When Sea of Poppies ended in a daring escape
of four of its sailors, I was expecting and looking forward to their travels
and assorted adventures in its sequel River of Smoke, but Ghosh comes up with a
different set of characters for his second edition in the trilogy. Though, it
starts with the erstwhile likeable characters of Deeti and Neel, we soon drift
into stories of Bahram Modi - a Parsi business man often troubled by his
conscience about the trade of opium who is equally unwilling to give it up due
to his economic constraints, Robin Chinnery – a rather boastful character
edging on being cantankerous given his profession as a painter, Charlie King,
Lancelot Dent, Wetmore and other Fanqui merchants.
Much of the action takes place in Canton, a
Chinese city where the East India Company trades opium, neglecting the firm
stand the Chinese government has against opium. Denying the government’s orders
to ban the drug and the trade of it, the Fanqui traders smuggle opium from
India and sell it through their Chinese trader friends. This brings
Commissioner Len Zhiu into foray as he orders the opium to be confiscated,
which infuriates the businessmen who invested a lot in the production of the
drug. The result was the two opium wars between the Chinese and the East India
Company. The canvas provided by the Chinese setting facilitates Ghosh to
indulge himself to his heart’s content in pidgin language with a bit of
Chinese, Bengali and Hindustani thrown in between. The absence of a glossary of
terms used in the book ensures that the language is seen as the white noise,
which Ghosh – on record - wanted it to be. People acquainted with his writing
style would agree that it would be difficult to separate the impact he derives
by his language into the narrative style and that is even more evident in this
installment of the Ibis trilogy. I felt that the caustic remarks about the
English language that Ghosh makes through Bahram Modi serve as a brilliant
subtext to the way the book has been written.
One of the aspects that I have been
fascinated with ever since I have heard of opium was the effectiveness of the
drug. It has been greatly eulogized by Ghosh in this book and now I’m really
thinking of getting it someday specially after the knowledge that wars have
been fought for it. This book also provided me with valuable insights into wars
between countries, which I’m in the process of exploring further.
I have always admired Amitav Ghosh for his
passion about travelling around and creating unique characters with intriguing
eccentricities, both of which the first book had in abundance, but these go
largely amiss in ROS as it appears a bit lethargic in the way the action
unfolds. It may be explicable to some extent considering this is the second
edition of the trilogy where the story takes its time building into an
interesting drama, but it does appear long with the golden camellias subplot
running into too many coincidences which appears to be against a general
credibility. The plot device to use letters to carry the story forward was a
good idea indeed, but I personally am not very interested in botanical
discoveries of the colonial era that made it even more difficult for me to go
through those parts of the book.
Many likeable characters from the first book
like Zachary Reid, Serang Ali, Kalua, and Ah Fatt were merely mentioned as the
focus shifts to the opium business by the East India Company. The characters
were either black or white in general, without many eccentricities. The good
guys Whetmore and King and the bad guys Slade and Dent were so uni dimensional
that there wasn’t any plausible difference between them. He could really have
done away with either one of them on both the sides. Bahram Modi as the typical
Gujrati Parsi businessman from Bombay and Neel as his munshi look undercooked.
Baboo Nob Kissin makes an appearance towards the end of the book, but was
nowhere as effective as earlier.
In a way, River of Smoke reminded me of the
author’s lesser-appreciated work The Hungry Tide, while it should have been Sea
of Poppies - may be the intention was to make this book independent in itself
to readers unacquainted with the first part. Even further, the book does not
end on an interesting note like SOP, but I would love to be proved wrong.
Still, the finesse with which Ghosh serves an objective view of the opium wars
makes it a worthy read – but if not for just that this book would have been
uninteresting and tedious. I hope the final episode gets a bit more adventurous
and less circuitous.
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