Sea of Poppies: A Novel (The Ibis Trilogy)

by Amitav Ghosh

  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 most lucrative of the British Empire’s products: thus would the drug travel the seas, until the casing was split open by a blow from a cleaver, in distant Maha-Chin.

  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 Deeti of having put together a hundred in a single day. But today Hukam Singh’s hands were no longer working and nor was he at his usual seat: Deeti spotted him as she entered the assembly room – he was lying on the floor with his eyes closed and he looked as if he had had some kind of seizure, for a thin line of bubbling spit was dribbling out of the corner of his mouth.

  Suddenly, Deeti was assailed by the sirdars who supervised the packaging room. What took you so long? . . . Don’t you know your husband is an afeemkhor? . . . Why do you send him here to work? . . . Do you want him to die?

  Despite the shocks of the day, Deeti was not of a mind to ignore these attacks. From the shelter of her sari, she snapped back: And who are you to speak to me like that? How would you earn your living if not for afeemkhors?

  The altercation drew the attention of an English agent, who waved the sirdars aside. Glancing from Hukam Singh’s prone body to Deeti, he said, quietly: Tumhara mard hai? Is he your husband?

  Although the Englishman’s Hindi was stilted, there was a kindly sound to his voice. Deeti nodded, lowering her head, and her eyes filled with tears as she listened to the sahib berating the sirdars: Hukam Singh was a sepoy in our army; he was a balamteer in Burma and was wounded fighting for the Company Bahadur. Do you think any of you are better than him? Shut your mouths and get back to work or I’ll whip you with my own chabuck.

  The cowed sirdars fell silent, stepping aside as four bearers stooped to lift Hukam Singh’s inert body off the floor. Deeti was following them out when the Englishman turned to say: Tell him he can have his job back whenever he wants.

  Deeti joined her hands together, to express her gratitude – but in her heart she knew that her husband’s days in the Carcanna had come to an end.

  On the way home, in Kalua’s cart, with her husband’s head in her lap and her daughter’s fingers in her hand, she had eyes neither for Ghazipur’s forty-pillared palace nor for its memorial to the departed Laat-Sahib. Her thoughts were now all for the future and how they would manage without her husband’s monthly pay. In thinking of this, the light dimmed in her eyes; even though nightfall was still a couple of hours away, she felt as if she were already enveloped in darkness. As if by habit she began to chant the prayer-song for the end of the day:

  Sãjh bhailé

  Sãjha ghar ghar ghumé

  Ke mora sãjh

  manayo ji

  Twilight whispers

  at every door:

  it’s time

  to mark my coming.

  Just beyond the boundaries of Calcutta, to the west of the dockside neighbourhoods of Kidderpore and Metia Bruz, lay a length of gently sloping bank that overlooked a wide sweep of the Hooghly River: this was the verdant suburb of Garden Reach, where the leading white merchants of Calcutta had their country estates. Here, as if to keep watch over the ships that bore their names and their goods, stood the adjacent properties of the Ballards, Fergusons, McKenzies, MacKays, Smoults and Swinhoes. The mansions that graced these estates were as varied as the owners’ tastes would allow, some being modelled on the great manors of England and France, while others evoked the temples of classical Greece and Rome. The grounds of the estates were extensive enough to provide each mansion with a surrounding park, and these were, if anything, even more varied in design than the houses they enclosed – for the malis who tended the gardens, no less than the owners themselves, vied to outdo each other in the fancifulness of their plantings, creating here a little patch of topiary and there an avenue of trees, trimmed in the French fashion; and between the stretches of greenery, there were artfully placed bodies of water, some long and straight, like Persian qanats, and some irregular, like English ponds; a few of the gardens could even boast of geometrical Mughal terraces, complete with streams, fountains and delicately tiled bowries. But it was not by these extravagant extensions that the values of the properties were judged; it was rather by the view that each manse commanded – for a patch of garden, no matter how pretty, could not be held to materially affect the owner’s prospects, while to be able to keep an eye on the comings-and-goings on the river had an obvious and direct bearing on the fortunes of all who were dependent on that traffic. By this criterion it was generally acknowledged that the estate of Benjamin Brightwell Burnham was second to none, no matter that it was an acquisition of relatively recent date. In some respects the estate’s lack of a pedigree could even be counted as an advantage, for it had allowed Mr Burnham to give it a name of his choice, Bethel. What was more, having himself been responsible for the founding of his estate, Mr Burnham had felt no constraint in shaping the grounds to his needs and desires, ordering, without hesitation, the clearing of every unseemly weed and growth that obscured his view of the river – among them several ancient mango trees and a heathenish thicket of fifty-foot bamboo. Around Bethel, nothing interrupted the lines of sight between house and water, other than the chamber that stood perched on the lip of the river, looking down on the estate’s landing ghat and jetty. This shapely little gazebo differed from those on the neighbouring estates in that it was topped by a roof of Chinese design, with upturned eaves and curved green-glazed tiles.

  Recognizing the pavilion from the coksen’s description, Jodu plunged his oar into the mud and leant on the handle, to hold the dinghy stationary against the river’s current. In passing the other estates of Garden Reach, he had come to realize that the problem of finding Putli would not be resolved by locating the house in which she lived: each of these mansions was a small fortress, guarded by servants who were certain to perceive all interlopers as possible competitors against whom their jobs would have to be defended. To Jodu’s eye, it seemed that the garden with the green-roofed pavilion was the largest, and most impregnable, of all the neighbouring estates: deployed across its lawn was an army of malis and ghaskatas, some of whom were engaged in digging new beds, while others were weeding or mowing the grass with scythes. Dressed as he was, in a torn lungi and banyan, with
a faded gamchha tied around his head, Jodu knew that his chances of penetrating these defences were very small; in all likelihood within moments of setting foot on the grounds, he would be captured and handed over to the chowkidars, to be thrashed as a thief.

  Already, the stationary dinghy had attracted the attention of one of the estate’s boatmen – evidently a calputtee, for he was busy caulking the bottom of a sleek-looking caique, applying liquid tar with a palm-leaf brush. Now, leaving his brush in the bucket, the caulker turned to frown at Jodu. What’s the matter? he shouted. What’s your business here?

  Jodu gave him a disarming smile. Salam mistry-ji, he said, flattering the calputtee by raising him a rank or two in the grades of artisanship: I was just admiring the house. It must be the biggest around here?

  The calputtee nodded: What else? Zaroor. Of course it is.

  Jodu decided to chance his luck: It must be a large family that lives in it then?

  The calputtee’s lips curled into a sneer: Do you think a house like this would belong to the kind of people who’d live in a crowd? No; it’s just the Burra Sahib, the Burra BeeBee and the Burra Baby.

  That’s all? No one else?

  There’s a young missy-mem, said the caulker, with a dismissive shrug. But she’s not a part of the family. Just a charity-case they’ve taken in, from the goodness of their hearts.

  Jodu would have liked to know more, but he saw that it would be imprudent to press the man any further – it might well get Putli into trouble if word got out that a boatman had come looking for her in a dinghy. But how then was he to get a message to her? He was puzzling over this when he noticed a sapling, growing in the shade of the green-tiled pavilion: he recognized it as a chalta tree, which produced fragrant white flowers and a fruit that had an unusual, sour flavour, vaguely reminiscent of unripe apples.

  He assumed a voice like that of his rustic half-siblings, who seemed never to be able to walk past a field without asking questions about the crops; in a tone of innocent inquiry, he said to the calputtee: Has that chalta tree been recently planted?

  The caulker looked up and frowned. That one? He made a face and shrugged, as if to distance himself from the misbegotten growth. Yes, that’s the new missy-mem’s handiwork. She’s always interfering with the malis in the garden, moving things around.

  Jodu made his salams and turned the boat around, to head back the way he had come. He had guessed at once that the sapling had been planted by Putli: she had always craved the mouth-puckering taste of its fruit. At home, in the Botanical Gardens, a chalta tree had stood beside the window of her bedroom and every year, during its brief season, she had gathered handfuls of the fruit, to make into chutneys and pickles. She loved them so much that she even ate them raw, to the disbelief of others. Being thoroughly familiar with Putli’s gardening habits, Jodu knew that she would be down to water the sapling early in the morning: if he spent the night somewhere nearby, then he might well be able to catch her before the servants were up and about.

  Now, Jodu began to row upstream, watching the shore for a spot that would be at once hidden from view and near enough to habitation to be a discouragement to leopards and jackals. When one such appeared, he hitched up his lungi and waded through a bank of mud to tether the boat to the roots of a gigantic banyan tree. Then, climbing back inside, he washed the mud off his feet and set hungrily upon a pot of stale rice.

  At the rear of the dinghy there was a small thatched shelter and this was where he spread his mat after finishing his meagre meal. It was twilight now; the sun was setting on the far bank of the Hooghly, and the shadowed outlines of the trees in the Botanical Gardens were still visible across the water. Although Jodu was very tired, he could not bring himself to close his eyes while the skies were still bright enough to shed light upon the bustling life of the river.

  The tide was beginning to sweep in, and the Hooghly had filled with sails, as ships and boats hurried to take their berths or to stand out to mid-channel. From where he lay, on the slats of his gently rocking dinghy, Jodu could imagine that the world had turned itself upside down, so that the river had become the sky, crowded with banks of cloud; if you narrowed your eyes, you might almost think that the ships’ masts and spars were bolts of lightning, forking through the billowing sails. And as for thunder, there was that too, booming out of the sheets of canvas, as they flapped, slackened and filled again. The noise never failed to amaze him: the whiplash crack of the sails, the high-pitched shriek of the wind in the rigging, the groan of the timbers and surf-like pounding of the bow-waves: it was as if each ship were a moving tempest and he an eagle, circling close behind to hunt in the ruins of her wake.

  Looking across the river Jodu could count the flags of a dozen kingdoms and countries: Genoa, the Two Sicilies, France, Prussia, Holland, America, Venice. He had learnt to recognize them from Putli, who had pointed them out to him as they sailed past the Gardens; even though she herself had never left Bengal, she knew stories about the places from which they came. These tales had played no small part in nurturing his desire to see the roses of Basra and the port of Chin-kalan, where the great Faghfoor of Maha-chin held sway.

  On the deck of a nearby three-master, a mate’s voice could be heard, calling out in English: ‘All hands to quarters, ahoy!’ A moment later, the command became a hookum, relayed by a serang: Sab admi apni jagah!

  ‘Fill the main topsails.’ – Bhar bara gávi! With a resounding crack the canvas billowed in the wind, and the mate called out: ‘Ease the helm!’

  Gos daman ja! came the serang’s echo, and slowly the vessel’s bows began to turn. ‘Shiver the foretopsail!’ – and almost before the serang had finished issuing the hookum – Bajao tirkat gavi! – the lofty square of canvas had sent its whiplash crack shooting through the wind.

  From the silmagoors who sat on the ghats, sewing sails, Jodu had learnt the names of each piece of canvas, in English and in Laskari – that motley tongue, spoken nowhere but on the water, whose words were as varied as the port’s traffic, an anarchic medley of Portuguese calaluzes and Kerala pattimars, Arab booms and Bengal paunch-ways, Malay proas and Tamil catamarans, Hindusthani pulwars and English snows – yet beneath the surface of this farrago of sound, meaning flowed as freely as the currents beneath the crowded press of boats.

  By listening to the voices that echoed off the decks of ocean-going ships, Jodu had taught himself to recognize the officers’ hookums to the point where he could say them aloud, even if only to himself – ‘Starboard watch ahoy!’ Jamna pori upar ao! – understanding perfectly well the whole, while yet being unable to account for the meaning of the several parts. To shout the commands in earnest, on a ship that had been pushed on her beam-ends by a gale . . . that day would come, he was sure of it.

  Suddenly, another call floated across the water – Hayyá ilá assaláh . . . – and was taken up in relay, by the ships in the channel, passing from one vessel to another as the Muslims amongst the crewmen began to chant the evening azan. Jodu roused himself from the torpor of his full stomach and made his preparations for prayer: covering his head with a folded cloth, he manoeuvred his boat to point in a westerly direction before kneeling for the first raka’a. He had never been particularly devout and it was only because his mother’s interment was still so fresh in his mind that he felt compelled to pray now. But afterwards, when he had murmured the final syllables, he was glad that he had remembered: his mother would have wished it, he knew, and the knowledge of having done his duty would allow him to yield, without guilt, to the fatigue his body had accumulated over the last few weeks.

  Ten miles downriver, on the Raskhali budgerow, the preparations for dinner had run afoul of some unexpected snags. The boat’s lavish sheeshmahal for one: it had seen little use since the old Raja’s time and was found to be in a state of some disrepair when opened up. The chandeliers had lost many of their candle-holders, and these had to be replaced by makeshift devices constructed out of bits of string, wood and even a few strips of
coconut fibre. While the results were not unsatisfactory, they took some of the sparkle out of the fixtures and gave them a strangely wind-blown appearance.