Over three decades, Ghosh has produced a brilliant series of consistently smart, consistently exploratory novels. He’s at Ohtani-level, his ambition made it all the more unrealistic. Dude’s always swinging for the fences.
Which brings us to Ghosh’s latest novel. How to describe the wild “Ghost-Eye”?
“Ghost-Eye” is about Varsha, a 3-year-old girl from Calcutta in 1969 who, shortly after the moon landing and Ho Chi Minh’s death, announces to her wealthy Marwari Hindu family that she is neither a vegetarian nor their daughter. She claims to be a reincarnated young Bengali fisherman named Isha, which would be completely ridiculous if not for Varsha’s sudden supernatural expertise in river fish. She turns out to be somewhat of a prodigy, able to see from a distance and tell the future, and perhaps other things.
“Ghost-Eye” is about Shoma Bose, a “highly qualified therapist and psychologist” who has previously worked with “children who remember past lives”. She tries to help Varsha/Isha and confirms once and for all the reality of “types of reincarnation”, as academic literature calls these matters. Shoma receives vital assistance from a variety of test fish and her highly skeptical pediatrician husband, Monty – and from Dev, their Burmese Nepalese driver, an orphaned refugee whom the family took in years earlier. Deva himself has a guardian spirit, Shindaav Nat, whom he can call upon to intervene in both natural and supernatural matters (particularly useful when a local tree spirit becomes displeased).
“Ghost-Eye” is about our narrator Dinu Dutta. In 1969, Dinu is Shoma and Monty’s 7-year-old nephew, who lives with them part-time and witnesses all the oddities associated with the Varsha case. Currently, Dinu is a nearly 60-year-old “worst bookish person”. He’s living lovelessly in Brooklyn when the Covid pandemic forces him away from Calcutta and his girlfriend, tumbling 85-year-old Aunty Shoma, who has started saying some very strange things.
“Ghost-Eye” is about Tipu, a rogue climate activist who sets the novel in motion by asking Dinu for help in locating the mysterious client his aunt was treating in 1969. It turns out that Tipu is a Ghost-Eye, capable of demonic abilities (weak in his case), and belongs to the Ghost-Eye Guild, a low-key version of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. The Ghost-Eye Guild believes that Dinu’s aunt’s mysterious client is the key to changing the world’s climate fate.
