Review: Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

In Sea of Poppies dance becomes nautch, look becomes dekko and reliable is pukka. The setting is the British India of 1838. English mixes synchronously with Hindi, Bhojpuri and Bengali. Years ago, reading Gone with the Wind, I marveled at Margaret Mitchell's juggling of a southern accent and heavy Negro English. Here Ghosh does something even better. A colonial Englishman's indianised verbatim is juxtaposed with an American's English. The Frenchwoman's English is painfully strewn with Bengali words and it is the upper caste gomusta who speaks the language to perfection.

The trade of opium and the girmityari system are the explosive themes that move the novel. India is the producer, East India Company is the transporter and China is the consumer of this drug that defines the history of the nations. In this historical setting, a plethora of characters from an upper caste woman running away with a lower caste man, an American mulatto on the Ibis, a French biologist's daughter, a bankrupt Raja mingle and become jahaj-bhais.

Each charecter has its own life and the story is moving in so many different directions, but they end up reaching the same destination, the Ibis. On this ship, girmityars travel to the island of Mauritius. Ghosh takes delight in writing a book that is only half the story, the rest is the historical setting of the Indian subcontinent and China.

Whether it is the play with mulitple languages, the description of characters and their lives, the trade of opium, the impending war with China, or the complex societal setting the eighteenth century India, Ghosh excels on every front. Only the ending is abrupt and makes you wait for the next edition of the Ibis trilogy.

It is amazing how globalisation alters lives, Madhu Kalua becomes Maddow Colver. It is also probably how some of Sir Vidia's characters from A House For Mr Biswas acquired their names. Bishweshwar becomes Bissessar and Shyama becomes Shama.