Sea of poppies by Amitav Ghosh 

Sea of poppies is the first of the Ibis trilogy. Ghosh has done a remarkable job of creating a character portrait of the main people in this epic saga. He has made good use of his background as an anthropologist to do extensive research on the natives and their perspectives. Ghosh weaves an intricate pattern of people together as jahaj- bhais and jahaj-behens. In the first part of the novel, Ghosh unfolds each of his main characters and by the time the voyage across the Indian ocean starts the reader is intimately associated with them.

The story is set during the time of the opium wars. The novel starts with a glimpse into the life of Deeti -known to her kin as Kabutri-ki-ma-  the main protagonist as she goes about her day to day business. She is shown as an exceptionally resourceful woman. Her life is full of strife and tribulations but she takes each challenge in her stride and plods on. She runs away with her lover Kalua to start a new life and her daughter is sent off to live with relatives. She is known as Bhauji - elder brothers wife to everyone on the ship and is a source of support to all with her practical and steadfast frame of mind. She believes that this new life with Kalua is her rebirth , her escape from her previous karma.

On board the Ibis are:

Paulette Lambert an orphaned French girl who was brought up by her Indian wet nurse and she is more comfortable in saris than in 'memsahib' clothes. She looks upon the wet nurse's son — Jodu as her brother and is at ease conversing in the native tongue.

Raja Neel Rattan Halder who is wrongly convicted of forgery and is strangely able to make peace with his reduced station in life. He has known a life of material comfort and strict protocol with regard to his dietary habits and hygiene. This protocol is challenged to the core when he lives with his cell mate Ah Fatt- known as Aafaat (trouble) in the local lingo- who is an opium addict. He is suffering from withdrawal symptoms and caked from head to toe in his own body waste. To maintain some semblance of hygiene in his cell Neel washed the opium convict clean as if washing away his own fetishes.

Zachary Reid starts his journey as a carpenter on this ship but makes his way  up as the second mate.

The team of lascars is described in detail highlighting each lascar's unique traits — right from the alternate self Ghaseeti begum of one of the lascars. Ghaseeti begum would typically make an appearance when all the officers were out on the shore and the lascars would entertain themselves with her lively dance performances.

Baboo Nob Kissin is the supercargo and he is undergoing a transgender transformation based on a religious epiphany

The girmitiyas — the coolies on the ship who are being transported to farms in Mauritius, their dreams, their aspirations, hopes and fears are described with great sensitivity. They all experience the fearsome thought that they would never set foot on land again.

The British in this novel are shown as caricatures with a very predictable mind frame of exploitation of the natives. They even defend their opium selling in China as a service to god by propagating free trade.

The novel is generously peppered with native language and since I could actually understand the terms it enhanced my reading experience but it would be interesting to see how a reader would feel  for whom these terms are incomprehensible. I assume that  they would grow on the reader and one would correctly guess the meaning without having to refer to the dictionary. Just as a child one expands ones vocabulary by reading and not by looking in the dictionary.

Ghosh has done a wonderful job of  transporting the reader back to the times when the opium wars were in the air. The food, customs, the mannerisms and the thought process of the people who lived in those times are vividly described. There are some very humorous scenes in the novel — the dinner scene where Neel entertains his British guests in a formal dining room that was not in use for years is truly comic. Neel recoils in horror to see that his servants have substituted an old chamber pot as a centerpiece and vase! Neel is unable to eat with the foreigners as he does not want to lose caste and watches forlornly as his guests devour one scrumptious dish after another. The book is entertaining and the reader's curiosity is piqued right up to the end. The ending is apt —keeping in mind that a sequel for this book is soon to follow. Ghosh is able to portray these characters from an ancient time quite realistically. The only drawback in this novel is that sometimes the digressions from the main plot tend to meander for quite a while. Nevertheless he manages to whet the reader's appetite for the continuation of the story in the next of the series — 'The River of Smoke.'