Character Sketch: The Ghat Of The Only World | English Literature for Grade 11 PDF Download

Character Sketch of Narrator (Amitav Ghosh)

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 11 July 1956 to a Bengali Hindu family. Ghosh lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of the Laura Riding biography In Extremis. They have two children, Lila and Nayan. In 1999, Narrator joined the faculty at Queens College, City University of New York, as Distinguished Professor in Comparative literature. Amitav Ghosh has written the story, “The Ghat of the only world” in honour of his friend and great Kashmiri poet. The story is about their friendship and the fulfilment of the promise to a dying friend. Amitav knew Shahid from his college days as both were students from Delhi University but their friendship happened in Brooklyn, US through a common friend. Shahid had asked Amitav to write a story about him after his death. The narrator promised Shahid that he would try his best. From that day onwards, he started to note down all his conversations with Shahid because he knew that to be able to write about Shahid, he must have a record of the poet’s words and their conversations.

Character Sketch of Shahid

Shahid Ali was a friend of the author. He was a poet by profession. His writing was lyrical, disciplined, engaged and yet deeply inward. Shahid was a talented poet who gave liberty to life to embrace death with his amazing choice of words. Shahid was immensely fond of life’s all beautiful things, including food. He loved cooking Kashmiri dishes and made them tasty by adding all the spices. He would often give directions to the cook in the kitchen to make the food tastier. Shahid had a sorcerer’s ability to transmute the mundane into magical. Shahid was a very strong man. He had found a way out to keep himself alive in spite of the physical and mental pain of his illness. He loved the spirit of festivity as it meant he did not have any time to be depressed.