“You live in a dream world – a haze of poetry and fuzzy ideas about revolution. To build something is not the same thing as dreaming of it: building is always a matter of well-chosen compromises.” (214) One of the themes of Amitav Ghosh’s novel, The Hungry Tide , is the futility of effete idealism and the inevitable need for compromises. Nirmal Bose is the effete idealist to whom his wife, Nilima, speaks the above words. A brief detention by the police for participating in the 1948 conference of Socialist International unsettled Nirmal so much that he could not continue his job as English lecturer in a Calcutta college anymore. His physical condition deteriorated so much that his doctors advised a life outside the city. The couple chose Sunderbans where Nirmal took up job as the headmaster of a school in Lusibari, one of the islands. Nilima founded a Trust which built up a hospital for the people of the islands. Romantic dreamers like Nirmal will never be happ
Cerebrate and Celebrate