The Glass Palace

"The Glass Palace" (2000) is a historical novel by the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. Set in Burma, India, and Malay, the novel spans a century from the fall of the Ava Kingdom in Mandalay through the Second World War to modern times. Focusing mainly on the early 20th Century, it explores a broad range of issues, ranging from the changing economic landscape of Burma and India, to pertinent questions about what constitutes a nation and how these change as society is swept along by the tide of modernity.

ummary

Part One - Mandalay

The novel starts with a boy called Rajkumar running through the city of Mandalay to find a woman called Ma Cho. He's come from India and reaches Burma with a bright entrepreneurial spirit and a hunger for success.

Rajkumar's work as an assistant on Ma Cho's food stall takes place in the shadow of the Glass Palace, in which King Thibaw and his wife reside with their daughters, the princesses. As the British invasion comes to topple the incumbent regime, everyday citizens of Mandalay are able to enter the enshrined building, and it is then that Rajkumar spots Dolly, one of the princesses' assistants, falling instantly in love. However the entire Royal Family and their entourage are quickly extradited by the British and forced into house arrest hundreds of miles away on the West coast of India.

Part Two - Ratnagiri

Whilst Rajkumar's quickly evolving career begins to take shape with the help of Saya John, a successful teak merchant (Ma Cho's sometime lover), we are given a glimpse into the awkward beginnings of a new life for King Thebaw and his family as they try to settle into the port town of Ratnagiri, north of Goa. Events conspire to weave Outram House (the name of the residence the British provide to house the family and what remains of their assistants) more firmly into the life of Ratnagiri than had been expected. King Thebaw is revered by the local community, and in time the family come to feel secure and even happy in their new surroundings. The arrival of a new Collector stirs up feelings of resentment towards the colonial regime, but Uma, the Collector's headstrong wife, is able to help bridge the gap by befriending Dolly.

Meanwhile, Rajkumar has been enduring the hardships of the teak trade, having witnessed man and beast working together on an epic scale as elephants transport large volumes of wood down from the forests for sale into the British Empires's vastly expanding markets. Being the opportunist that he is, Rajkumar starts to make his own way in world after receiving advice from his new friend and colleague Doh Say. Borrowing cash from Saya John, he makes the journey to India to recruit poverty-stricken village-dwellers into the comparatively lucrative (yet undoubtedly perilous) world of early oil-mining in Burma. Having made enough money this way, Rajkumar does what has been his dream for some time: buy a timber-yard of his own, with Doh Say as business partner.

Having built a more than modest commercial empire, Rajkumar had one piece of unfinished business: to track down the only girl he'd ever loved, Dolly. Through an Indian connection in Rangoon (Yangon), Rajkumar makes contact with Ratnagiri via Uma, and is accordingly granted an audience with the Collector and his wife over a meal that of course stiffly conforms to colonial best practice. To his surprise, Dolly is present, and after some drama, he finally persuades her to leave the family she has been exiled with, and return with him to Burma as his wife.

Part Three - The Money Tree

Saya John prides himself on being able to spot the next big commodity, and on their return to Rangoon, he hands Rajkumar and Dolly a small clump of odd elastic material: rubber.

Excerpt (First 2 Paragraphs of Chapter 1)

"For his age, Rajkumar was well travelled. The boat he worked on was a coastal craft that generally kept to open waters, plying the long length of shore that joined Burma to Bengal. Rajkumar had been to Chittagong and Bassein and any number of towns and villages in between. But in all his travels he had never come across thoroughfares like those in Mandalay. He was accustomed to lanes and alleys that curled endlessly around themselves so that you could never see beyond the next curve. Here was something new: a road that followed a straight, unvarying course, bringing the horizon right into the middle of habitation. "When the fort's full immensity revealed itself, Rajkumar came to a halt in the middle of the road. The citadel was a miracle to behold, with its mile-long walls and its immense moat. The crenellated ramparts were almost three storeys high, but of a soaring lightness, red in color, and topped by ornamented gateways with seven-tiered roofs. Long straight roads radiated outwards from the walls, forming a neat geometrical grid. So intriguing was the ordered pattern of these streets that Rajkumar wandered far afield, exploring. It was almost dark by the time he remembered why he'd been sent to the city. He made his way back to the fort's western wall and asked for Ma Cho."

References

*cite web
url=http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/02/11/reviews/010211.11mishrat.html
title=There'll Always Be an England in India
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