He is a master at this ? pitting stories of ordinary people against a historical swathe spanning generations and continents. Think The Glass Palace, where through the lives of Rajkumar, a small Indian boy who helps to run a dhaba in Mandalay, and Dolly, an attendant girl of the king and queen who are exiled to Ratnagiri in India, we get a history lesson of the 20th century and the chaos British rule brought to Burma, Malaya and India. Through Rajkumar we learn how thousands of refugees trekked to India, a 1,000 mile journey, in treacherous terrain. Many of his characters are ?sucked? into history, like Tridib in The Shadow Lines. In Sea of Poppies, the first part of his Ibis Trilogy, there are many themes that appear in Ghosh?s novels ? journeys, both physical and mental, colonialism, an exploration of the human spirit ? but the scope and reach are much bigger.
Over 500 pages, we will have travelled at least three continents and almost two centuries, lived through the agony and ecstasy of the lives of Deeti and her light grey eyes, Kalua, Jodu, Paulette, wonderfully shortened to Putli, Neel Raja of Raskhali, Zachary Reid as they grapple with big historical developments, not least the opium wars between India and China.
Set in the 1830s, at the heart of the narrative is a ?tall-masted ship? or the Ibis, whose voyage across the Indian Ocean to the Mauritius Islands is tied to the destinies of a widowed village woman, a chamar (the leather worker caste), a raja gone bankrupt, a boatman?s son, a mulatto American freedman, a nature-loving European. The story begins with a vision that comes to Deeti, soon to be a widow with a six-year-old daughter Kabutri, of a ship at sail on the ocean. ?? she knew instantly that the apparition was a sign of destiny for she had never seen such a vessel before, not even in a dream: how could she have, living as she did in northern Bihar, four hundred miles from the coast??
We are immediately tuned to Deeti?s story ? and are hugely relieved when she is plucked out of her husband?s funeral pyre and saved from being a sati. Like Deeti?s, each of the stories linger long after the Ibis voyage nears its destination.
The individual stories apart, the big themes of history dominate ? how Calcutta was at the heart of the opium trade in the 19th century, how the Ballards and Fergusons and Swinhoes of East India Company were laying claim to the colony, how ordinary lives were caught up in extraordinary happenings. ?In the good old days people used to say there were only two things to be exported from Calcutta ? thugs and drugs ? or opium and coolies as some would have it.? There?s a chilling description of the mixing room of the Sudder Opium Factory or the Ghazeepore Carcanna. ?? a host of dark, legless torsos was circling around and around, like some enslaved tribe of demons?. Their eyes were vacant, glazed, and yet somehow they managed to keep moving, as slow as ants in honey, tramping, treading. When they could move no more, they sat on the edges of the tanks, stirring the dark ooze only with their feet. These seated men had more the look of ghouls than any living thing she had ever seen?.?
In this sweeping tale is a melting pot of languages from Bhojpuri to Bengali, Anglo Indian to Hindustani. There are delightful passages highlighting the clash of languages. Once, little Annabel, daughter of Paulette?s benefactors, screams at the sight of her ill-fitting bodice, the stays of which have come undone: ?Mama! she forgot to bundo her jumma!? As the people on board the Ibis sail towards the open seas, or ?kala pani?, old family ties are abandoned and this ?jahaj-bhais or ship brothers foster new connections, cutting across caste and culture.
Here?s to the next chapter of Deeti?s destiny.
