Sea of Information

On reading the second part of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, it’s evident that there is such a thing as too much research

Three years ago, Sea of Poppies led readers through the fume-thick factories and poppy fields of early 19th century Malwa, and on a swashbuckling voyage aboard the Ibis, a schooner transporting indentured labourers to Mauritius. In River of Smoke, the story steams along with the Ibis to Canton. Foreign opium traders are waiting at the mouth of the Pearl River delta, waiting to send their illicit cargo upstream with the help of smugglers in ‘fast-crab boats’. But China’s Qing emperor, determined to arrest the trade draining its populace and silver, stalls the boats and installs an incorruptible new governor in the city, who tells the merchants to surrender their opium stock, and declares the trade a capital offence.

In the stand-off between the Imperial Chinese and the evangelists of Free Trade, no one stands to lose as much as Bahram Modi, an opium merchant from Bombay. He has poured his savings into a large stock of raw opium, despite the warnings of his brothers-in-law and wife, who is assailed by ominous portents right up to his departure. The journey reinforces the sense of dread. His ship, the Anahita, loses its figurehead in a storm, which reduces a part of his stock to a sludge that fills his head with sinister visions when he wades through it. In Singapore, where he stops, he hears that Chi-mei, his Chinese second wife in Canton’s floating city, has been robbed and killed.

Some characters from the previous book make a brief reappearance. Neel, the disgraced zamindar, becomes Bahram’s munshi. Paulette, a French orphan whose father was a botanist, gets aboard Redruth, the floating greenhouse of plant-hunter Fitcher Penrose, who is in search of the elusive, near-mythic Camellia sinensus. But much of the action is conveyed second-hand, through the letters of Paulette’s childhood artist friend Robin Chinnery, writing to her from Fanqui-town, the foreigners’ enclave in Canton. His is a vivacious voice, but the epistolary device, while period-appropriate, feels like too handy a way to grant us access to places out of Bahram’s range, like the foreign traders and their ‘Friendships’. Robin’s descriptions of offstage action also tend to meander, speeding up abruptly when the narrative focus swings to Neel or Bahram.

The problem of pace is compounded by scholastic digressions. While meticulous detail helps navigate the vast geographic and temporal sea upon which Ghosh’s characters are buffeted about by the winds of imperialism and commerce, it sometimes leaves the reader’s attention adrift in the doldrums. It’s fascinating to learn about 18th century plant hunters, Chinese epicurean fare such as fried sparrow-head and the hybrid provenance of the ‘samsa’ and ‘chai-garam’, but glosses on Spanish silver and the evolution of Cantonese studios feel like studious intrusions, and read like passages from a history book, slipped in to edify us.

One such contrivance is an episode in which Barry and his Armenian clock-maker friend Zadig meet Napoleon, who demands to see the ‘Zoroastrian prince’ in his St Helena exile. An exchange of disquisitions ensues. Bahram holds forth on Zoroastrian vestments and beliefs, Zadig, on the particulars of trade in Canton, and the etymology of ‘factories’ , while Napoleon directs their attention to the She Cabbage Tree, endemic to the island. The episode is a dreamlike co-mingling of the familiar and the absurd.

What keeps the book light and buoyant despite its girth is the dialogue, a vivid evocation of geographic and class particularities, and the products of their intermingling—such as Chi-mei and Bahram’s flirty pidgin banter. (Chi-mei: “White Hat Devil have too muchi big cloth.” Bahram: “White Hat Devil have nother-piece thingi too muchi big”.) It also serves, like a ceremonial beat, to build up anticipation in moments of high drama, such as when the imperial authorities prepare to execute an opium smuggler in full view of foreign merchants. As the apparatus for execution is placed before them, the largely intoxicated crowd boils over with excited babbling.

“…look at old Creepin Jesus over there…”

“they’s never going to nail him to no cross!”

“…bleedin blasphemy is what I call it…”

The suspense will keep us company until the last instalment, and the final unfolding of this epic scroll on the ravages and riches of imperialism and trade.

About The Author

Shruti Ravindran