The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Characters from ‘the footnotes of history’

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Thursday, Jul 03, 2008
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Characters from ‘the footnotes of history’

Special Correspondent

Amitav Ghosh’s new book released in Bangalore

It is the first in a trilogy series by the writer
It chronicles the journey of labourers to Mauritius

— Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

NEW VOYAGE: Historian Ramachandra Guha (left) releasing Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Sea of Poppies’ at a function in Bangalore.

Bangalore: Indigenous sailors from the Indian Ocean areas in the 18th and 19th centuries were the equivalents of today’s information technology industry workers as they were the first to work with Western technology in a globalised workplace, said writer Amitav Ghosh.

His latest book, Sea of Poppies, released in Bangalore on Tuesday, is the first of a trilogy that chronicles the tumultuous journey of indentured labourers from varying social backgrounds across the Indian Ocean to the distant Mauritius.

As Ravi Singh of Penguin Books India put it at the launch, the novel recovers characters from “the footnotes of history” and shapes a richly textured novel against the backdrop of the social and economic devastation caused by opium trade of the East India Company.

Ghosh read a chapter from the book that describes the beginning of the journey of the motley crowd of labourers and sailors from the shores of Calcutta into the unknown “black waters” with apprehension and yet hopes of a new beginning together as “jahaz bhais” and “jahaz behans”.

Speaking at the interaction later, Ghosh said that though real historical characters did spark many of his works, they took a life of their own in the imagination. He was always interested in how “vast tapestry of life extends itself and regenerates itself”, he said.

One of the strengths of fiction, said Ghosh, is that it “allows us to inhabit a landscape”, like his earlier novel, “Hungry Tide”, allowed a reader to inhabit the Sundarbans. This, in turn, might have created sensitivity towards the ecologically fragile region. Environmental degradation is of great concern today, he said but warned that it should not become “eco-fascism” that discounts people’s lives in the process.

Ghosh said that it was always a pleasure to be in Bangalore. When his American friends ask him how readings in India are different are from those in America, he tells them: “Nandan Nilekani comes to my reading in Bangalore. Would Bill Gates come to your reading?”

Historian Ramachandra Guha released the book.

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