Sea of Poppies

by Amitav Ghosh

His forefinger pointed first to a lump of common abkari, black in colour and hard in texture; then it passed on to a ball of madak, a gluey mixture of opium and tobacco: See: this is the cheap stuff that people smoke in chillums. Next, using both hands, he took out a small lump, still in its poppy-petal wrapper, and touched it to her palm, to show her how soft it was: This is what we make in the factory: chandu. You won’t see it here, the sahibs send it across the sea, to Maha-Chin. It can’t be eaten like abkari and it can’t be smoked like madak.

What’s done with it then? she asked. Dekheheba ka hoi? You want to see? She nodded and he rose to his feet and went to a shelf on the wall. Reaching up, he brought down a pipe that was as long as his arm. He held it in front of her, and she saw that it was made of bamboo, blackened and oily with use. There was a mouthpiece at one end, and in the middle of the tube there was a little bulb, made of clay, with a tiny pinhole on top. Holding the pipe reverentially in his hands, Hukam Singh explained that it came from a faraway place – Rakhine-desh in southern Burma. Pipes like this one were not to be found in Ghazipur, or Benares, or even Bengal: they had to be brought in, from across the Black Water, and were too valuable to be toyed with.

From the carved box, he took a long needle, dipped its tip in the soft black chandu and roasted the droplet on the flame of a candle. When the opium began to sizzle and bubble, he put it on the pinhole of his pipe and took a deep draught of the smoke, through the mouthpiece. He sat with his eyes closed, while the white smoke drifted slowly out of his ...

Her head began to swim, but whether from the smoke or from the touch of his lips she could not tell. The fibres of her muscles began to soften and go slack; her body seemed to drain itself of tension and a sensation of the most delectable languor followed in its wake. Awash in well-being, she leant back against her pillow and then his mouth closed on hers again, filling her lungs with smoke and she felt herself slipping away from this world into another that was brighter, better, more fulfilling.

a pond needn’t be deep to bear a lotus.

‘The Ibis won’t be carrying opium on her first voyage, Reid. The Chinese have been making trouble on that score and until such time as they can be made to understand the benefits of Free Trade, I’m not going to send any more shipments to Canton. Till then, this vessel is going to do just the kind of work she was intended for.’

‘I thought you were a pucka kind of chap,

the Sudder Opium Factory – fondly spoken of by old Company hands as the ‘Ghazeepore Carcanna’. The factory was immense: its premises covered forty-five acres and sprawled over two adjoining compounds, each with numerous courtyards, water tanks and iron-roofed sheds. Like the great medieval forts that overlooked the Ganga, the factory was so situated as to have easy access to the river while being high enough to escape seasonal floods. But unlike such forts as Chunar and Buxar, which were overgrown and largely abandoned, the Carcanna was anything but a picturesque ruin: its turrets housed squads of sentries, and its parapets were manned by a great number of peons and armed burkundazes.

The day-to-day management of the factory was in the hands of a superintendent, a senior official of the East India Company who oversaw a staff of several hundred Indian workers: the rest of the British contingent consisted of overseers, accountants, storekeepers, chemists and two grades of assistant. The superintendent lived on the premises, and his sprawling bungalow was surrounded by a colourful garden, planted with many varieties of ornamental poppy.

The English church was nearby and the passage of the day was marked by the ringing of its bell. On Sundays, worshippers were called to service by the firing of a cannon. The gun-crew was paid not by the Carcanna, but by the subscription of the congregation: the opium factory being an instit...

Although the Sudder Opium Factory was indisputably large and well-guarded, there was nothing about its exterior to suggest to an onlooker that it was among the most precious jewels in Queen Victoria’s crown. On the contrary, a miasma of lethargy seemed always to hang over the factory’s surroundings. The monkeys that lived around it, for instance: Deeti pointed a few of these out to Kabutri as the ox-cart trundled towards the walls. Unlike others of their kind they never chattered or fought or stole from passers-by; when they came down from the trees it was to lap at the open sewers that drained the fact...

Kalua’s cart rumbled slowly past the factory’s outer compound: this was a complex of some sixteen enormous godowns that were used for the storage of processed opium. The fortifications here were formidable, and the guards particularly sharp-eyed – and well they might be, for the contents of those few sheds, or so it was said, were...

Noses streaming, the oxen plodded on, past the massive brass-studded doors of the factory’s Sudder Gateway, towards a humbler but more-frequented entrance at the south-western corner of the walls, a few steps from the Ganga. This stretch of riverbank was unlike any other, for the ghats around the Carcanna were shored up with thousands of broken earthenware gharas – the round-bottomed vessels in which raw opium was brought to the factory. The belief was widespread that fish were more easily caught after they had nibbled at the shards, and as a result the bank was always crowded with fishermen.

Deeti was about to step in when she glanced over the sirdar’s shoulder, into the weighing shed: the sight made her pull back, with a sudden start of apprehension. Such was the length of the shed that the door at the far end looked like a distant pinprick of light; in between, arrayed along the floor, stood many gigantic pairs of scales, dwarfing the men around them; beside each set of scales sat a tall-hatted Englishman, overseeing teams of weighmen and accountants. Buzzing busily around the sahibs were turbaned muharirs bearing armloads of paper and dhoti-clad serishtas with thick registers; swarming everywhere were gangs of bare-bodied boys carrying improbably tall stacks of poppy-flower wrappers.

It could indeed have been a temple that Deeti had entered now, for the long, well-aired passage ahead was lined with two rows of dhoti-clad men, sitting cross-legged on the floor, like Brahmins at a feast, each on his own woven seat, with an array of brass cups and other equipment arranged around him. Deeti knew, from her husband’s tales, that there were no fewer than two hundred and fifty men working in that room, and twice that number of running-boys – yet such was the assemblers’ concentration that there was very little noise, apart from the pattering of the runners’ feet, and periodic shouts announcing the completion of yet another ball of opium.

The assemblers’ hands moved with dizzying speed as they lined hemispherical moulds with poppy-leaf rotis, moistening the wrappers with lewah, a light solution of liquid opium. Hukam Singh had told Deeti that the measure for every ingredient was precisely laid down by the Company’s directors in faraway London: each package of opium was to consist of exactly one seer and seven-and-a-half chittacks of the drug, the ball being wrapped in five chittacks of poppy-leaf rotis, half of fine grade and half coarse, the whole being moistened with no more and no less than five chittacks of lewah.

So finely honed was the system, with relays of runners carrying precise measures of each ingredient to each seat, that the assemblers’ hands never had cause to falter: they lined the moulds in such a way as to leave half the moistened rotis hanging over the edge. Then, dropping in the balls of opium, they covered them with the overhanging wrappers, and coated them with poppy-trash before tapping them out again. It remained only for runners to arrive with the outer casing for each ball – two halves of an earthenware sphere. The ball being dropped inside, the halves were fitted into a neat little cannonshot, to hold safe this mo...

Dozens of the black containers passed through the assemblers’ hands every hour and were duly noted on a blackboard: Hukam Singh, who was not the most skilled among them, had once boasted to Dee...

‘The 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. Free Trade is a right conferred on Man by God, and its principles apply as much to opium as to any other article of trade. More so perhaps, since in its absence many millions of natives would be denied the lasting advantages of British influence.’

Really loving this intelligent historical novel by @GhoshAmitav

‘For the simple reason, Reid,’ said Mr Burnham patiently, ‘that British rule in India could not be sustained without opium – that is all there is to it, and let us not pretend otherwise.

the Company’s annual gains from opium are almost equal to the entire revenue of your own country, the United States? Do you imagine that British rule would be possible in this impoverished land if it were not for this source of wealth?

‘Does it not trouble you, Mr Burnham, to invoke God in the service of opium?’ ‘Not in the slightest,’ said Mr Burnham, stroking his beard. ‘One of my countrymen has put the matter very simply: “Jesus Christ is Free Trade and Free Trade is Jesus Christ.” Truer words, I believe, were never spoken. If it is God’s will that opium be used as an instrument to open China to his teachings, then so be it.

#quote #SeaofPoppies by @GhoshAmitav

‘Why, let me ask you, sir: would you like to return to such a time when men had to have their teeth pulled and their limbs sawn off without benefit of any palliative to ease the pain?’ ‘Why no,’ said Neel, with a shudder. ‘I certainly wouldn’t.’ ‘I thought not,’ said Mr Burnham. ‘So you would do well to bear in mind that it would be well nigh impossible to practise modern medicine or surgery without such chemicals as morphine, codeine and narcotine – and these are but a few of the blessings derived from opium.

what would our ladies – why, our beloved Queen herself? – do without laudanum? Why, one might even say that it is opium that has made this age of progress and industry possible: without it, the streets of London would be thronged with coughing, sleepless, incontinent multitudes. And if we consider all this, is it not apposite to ask if the Manchu tyrant has any right to deprive his helpless subjects of the advantages of progress? Do you think it pleases God to see us conspiring with that tyrant in depriving such a great number of people of this amazing gift?’

Because the antidote for addiction lies not in bans enacted by Parliaments and emperors, but in the individual conscience – in every man’s awareness of his personal responsibility and his fear of God. As a Christian nation this is the single most important lesson we can offer to China – and I have no doubt that the message would be welcomed by the people of that unfortunate country, were they not prevented from hearing it by the cruel despot who holds sway over them. It is tyranny alone that is to blame for China’s degeneracy, sir.

would not go to war for it, sir,’ Neel said, in a tone that matched Mr Burnham’s in its sharpness. ‘And I do not believe the Empire will either. You must not imagine that I am unaware of the part that Parliament plays in your country.’ ‘Parliament?’ Mr Burnham laughed. ‘Parliament will not know of the war until it is over. Be assured, sir, that if such matters were left to Parliament there would be no Empire.’

‘Please do not speak to me, sir,’ said Mr Burnham, in the chilly tone of a man who wishes to snub a name-dropper, ‘of Mr Hume and Mr Locke. For I would have you know that I have been acquainted with them since they served on the Bengal Board of Revenue. I too have read every word they’ve written – even their report on sanitation. And as for Mr Hobbes, why I do believe I dined with him at my club just the other day.’

These doses were not enough to bring him to his feet, but they did ease his suffering and for Deeti, it was a relief to look into his eyes and know that he had slipped away from the mundane pains of the world and escaped into that other, more vivid reality where Holi never ceased and spring arrived afresh every day.

She had only to look around to know that here, as in the village she had left, everyone’s land was in hock to the agents of the opium factory: every farmer had been served with a contract, the fulfilling of which left them with no option but to strew their land with poppies. And now, with the harvest over and little grain at home, they would have to plunge still deeper into debt to feed their families. It was as if the poppy had become the carrier of the Karamnasa’s malign taint.

the Rajas of Raskhali were well known to be bigoted, ritual-bound Hindus, who were dismissive of heterodox Vaishnavites like himself: people like that needed to be taught a lesson from time to time.

this was the fleet of the Ghazipur Opium Factory, carrying the season’s produce to Calcutta, for auction.

The fleet was accompanied by a sizeable contingent of armed guards, burkundazes and peons, most of whom were distributed among the smaller pulwar boats. The large vessels were still a good hour away when some half-dozen pulwars pulled in. Squads of guards jumped ashore, wielding lathis and spears, and set about clearing the ghats of people, securing them for the docking of the stately patelis.

The opium fleet was commanded by two Englishmen, both junior assistants from the Ghazipur Carcanna. By tradition, the senior of the two occupied the pateli that headed the fleet while the other sailed in the ship that brought up the rear. These two vessels were the largest in the fleet and they took the places of honour at the shore. The ghats at Chhapra were not of a size t...

‘The mandarins do indeed seem quite set in their course. The other day, they beheaded some half-dozen opium-sellers, right at the gates of Macao. Strung up the bodies in full public view, for everyone to see, Europeans included. It’s had an effect, no doubt about it. In February the price of the best Patna opium had sunk to four hundred and fifty dollars a chest.’ ‘Good God!’ said Mr Doughty. ‘Was it not twice that last year?’

The truth is, sir, that men do what their power permits them to do. We are no different from the Pharaohs or the Mongols: the 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.’

#SeaofPoppies by @GhoshAmitav #quote #power

one of the more dangerous oddities of the waterways of Bengal: namely the bán, or bore – a tidal phenomenon that sends walls of water hurtling upriver from the coast. Bores are never more hazardous than in the periods around Holi and Diwali, when the seasons turn upon an equinoctial hinge: at those times, rising to formidable heights and travelling at great speed, the waves can pose a serious threat to the river’s traffic.

ship could take as long as three days, depending on the weather and the winds, to sail downriver from Calcutta to the Bay of Bengal. Between the river’s estuary and the open sea lay the island of Ganga-Sagar, the last of the holy waterway’s many pilgrimages.

Sea of Poppies owes a great debt to many nineteenth-century scholars, dictionarists, linguists and chroniclers: most notably to Sir George Grierson, for his Report on Colonial Emigration from the Bengal Presidency, 1883, for his grammar of the Bhojpuri language, and for his 1884 and 1886 articles on Bhojpuri folk songs; to J. W. S. MacArthur, one-time Superintendent of the Ghazipur Opium Factory for his Notes on an Opium Factory, (Thacker, Spink, Calcutta, 1865); to Lt Thomas Roebuck, for his nautical lexicon, first published in Calcutta, An English And Hindostanee Naval Dictionary Of Technical Terms And Sea Phrases As Also The Various Words Of Command Given In Working A Ship, &C. With Many Sentences Of Great Use At Sea; To Which Is Prefixed A Short Grammar Of The Hindostanee Language (reprinted in London in 1813 by Black, Parry & Co., booksellers to the Hon. East India Company; later revised by George Small, and reissued by W. H. Allen & Co., under the title A Laskari Dictionary Or Anglo-Indian Vocabulary Of Nautical Terms And Phrases In English And Hindustani, London, 1882);

Sir Henry Yule & A. C. Burnell, authors of Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary Of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words And Phrases, And Of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical And Discursive; and to the Chief Justice of Calcutta’s Supreme Court of Judicature for his verdict in the 1829 forgery trial of Prawnkissen Holdar (reprinted in Anil Chandra Das Gupta, (ed.), The Days of John Company: Selections from Calcutta Gazette 1824–1832, West Bengal Govt. Press, Calcutta, 1959, pp. 366–8).

Clare Anderson, Robert Antony, David Arnold, Jack Beeching, Kingsley Bolton, Sarita Boodhoo, Anne Bulley, B. R. Burg, Marina Carter, Hsin-Pao Chang, Weng Eang Cheong, Tan Chung, Maurice Collis, Saloni Deerpalsingh, Guo Deyan, Jacques M. Downs, Amar Farooqui, Peter Ward Fay, Michael Fisher, Basil Greenhill, Richard H. Grove, Amalendu Guha, Edward O. Henry, Engseng Ho, Hunt Janin, Isaac Land, C. P. Liang, Brian Lubbock, Dian H. Murray, Helen Myers, Marcus Rediker, John F. Richards, Dingxu Shi, Asiya Siddiqi, Radhika Singha, Michael Sokolow, Vijaya Teelock, Madhavi Thampi and Rozina Visram.

For their support and assistance at various points in the writing of this novel, I owe many thanks to: Kanti & Champa Banymandhab, Girindre Beeharry, the late Sir Satcam Boolell and his family, Sanjay Buckory, Pushpa Burrenchobay, May Bo Ching, Careem Curreemjee, Saloni Deerpalsingh, Parmeshwar K. Dhawan, Greg Gibson, Marc Foo Kune, Surendra Ramgoolam, Vishwamitra Ramphul, Achintyarup Ray, Debashree Roy, Anthony J. Simmonds, Vijaya Teelock, Boodhun Teelock and Zhou Xiang.

I owe a great debt of gratitude also to the following institutions: the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England; the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Mauri...

The lines quoted in Chapter Two (ág mor lágal ba . . .), are from a song collected by Edward O. Henry (Chant The Names of God: Music and Culture in Bhojpuri-Speaking India, San Diego State University Press, San Diego, 1988, p. 288). The lines quoted in Chapter Three (Majha dhára me hai bera merá . . .), are from a song collected by Helen Myers, Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the Indian Diaspora, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998, p. 307. The lines quoted in Chapter Five (Sãjh bhailé . . .), are from Sarita Boodhoo’s Bhojpuri Traditions in Mauritius, Mauritius Bhojpuri Inst., Port Louis, 1999, p. 63. The lines quoted in Chapter Nineteen (Talwa jharailé . . .)and the lines quoted in Chapter Twenty-one (. . . uthlé há chhati ke jobanwá . . .), a...