There is a Short Period in Everyone’s Life when His Character is Fixed for Ever...Eric Blair Goes to Burma

Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace, 2000:

"...The British occupation had changed everything: Burma had been quickly integrated into the Empire, forcibly converted into a province of British India. Courtly Mandalay was now a bustling commercial hub; resources were being exploited with an energy and efficiency hitherto undreamt of. The Mandalay palace had been refurbished to serve the conquerors’ recondite pleasures: the west wing had been converted into a British Club; the Queen’s Hall of Audience had now become a billiard room; the mirrored walls were lined with months-old copies of Punch and the Illustrated London News; the gardens had been dug up to make room for tennis courts and polo grounds; the exquisite little monastery in which Thebaw had spent his novitiate had become a chapel where Anglican priests administered the sacrament to British troops. Mandalay, it was confidently predicted, would soon become the Chicago of Asia; prosperity was the natural destiny of a city that guarded the confluence of two of the world’s mightiest waterways, the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin..."

 George Orwell, 'Burmese Days': "There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed for ever." 

This is an epigraph of new novel by Paul Theroux "BURMA SAHIB", fictional account of Orwell's life in Burma from 1922 to 1927.

I have read Burmese Days, 1934 after I lived in Assam for about three years (1989-1992) and I could relate to a few things in the book easily. But in the end the novel left me sad. 

It is said that young Orwell's experiences in Burma made him the writer and thinker who became George Orwell

Reviewing Theroux's new book for TLS,  Alice Jolly writes:

"... Although Paul Theroux allows himself no authorial rhetoric or contemporary critique, Burma Sahib is a work of profound relevance to the present day for the way in which it demonstrates how human beings become enslaved to systems, institutions and social codes. It shows how such systems work to obscure the facts and make it impossible for the majority to rebel or even question. Blair is aware that the British Empire is a “racket” and a “colossal bluff”, but he can do little to oppose it. Only later, in his writing, does he begin to challenge it; and then only at a distance."

 

Eric Blair at 19 (Credit...Private Collection, via Bridgeman Art Library)

Mohammed Rafi@100

 

 With Naushad on harmonium

with Geeta Dutt and O P Nayyar

The 1737 Calcutta Cyclone...French Ship on Shore Having Enormous Crocodile

 Amitav Ghosh, 'The Hungry Tide', 2004:

"...“In Kolkata tens of thousands of dwellings fell instantly to the ground — Englishmen’s palaces as well as houses and huts. The steeple of the English church toppled over and came crashing down. They say there was not a building in the city left with four walls intact. Bridges were blown away, wharves were carried off by the surging waters, godowns were emptied of their rice, and gunpowder in the armories was scattered by the wind. On the river were many ships at anchor, large and small, from many nations. Among them there were two English ships of five hundred tons each. The wind picked them up and carried them over the tops of trees and houses; it threw them down a quarter of a mile from the river. People saw huge barges fluttering in the air like paper kites. They say that over twenty thousand vessels were lost that day, including boats, barges, dinghies and the like. And even among those that remained, many strange things happened.”

“A French ship was driven on shore with some of its cargo intact. The day after the storm, the remaining members of the crew went out into the fields to try to salvage what they could from the wreckage. A crewman was sent down into one of the holds to see what had been spared. After he had been gone a while, his mates shouted to ask him what was taking him so long. There was no answer, so they sent another man. He too fell quickly silent, as did the man who followed him. Now panic set in and no one else would agree to go until a fire had been lit to see what was going on. When the flame was kindled they saw that the hold was filled with water, and swimming in this tank was an enormous crocodile — it had killed those three men. “And this, my friend and comrade, is a true story, recorded in documents stored in the British Museum, the very place where Marx wrote Das Kapital.”