NOTE 45 The narrator says that he too had earlier believed in the^e deceptive precepts. Th^ implication is that by using Tridib's concept of travelling, of 'using [one's] imagination with precision' (TSL, p. 124), The narf-ator has been able to effectively represent the contemporary Indian situation. Hence he says that unlike Tha'mma or his father, he has realised that maps are mirages and that Dhaka and Calcutta are essentially mirror-images of each other. But as he himself acknowledges elsewhere, such a symmetry only exists in the event of a war (TSL, p. 233). Thus, he is unable to account for the very different socio-political conditions of the two nations and formulates instead a definition of India characterised by a 'special quality of loneliness'. So, the narrator's own concept of 'travelling' also does not contribute to an accurate reconstruction of the material pressures which mark present-day India. By offering a contemplative interpretation of India, the narrator remains a subject to the ideology that fosters the illusion that individuals are world-makers. While I have a more detailed analysis elsewhere,15 what I hope to have established in my discussion is that Ghosh's self-representations are unable to register the many-layeredness of the cultural-historical formation of post-colonial India. The specific, complex and contradictory socio-economic conditions which shape class and gender identities in contemporary India are transformed in Ghosh's interpretation into certain universal values. This transformation performed by The Shadow Lines prevents it from offering a liberating and radical re-description of the post colonial context. I wish to thank Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana for her comments on earlier versions of this article. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines, Ravi Dayal Publishers, Delhi, 1989. All subsequent references to this work, abbreviated as TSL, are indicated in the essay itself. 2. P.K. Dutta, 'Studies in Heterogeneity: A Reading of Two Recent Indo-Anglian Novels', Social Scientist^ (3), March 1990, pp. 61-70. 3. Ibid., p.70. 4. For an extended discussion see Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, Oxford University Press, New York, 1973. 5. Malini Bhattacharya, 'Utilitarianism and the Concept of Authorial Autonomy in Early Nineteenth-Century England', Economic and Political Weekly, 17(31), 31 July 1982, pp. 49-57. 6. J.M. Bernstein, The Philosophy of the Novel: Luckacs, Marxism and the Dialectics of form, Thompson Press, New Delhi, 1984, p. 180. 7 Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, 'On Literature as an Ideological Form', in Untying The Text, edited by Robert Young, Routfedge and Kegan Paul, (.ondon, 1989, pp. 81-99.