The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Plane Hardcover – 14 October 2021

Perhaps the best book I have read this year so far. I am an avid reader of Amitav Ghosh since the day I flipped through his Hungry Tides . I came to know about this book from a review by Prof. Sukanta Choudhury who wrote for a reputed Bengali quarterly magazine. The interconnection of the themes like colonialism , militarization , oil trade , American dominance over global petroleum products with the issue of climate change has been extrapolated in this book so well and in such an engaging prose that one could not simply take off his eyes from it. It is not that Mr. Ghosh has done it for the first time . Actually it has been his favourite theme of his literary creations. In his The Great Dearrangement , in his novels like Hungry Tides , Snake Island and even in his novels of poppy series Mr. Ghosh has shown how the recent global environmental degradation is a cautious human working. No external factors be held as responsible for this climate change which is losing constant threat to us. It is our irresponsible activities which account for this climate catastrophy . And in this book we are informed with examples from past history that how the so- called educated superpowers of the western world had started this degeneration of climate after the Industrial revolution and how still they are sticking to it. The book focuses on how a small peaceful island was wiped out from the map along it's humanity and it's Flora and fauna through an inhuman genocide of a tribal race who couldn't realise why they were killed and what for they were displaced from their place where they had been living from an indefinite period of time. The Dutch conolialists had to do so because they put human values below their greed for a rare spice namely nutmeg. Only for a spice that a whole peaceful civilization was just obliterated from the global map . What had happened to the Islanders of Malaku of Indonesia is reminiscent of what had happened once to Indian farmers who were forced to cultivate indigo instead of profitable and more necessary paddy only because the conolial British East Indian Company targeted to cater the demand of indigo in Britain and the rest of Europe after the Industrial revolution. I feel ashamed to think that some of great minds of the West like Bacon thought that for the betterment and the development of the world the people of the eastern and the African world should be killed as he thought these people with their illiteracy and ignorance were making the world stagnant. In this book Mr. Ghosh has pointed it blankly that it was the educated people of Baconian west had done unrepairable damage to the world in sacrificing people whom they held too unfit to live . All should read this book. Read it , you will have known many things fresh . The best book of the year no doubt.

Amitava Ghosh takes the reader through a journey starting in 1621 at Banda Island, Indonesia, to provide us an account of an event of diabolic proportions, a foreshadow of European colonianism, that would become the dominant world order for the next 500 years to come. In the process he lays bare the avarice and greed that was inherent in this quest of mankind to dominate and reshape the earth for the sole purpose of corporate profits. After reading 300 pages, one begins to realise that human beings do not even have the language to describe this crisis that is confronting us today, and the great storyteller that he is, he urges us to find / discover this language that humans once had and lost. This, he says, is the only way that mankind has any hope of creating a better and fulfilling world. Personally, he has helped me to look at what I see outside my window, differently. I fervently wish, I can continue to hold on to this new realisation till I die.

Ghosh weaves multiple conflicts of humans with other humans and with nature and gives an integrated perspective of how it all ties with colonialism. It was insightful to learn deeper about the climate impacts of terraforming and militarisation, both being strong pillars of colonialism. The book chapters flow well and it is easy read throughout. I enjoyed reading his Smoke and ashes book more though.

5 stars🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟"Taking a nutmeg out of its fruit is like unearthing a tiny planet. Like a planet, the nutmeg is encased within a series of expanding spheres. There is, first of all, the fruit’s matte- brown skin, a kind of exosphere. Then there is the pale, perfumed flesh, growing denser toward the core, like a planet’s outer atmosphere. And when all the flesh has been stripped away, you have in your hand a ball wrapped in what could be a stratosphere of fiery, crimson clouds: it is this fragrant outer sleeve that is known as mace. Stripping off the mace reveals yet another casing, a glossy, ridged, chocolate- colored carapace, which holds the nut inside like a protective tropo sphere. Only when this shell is cracked open do you have the nut in your palm, its surface clouded by matte- brown continents floating on patches of ivory. And should you then break the nut open, you will see inside something akin to a geological structure— except that it is composed of the unique mixture of substances that produces the aroma, and the psychotropic effects, that are the nut’s very own superpowers. Like a planet, a nutmeg too can never be seen in its entirety at one time. As with the moon, or any spherical (or quasi- spherical) object, a nutmeg has two hemispheres; when one is in the light, the other must be in darkness— for one to be seen by the human eye, the other must be hidden."Along with the Pandemic, there's another global, political disease: greenwashing. Ecofascism is THE smokescreen for politicians to systemically annihilate indigenous people, manicuring landscapes for more coal, timber, uranium exploits. More industries, more war, more weapons, more power, more money. Ecofascism stemmed from the Americans and then Nazis. Again, Europeans. Fundamentally, the West/Colonialists.The advent of climate crises, nature red in tooth and claw aren't the acute symptoms of urbanization. But one conceived from parasitic Colonializations. Hence, we reap what they sowed.#thenutmegscurse #amitavghosh #parablesforaplanetincrisis #nonfiction #ecofascism #igreads #bookstagram #sgbookstagram #bookstagrammers #readersofinstagram #climatechange#globalwarming#penguinindia