The shadow lines, Amitav Ghosh comprehensively tells its readers the story of three generations of family spread over Calcutta, Dhaka and London. It lines up characters from different nationalist religions and culture in a closely knit fictive world. The novel is written against the backdrop of the civil strife in post –partition east Bengal and the riot – hit Calcutta. The events revolve round Calcutta and affect severely the family of Maya Devi and their friend ship and the sojourn with their English friends – prices and Thamma. During that time the writer’s grandmother was in their ancestral city Dhaka. Amitav Ghosh stresses back to history describing the riots of 1964 which claimed the lives of his elder father. The death raised questions and posed a challenge to the concept of intercultural understanding and friendship in contemporary society divided by arbitrary demarcations of national boundaries.