Sea of Poppies Quotes

“How was it that no one had ever told her that it was not love itself, but its treacherous gatekeepers which made the greatest demands on your courage: the panic of acknowledging it; the terror of declaring it; the fear of being rebuffed? Why had no one told her that love's twin was not hate but cowardice?”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“Hold a bottle by the neck and a woman by the waist. Never the other way around”.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“The government to you is what God is to agnostics--only to be invoked when your own well being is at stake.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“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.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“How had it happened that when choosing the men and women who were to be torn from this subjugated plain, the hand of destiny had stayed so far inland, away from the busy coastlines, to alight on the people who were, of all, the most stubbornly rooted in the silt of the Ganga, in a soil that had to be sown with suffering to yield its crop of story and song? It was as if fate had thrust its fist through the living flesh of the land in order to tear away a piece of its stricken heart.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“in her inward reality she was a vehicle of transformation, travelling through the mists of illusion towards the elusive, ever-receding landfall that was Truth.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“It was a single poppy seed...she rolled it between her fingers and raised her eyes past the straining sails, to the star-filled vault above. On any other night she would have scanned the sky for the planet she had always thought to be the arbiter of her fate - but tonight her eyes dropped instead to the tiny sphere she was holding between her thumb and forefinger. She looked at the seed as if she had never seen one before, and suddenly she knew that it was not the planet above that governed her life: it was this minuscule orb - at once bountiful and all-devouring, merciful and destructive, sustaining and vengeful. This was her Shani, her Saturn.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“How was it that no one had ever told her that it was not love itself, but its treacherous gatekeepers which made the greatest demands on your courage: the panic of acknowledging it; the terror of declaring it; the fear of being rebuffed? Why had no one told her that love’s twin was not hate but cowardice?”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“Well sir, if slavery is freedom then I'm glad I don't have to make a meal of it. Whips and chains are not much to my taste.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“In the old days, farmers would keep a little of their home-made opium for their families, to be used during illnesses, or at harvests and weddings; the rest they would sell to the local nobility, or to pykari merchants from Patna. Back then, a few clumps of poppy were enough to provide for a household's needs, leaving a little over, to be sold: no one was inclined to plant more because of all the work it took to grow poppies - fifteen ploughings of the land and every remaining clod to be built; purchases of manure and constant watering; and after all that, the frenzy of the harvest, each bulb having to be individually nicked, drained and scrapped. Such punishment was bearable when you had a patch or two of poppies - but what sane person would want to multiply these labours when there were better, more useful crops to grow, like wheat, dal, vegetables? But those toothsome winter crops were steadily shrinking in acreage: now the factory's appetite for opium seemed never to be seated. Come the cold weather, the English sahibs would allow little else to be planted; their agents would go from home to home, forcing cash advances on the farmers, making them sign /asámi/ contracts. It was impossible to say no to them: if you refused they would leave their silver hidden in your house, or throw it through a window. It was no use telling the white magistrate that you hadn't accepted the money and your thumbprint was forged: he earned commissions on the oppium adn would never let you off. And, at the end of it, your earnings would come to no more than three-and-a-half sicca rupees, just about enough to pay off your advance.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“Pon my sivvy, Miss Lambert! Aren’t you quite the dandyzette today? Fit to knock a feller oolter-poolter on his beam ends!”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“The wind is rising and we must make sail. Anchors aweigh! We must be off!”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“It occurred to him now to ask himself if this was how it happened : was it possible that the mere fact of using one's hands and investing one's attention in someone other than oneself, created a pride and tenderness that had nothing whatever to do with the response of the object of one's care - just as a craftsman's love for his handiwork is in no way diminished by the fact of it being unreciprocated?”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“Whatever the case, he saw now that it was a rare, difficult and improbable thing for two people from worlds apart to find themselves linked by a tie of pure sympathy, a feeling that owed nothing to the rules and expectations of others. He understood also that when such a bond comes into being, its truths and falsehoods, its obligations and privileges, exist only for the people who are linked by it, and then in such a way that only they can judge the honour and dishonour of how they conduct themselves in relation to each other.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“the opium factory being an institution steeped in Anglican piety,”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“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.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“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.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“No matter how hard the times at home may have been, in the ashes of every past there were a few cinders of memory that glowed with warmth—...”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“in Bengal it was so easy to know who was who; more often than not, just to hear someone’s name would reveal their religion, their caste, their village.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“But money, if not mastered, can bring ruin as well as riches,”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“Her hair, long, black and flowing, was her great asset, and she liked to wear it over her shoulders,”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“Sometimes, the lascars would gather between the bows to listen to the stories of the greybeards. There was the steward, Cornelius Pinto: a grey-haired Catholic, from Goa, he claimed to have been around the world twice, sailing in every kind of ship, with every kind of sailor - including Finns, who were known to be the warlocks and wizards of the sea, capable of conjuring up winds with a whistle.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“I had thought you were a better man, Mr Reid, a man of your word, but I see that you are nothing but a paltry hommelette.'
'An omelette?'
'Yes, your word is not worth a dam.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“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. You are no doubt aware that in some years, 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? And if we reflect on the benefits that British rule has conferred upon India, does it not follow that opium is this land’s greatest blessing?”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“(...) kitaplarla yavanlaşmamıştı.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“to listen to him was a venture of collaboration, in which the things that were spoken of came gradually to be transformed into artefacts of a shared imagining.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“I felt all of existence swelling in my veins. Letting my umbrella drop, I flung back my head to open myself to the wind and the suns. It was as though in the course of one night I had cast away the emptiness I had so long held in my arms.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“in Bengal it was so easy to know who was who; more often than not, just to hear someone's name would reveal their religion, their caste, their village. Foreigners were, by comparison, so opaque: it was impossible to speculate about them.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“there was nothing wrong: just a touch of the back-door trots - not the flux, for there was no sign of blood, no spotting in the mustard. 'I know how to take care o' myself: not the first time I've had a run of the squitters and collywobbles.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“As he was raising his hand to his lips, it occurred to him that this was the first time in all his years that he had eaten something that was prepared by hands of unknown caste. Perhaps it was this thought, or perhaps it was just the smell of the food--it happened, at any rate, that he was assailed by a nausea so powerful that he could not bring his fingers to his mouth. The intensity of his body's resistance amazed him: for the fact was that he did not believe in caste, or at least he had said, many, many times, to his friends and anyone else who would listen. If, in answer, they accused him of having become too tash, overly Westernized, his retort was always to say, no, his allegiance was to the Buddha, the Mahavira, Shri Chaitanya, Kabir and many others such--all of whom had battled against the boundaries of caste with as much determinations as any European revolutionary. Neel had always taken pride in laying claim to this lineage of egalitarianism, all the more so since it was his prerogative to see on a Raja's guddee: but why, then, had he never before eaten anything prepared by an unknown hand?”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies