Normally, books or authors do not make a lasting impression on me, largely owing to the fact that I have very little memory of what I have read before. The only reason I picked up the ‘Sea of Poppies’ was that it was nominated for the Booker, though I was not particularly kicked that the tiger finally won it. A few pages into the book, I recognized the author Amitav Ghosh’s other books and I was hooked.
Set in the early 1800s, history comes alive as Ghosh weaves a masterful tale that starts at Bihar where the East India company has converted the farmlands to seas of poppies which has driven the farmers to debt traps forcing them into labor at the opium factories. Deeti, married to one such opium addict and subsequently widowed is rescued from her husband’s funeral pyre by Kalua, a low caste and is forced to elope to save themselves from certain slaughter. The reader is then transported to the archetypal lives of the Europians in India where Paulette, daughter of a liberal French botanist, brought up by an Indian nurse has to subject herself to the snobbery and pretensions in the home of her care takers. The scene deftly shifts to the palace of Raja Neel, a Bengali royal who is too naïve and honorable for the wily ways of the British and is soon booked for financial fraud. We also get a glimpse of the slave ship where Zachary, the American sailor finds himself pushed to the role of second command, with tips from the leader of the deckhands on appropriate command behavior.
It is at Ibis, the ship set to sail to Mauritius, that these motley assembly of characters converge,each with hope for a new life ahead. The only complaint I have is the dialects Ghosh injects into some conversations in the ship which turns a bit weary.The voyage across the ‘Black Water’ is sprinkled with a wide range of emotions among these strangers thrown together seemingly randomly.The novel ends with promise of a new life for the protagonists in the next two volumes of the trilogy.
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