Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part C (2020)

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide is an intense novel delineating psychological and environmental concerns in an intricate social background. The behaviour and destinies of various characters are interconnected to each other as well as to their immediate and to the larger environment. This paper analyses how Ghosh minutely observes and portrays the workings of the human mind and addresses various dimensions of human as well as human- non human relationships. Ghosh introduces a collage of characters like Piyali Roy, the cetologist whose life though pole apart from that of Fokir, an illiterate boatman and his wife Moyna, an educated, good-looking nurse gets tied up to theirs. Then there are the couple Neelima and Nirmal who do not share a cordial marital relationship. Kanai Dutt is a forty-two year old bachelor sharing experiences with all the other characters in the novel. The episodes are connected with the Indian forests and the conditions, necessity and dangers posed to the co-existence of nature and man has been dealt with in a reflective and introspective manner. The author successfully brings to the surface the natural instincts of love, friendship, envy, suspicion, disbelief and caution that are true to human nature.