As I skimmed through my collection of books from India, I found many to look forward to. Whether it was the friendly and warm stories from R.K Narayan, or the modern, yet classic works from Jhumpa Lahiri, I found myself in many different worlds.
Then I saw a large book, whose dominance caught my attention. A book by Amitav Ghosh, “The Glass Palace.”
This would be the moment I would read it, but no—that never happened. In fact I didn’t read it till 6 months after, when my aunt and uncle finally reached their home in Hyderabad. And if I still delayed reading it, it would’ve become the biggest regret I ever had.
So, I did.
Before I start my essay on this book, I simply want to inform you of two things. The writing that you will soon read is simply my thoughts, not a judgmental backbone for your opinion. And if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend that you close this tab and do so.
The Glass Palace is very long, almost 600 pages. But it compensates for its size through the ink within.
The story is about a young boy from Burma, Rajkumar. It’s basically his life story, spanning almost a century. Along with Rajkumar stands another group of characters, who are the only people along with him to be prominent in the entire story.
The royal family in the glass palace.
If you think this is going to be a fantasy, you are wrong. Nobody, I repeat, nobody has a fairy tale happy ending. Not even a fourth through the book, the royal family are exiled from Burma by the British, who sentence them to house arrest in the west coast of India.
And there is never peace, except when Rajkumar thinks there is. The characters drag themselves through the Third Anglo-Burmese War, both the World Wars, and the generation gap in the 1960s.
It’s more of a tragic story though; people lose their loved ones, they run away from happiness only to continue living a sorrowful life, and the regrets they have are too many.
But the character’s trouble cannot outperform the author’s voiceprint.
All of these events are conveyed in smart-aleck writing, and the tone is ever-changing. Sometimes, it’s sarcastic, other times joyful.
As chapters go by, you become engulfed in the composition of the writer that you forget the fact that it’s the size of two stories combined. At the end, you are plunged into a deep limbo, rethinking how a character’s life went by, and how he/she could have changed it.
The Glass Palace is by no means an easy read, yet it isn’t a boring one. It’s a tale of a man, as he lives through many eras, and has to come to terms with his world.
In the end, I believe this is a necessary read if one wants to dwell upon British rule in Asia. It depicts the daily lives of many who had to survive the horrors of dictatorship, and the cruelty of greed. It’s a portrait of Burma, and the overabundant arguments that turned to war. It’s the story of a life, and how it deals with nature.
It’s a book about a family, and how they stay together.