The Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A nice book that traces the journey of Deeti, The Raja of Rungpur and Paulette Lambert along with a host of other characters out of India. Their journey does not end with the book. Amitav has promised a trilogy so we await the second one.



In the early 19th century Poppy flourished as a trading commodity. It had not yet been outlawed. The British were trying to create a big market in China and poppy was grown in the north of Indian subcontinent.



This is where the story starts. Deeti a simple villager whose village is one of the villages where poppy is grown. There is also a factory where the seeds are processed into a form in which they can be sold. She is forced to marry an old man addicted to hashish and is an incapable lout. She is impregnated by her brother in law in a state of stupor of the hashish smoke which she is forced to inhale and she bears a girl. This section gives a very good description of the times as it was in those days.



When her husband eventually dies her in-laws try to burn her as a sati along with her husband, but she manages to escape with the help of an untouchable. They board a boat going to Calcutta carrying a shipment of indentured labourers bound to Mauritius.



The second story is the story of Raja of Rungpur, near Calcutta who depends on an English merchant and gets cheated out of his money. He is imprisoned for having cheated the merchant and is put along with another criminal of Chinese origin to be shipped to Mauritius. This section has a nice descriptions of the life led by the English men and the Rajas of those days. It also brings to light the blind respect that people had for Rajas and Maharajas.



The third story is tied to the second as the English merchant takes under his care a french girl brought up by an Indian dai (maid-servant) after she is orphaned by her father's death. The mother had died much before it. Her father is a botanist and she loves nature and loves living with it. But at the Englishman's house she finds her freedom restricted and longs to run away. She runs away dressed as a male in the same ship as the others in the story. She is close to the Dai's son who is like a brother to her. This brother also manages to get into the ship to run away from the penury he is facing at home.



The rest of the book is about how the journey progresses. In the meantime Ditee gets pregnant. She is spotted by a villager from her village who tries to take advantage of her and outrage her modesty. The untouchable who is now her husband comes to her rescue and in the process he is caught and is to be punished by death.



They encounter a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal and in the process the Untouchable, the Dai's son, the two "criminals" escape. They take a boat and ride into the cyclone and they are persumed to be dead.



The book ends here.



The description of the places and events evoke a vivid imagery in the reader's mind and Amitav Ghosh has created a masterpiece.









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