Amitav Ghosh - A Writer with an English Pen and a Bengali Soul

His web address is: http://www.amitavghosh.com
This everyoung journalist-turned-book writer was born in Calcutta in 1956. Had a journalist career in India. Received a PhD from Oxford and now lives in Brooklyn, USA.

I could care less about whether someone obtained his/her PhD degree from Oxford or from Mars. I care about how smoothly one can make transitions in their self-actualization process. Be it from Bengal to Brooklyn, or from London to Liberia for that matter. And, how candidly we can share with readers about our origins and, about our present situations and future destinations. No doubt, there is a genre of readers in the industrialized west, to whom mere narratives of everyday trivialities of rest of the world can read very intrigueing and, exoticly original. Same applies to the readers from the developing world, who find the descriptiion of everyday life of an average westerner enviably interesting. R.K. Narayanan's 'Malgudi days' got popularity in english language due mainly to the fact that 'exotic South India' was served in an accessible language. Now, Ghosh seems to be more urban, more sophisticated, and, is aparently making his living by serving not only 'exotic' to non-exotic readers, but, also by feeding western readers with images and thoughts from their own societies. That's great.
Ghosh's essay on Satyajit Ray was a great peice. In that essay, he tells us about how Japanse literary fans pay homage to their cultural idols. That's a nice polite way.