 9 (or 10) days late, and this paper is worth 20% of my final grade in the class.
But at least it's done?