Gun Island

“The Sundarbans are the frontier where commerce and the wilderness look each other directly in the eye; that’s exactly where the war between profit and Nature is fought.”

In this passage, Kanai explains to Deen why a shrine to Manasa Devi would exist in the Sunderbans—because any merchant coming out of Bengal would have had to pass through this treacherous wilderness to exit into the sea. The very geography of the Sunderbans and what it means to contend with its landscape if one is to pass through it, lends itself to an exploration of The Conflict Between Humans and Nature.

“The legend is filled with secrets and if you don’t know their meaning it’s impossible to understand. […] But some day, when the time is right, someone will understand it and who knows? For them it may open up a world that we cannot see.”

Nilima meets the Muslim caretaker of Manasa Devi’s shrine, who asserts that the secrets of the Gun Merchant’s legend will open themselves up to the right person at the right time. This works as both prediction and foreshadowing, and the Gun Merchant’s story becomes a framing device within the story. Multiple parallels to the Gun Merchant’s legend emerge over the course of the book, and they help different characters to find the respective things that they had been looking for in their lives.

“It was the Inquisitor’s job to stamp out ‘superstition’ and replace it with true religion. It was the Inquisitor also who decided what was ‘natural’ and what was ‘supernatural.’ So to say that you don’t believe in the ‘supernatural’ is a contradiction in terms—because it means that you also don’t believe in the ‘natural.’ Neither can exist without the other.”

Cinta explains to Deen how the understanding of “natural” and “supernatural” came about during the Inquisition, and the relation of these terms to each other. Her assertion that disbelief in one leads to dismissal of the other is in keeping with her worldview.