Sea of Poppies; by Amitav Ghosh.

In some ways this work is structured like his other earlier work, the first one, the Circle of Reason, what with the journey of people from variuos corners of the earth together and the geography, the difference being this one is set in past where timeline is shortly after the beginning of The Glass Palace, while the other was closer to present. The humour though that was pervasive in the first one, at least in the first part of it, is a mere whiff here in some of the pronouncements of a character that hears a penny whistle and unfamiliar with the particular item mistakes it for a flute, taking the one playing it as yet another incarnation and cautioning him about his conduct - to his, the cautioned one's that is - utter confusion.

One small surprise at the very outset as one begins to read this book is that this is not about the recent Afghanistan, but about India over a century ago, when opium trade was beginning and escalated by British and China was forced to accept the trade from European (and US) powers during the famous Opium wars. India, post independence, made a conscious decision not to use opium trade, which could have benefited the then poor nation weighed under with debts of the legacy of the British rule, and forego the profits of the opium trade however high, since it was a substance mostly misused to get people addicted and thereafter not good for health.

It took most part of the remaining century, however, to get tobacco industry (mostly centred in US) to be contained in any way at all, and that too mostly in US and Europe - while in the rest of the world tobacco smoking is promoted aggressively nevertheless. In Thailand for example police were used to arrest anyone protesting against the tobacco promotion being held outside schools and colleges by US corporations or local subsidiaries thereof, handing over free cigarettes to teenagers, from what one read within last couple of decades at the most - so even as court battles were being fought in US and Europe was banning smoking in most places, minors in other parts of the world being inculcated into the ill practice with aggressive use of law enforcing agencies was used to make sure the profits at expense of world health would continue.

Even Bible has something about sins coming home to roost, doesn't it! Only, very unfortunately such roosting is not as accurate as it ought to be and instead of those that practice such ill practices being affected by their own sins coming home to roost, it is other innocents of their own society being affected by what is misnamed party drugs even as innocents of all ages across the world are being bombed so the weapon producers ought to not suffer losses post cold war.

Now post 2001 some parts of the unhealthy trade have not only resurfaced in countries that deal more in arms and uses thereof than in health of their own people or their needs of food, education, and a good life even at the most basic level, the trade is escalated at cost of all other farming and of course the health of those that are paying hefty amounts across the world to use the substance in a highly altered form.

Addictive substances for killing weapons trade is not new, it was exposed during the Iran - contra scandal and trials, and some rightwing publications in US published the details (during mid to late eighties) of military airplanes being used to bring such substance back in what would be otherwise empty planes returning from a run to central America to supply the favoured with weapons.

But now the scale is escalated beyond recognition and uses too, and the tales of women not remembering a day or two of rapes or men deprived of their organs are covered up under the (what ought to be confusing logically but is very well understood) name of party drugs, falsifying both the words that make up that name.

Hence the surprise at the outset about this book so recently being up for Booker prize being not about Afghanistan today but about the British empire of yore - one tends to overlook the roots of a problem in the concerns of today, of being tangled in the vines and branches we are attempting to free health of the world from. But as one reads on it becomes clear why the Booker buzz about this book ended in a rather puzzling silence, and it becomes obvious there could not have been an official British recognition of this any more than there could be an oscar for any film made in India about the independence struggle. It had to lose the Booker since it is so clear an indictment of the British rule in India used for forcing poor farmers into changing their harvest from growing all their necessary food crops to growing poppies, using their own people at low rates and in horrifying conditions in manufacturing opium for export into the world, and going to war with China when the Chinese decided they did not wish their populations to be addicted to this substance for sake of profit of those that sold it.

China lost the war now remembered as the Opium War and subsequently one saw substance addiction of US veterans from Vietnam or Asia in general blamed on their being in company of the orientals who got the good boys addicted, the part of US fleet in Opium wars being conveniently forgotten. One wonders if the use of Indian men in the British military in those wars had something do to with the China India relationship as it has been during last half a century or so.

This story begins with one main character's soon to die husband is an ex volunteer of the British military in the short war that was conquest of Burma and joining of it to India for over a century, but this tale is about a journey down the Ganga for some characters while others have come from as far as Baltimore or Canton, all finding themselves together on a ship carrying bonded labour from Gangetic plains to Mauritius, along with some convicts proven guilty for reasons other than guilt as often as not.

Just as Australia was the penal colony for Britain as well as yet another place apart from Canada where the poor of Britain were encouraged to go settle in an attempt to clean up the mainland and solve the problem of what to do with them, Mauritius was used as a penal colony along with Andaman and Nicobar island group off coast of Burma near equator, and here one gets a glimpse in to the human tales of those that are forced to leave home and go forth into unknown lands for one reason or another - a son of a Maryland freedwoman who leaves for fear of being enslaved if he stays on, a couple in heart of Gangetic plain that flees her relatives who will kill them both since she is a widow saved by him from the pyre convenient for them for economic reasons and he is a low caste male too incidentally, an unwanted wife who was left at a fair and found her husband living with his new family when she found her way back finally, a Frenchwoman in India who is looked down on by the local British for being well educated and unprejudiced and bathing every day like the local people rather than the twice or so a week that the ruling wives do, and so on.


At almost the beginning the author brings out the fact of British in India forcing the local population of Gangetic plains - one of the most fertile regions of the world with few to compare - to plant their fields with poppies that they control the product of and make profits from, and it becomes clear opium trade was as much forced on India as on China. These poor farmers had to forego their harvests of food, which in turn not only made food scarce and therefore pricey with affordability going steadily above the capacity of the farmers, but it also meant the loss of biodiversity - farmers prior to being forced to grow poppy typically planted several crops and rotated them to suit their needs and that of the land - and, too, impoverishing of the soil. All this together with loss of extra benefits such as the straw now being no longer free to refurnish the thatched cottage roofs, and hence the direness of poverty being worse, makes a graphic picture. The farmers harvesting opium for the British cannot afford to seal roofs over their own heads with even straw, since now straw is no longer the free byproduct of their own wheat harvest every year.

On the other hand or rather in the other strand of the story, which by now one is used to his playing with two or three strands alternately as he weaves his tale, he brings in a son of a "freedwoman" by her ex-master, skin the colour of "old ivory" and able to pass for "white" (as if any human could be the exact, precise colour that white is!) - who benefits unintentionally through the dire circumstances of his ship sailing from Baltimore to Calcutta after having bought for opium trade, and along the journey is the fascinating description of men who take to ocean for a living from various corners of the world. Their linguistic stew consists of traces of every language they have encountered and so does the lingo of the British masters in India deliberately mixing up their vocabulary just so, one cannot be good at the local languages lest any colleague accuse one of having gone local and one nevertheless must speak the half or less version of English lest one is taken by local populace for a naive newcomer on the land. It seems that another unspoken precept is also that one must distort any word one picks up from the locals, but that may be part of the first rule.

The lyrical tale of a journey, or rather many journeys of many characters who are from various corners of the earth and come together at the port on the river in Calcutta for yet another journey together to an island off coast of Africa where a new society is being forged, hides a great deal of research visible behind the thin veil of a well told story that ends rather abruptly. One cannot help thinking there is another book or many in the offing, and that this one is just the prologue. The writer practically promises it, all but, in the ending sentence that leaves one looking through the book again, puzzled about where exactly was the reference tantalisingly mentioned in the last sentence, only to be convinced at the end of the search that it was the vision mentioned in the beginning and no other event. It is a veiled promise so if it is reneged on it counts as the temptation and promise offered with an exchange of glance that is never given in word, just in case. Still, it would be a piece of folly not to follow this up with the stories of the characters further in their willy nilly chosen land of migration and how the society developed there.

One personal favourite is the description of the tidal bore, so far shown post the recent tsunami only as a phenomena in east coast China on some information channel when the tsunami trauma was new.