THE DOPE NEXUS
by Hirsh Sawhney

New York Observer
October 23, 2008
NY

Historical fiction on an epic scale, this opium-stuffed novel has
contemporary resonance

The West has a pernicious dependence on China, and Western business
barons are bent on a war that will allegedly liberate a foreign people,
as well as secure less lofty things, like the free flow of commodities
and profit. While this might sound like a critique of present-day
U.S. economic policy and the invasion of Iraq, it’s actually a
description of the mid-19th-century world vividly conjured up by
veteran Indian author Amitav Ghosh in Sea of Poppies. (The first in
his Ibis Trilogy, the book was short-listed for the Booker prize but
lost to Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger.)

A sweeping opus set just before the First Opium War, Sea of Poppies
contains traces of Dickens and Twain and also recalls Lucas–George
Lucas that is–and his Star Wars trilogy. Yes, Mr. Ghosh’s book
resembles less a modern novel than a cinematic epic; and this style,
despite some drawbacks, actually complements a work of profound
historical magnitude.

Maryland-born Zachary Reid, the son of a freed slave and a white
master, has survived a perilous voyage to Calcutta, a cosmopolitan port
teeming with Armenians, prostitutes and lascars, the vagrant pan-Asian
sailors who manned Europe’s merchant navies. A slave ship called the
Ibis has delivered him here, and he must refit the schooner for her
new job, the export of British East India Company opium into China.

Opium, which at the time provided the British with profits that rivaled
the entire revenue of the United States, forms the murky web that
links Zachary to the book’s immense cast of characters, like Deeti,
a poppy farmer coaxed into debt by the English. When Deeti’s opium
addict husband dies, she’s destined to be burned alive on his funeral
pyre. But her low-caste neighbor Kalua rescues her, and the pair flee
down the Ganges. Meanwhile, Neel Rattan Halder contemplates British
philosophy on his opulent houseboat downstream. Neel is the scion of
a landowning Bengali family known for its fixation with oppressive
caste codes and erotic dancers. But he’s unsettled that his family
fortune is dependent on Mr. Burnham, the evangelical owner of the Ibis,
who’s made millions getting the Chinese hooked on dope.

When officials in Canton block the flow of opium into China,
the fortunes of Neel and the entire British empire are thrown into
jeopardy. "To end the trade would be ruinous," so Burnham nudges the
Crown into war with "the Manchu tyrant." But this war, "when it comes,
will not be for opium. It will be for a principle: for freedom–for the
freedom of trade and for the freedom of the Chinese people." Burnham
also makes Zachary an officer on the Ibis, and the ship will once
again deliver human cargo: Neel, now a debt-ruined prisoner who will
be interned in Mauritius, and Indian indentured servants who will toil
on the island’s tropical plantations. Among these bonded laborers are
Deeti and Kalua. Although the Ibis is an obvious symbol of depravity,
it provides a strange (and temporary) form of sanctuary to these two.

Sea of Poppies is defined by such provocative ironies and
nuances. The author has no illusions about the hypocrisy that
underpinned colonialism. His colonial agents have the audacity to
call the slave trade "the greatest exercise in freedom since God led
the children of Israel out of Egypt" and refer to Hindi and Urdu as
"nigger-talk." But native Indians are oppressive in their own right
and end up as cogs in the cruel colonial machinery.

PROJECTS AS AMBITIOUS AS this are rarely flawless. The book’s
countless subplots are mostly well imagined, but they sometimes feel
like occasions for Mr. Ghosh to convey fascinating anthropological
tidbits–the lascar crew’s hybridized speech (which recalls Star
Wars’ Jar Jar Binks) or the origin of the word "canvas" (it comes from
"cannabis"). But this isn’t a conventional novel; it’s an epic and must
be read according to different rules. If the plot drags, Mr. Ghosh’s
19th-century world is worth savoring for its meticulous props and
sets–an Armenian boarding house, Calcutta’s botanical gardens. Neat
coincidences like Deeti’s vengeful relative appearing as a guard on the
Ibis are permissible and even necessary. It’s this uncle, after all,
who eventually captures Deeti, which leads to torture, murder and a
cliffhanger ending that leaves fans of historical fiction hungry for
volume two of this trilogy.

For other readers, what makes Sea of Poppies vital is the chilling
mirror it holds up to our world. "We are no different from the Pharaohs
or the Mongols," says the captain of the Ibis. "[T]he difference is
only that when we kill people, we feel compelled to pretend that it is
for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you,
that will never be forgiven by history."

Hirsh Sawhney is the editor of Delhi Noir, forthcoming from Akashic
Books. He can be reached at books@observer.com