First encounter with Amitav Ghosh's new novel "Sea of Poppies"

Hi folks…
I’m back…I was away on a short vacation and visited Gaya (Bihar) and Ranchi (Jharkhand)…Gaya is where Shruti’s parents live…and this time, the visit, though short, was memorable…for many reasons…I felt more comfortable this time around…I was visiting Gaya for the third time…and the visit to Bodh Gaya was extremely satisfying, more because this time we had our own camera…the soaring tower of the majestic Mahabodhi Temple fascinated me no end…I will give out details and photos in subsequent posts…

A few days before I left for Gaya, I was so busy wrapping up things at my college that I found no time to post…it is stale news now, but when it happened I was eager with anticipation…I had bought my own copy of Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies…the cover was so beautifully designed and light coloured that I realised that it would become dirty very soon and as is my usual practice, I covered it with a transparent polythene sheet…I started reading immediately…and was soon engrossed in the lives of the novel’s various inhabitants…but I couldn’t read much…I thought I’d be travelling soon and it would be a good thing to read the novel on the train…soon, the day of our departure to Kolkata (en route Gaya) arrived and I eagerly returned to the Sea of Poppies…so many reviews have already been written by eminent critics and writers and they are all available on the net… I won’t go into the details…I was enjoying the wonderful multi textured world that Amitav Ghosh had created and most of all I liked the way Amitav-da used different tongues – laskari, bhojpuri, the international sailors’ argot, the Anglo-Indian patois, etc., to take the reader into a different world…a different time…I have always admired Amitav-da’s ability to seamlessly weave in uncommon research-based topics (malaria research in The Calcutta Chromosome, cetology in The Hungry Tide, opium trade in Sea of Poppies, 12th century India and modern Egypt in In an Antique Land and so on) into the narrative of the novel…with such ease that you don’t see the effort…but more than this, it is Amitav-da’s favourite themes that one sees delineated with great concern here…

I have to get back to what I wanted to write today…I was reading the novel with great pleasure…and enjoying the reading very much…Amitav-da is a master storyteller …and if you have read The Calcutta Chromosome and The Hungry Tide…you know that he is a master of suspense too…I was somewhere after page 300 and as I finished a page on the left and looked up to start the page on the right…I felt odd…something was wrong…the previous page had ended with a full-stop…and now this page began mid sentence…I realised what was wrong and looked down to see the page number…after 314 it was 283… these things happen (I am reminded of a similar incident with another celebrated book…next post, ok?) and I flipped the remaining pages to see if 315 onwards occurred later…instead it was 283 to 314 once again and the novel resumes from 347 on…I was frustrated, disconcerted, and terribly irritated and all this in the train…it was evening around 7.00 PM…Shruti, always practical, asked me to call up the bookshop, Book Selection Centre, Secunderabad, and inform them about this damaged copy… we wouldn’t be back for another 15 days and who knows what the bookwallah will say…and I was mentally scanning my study trying to locate the bill/receipt…I dialled the number and the phone on the other side was ringing…nobody was picking it up…I tried again…and again…the Book Selection Centre people don’t delay answering the phone…then it dawned on me that it was Sunday and the shop would be closed…the frustration and irritation remained…then Shruti told me that it is only a matter of 30 pages and in such a large novel nothing much would have transpired…I was unenthusiastic…and continued to sulk…and then with nothing much to do and with a scowl, I went back to the novel…I started reading from 347 onwards and completed the novel…but the feeling of having eaten curd rice without pickles still remained… and we reached Gaya the next day…and sometime midday, I called up Book Selection Centre and told them about this problem…they told me that they would replace the book…I was relieved…then, another thing started nagging me…I had written Shruti’s and my name on the inside title page and date of purchase and had covered the book with transparent polythene…I was wondering whether the shopwallah would take back such a copy…this thing kept coming back and harried me no end…we returned on the 28th evening…it was late in the evening and I was tired…I decided to go to Book Selection Centre on 30th (Monday) and return the flawed copy of the novel…and that’s what I did on Monday evening…I went sheepishly with a silly smile to the counter and showed them my copy of the novel…he (after almost 15 years of purchasing books from Book Selection Centre, I still don’t know the names of the owners there…shame on me…but I know them and they know me…that’s enough, no…?) promptly said that he would replace the copy and proceeded to do so calling his assistant…I said that I have covered it…he said, ‘no problem, sir’…I said, I have also written my name, will that be a problem…he said, ‘no problem, sir, we will replace the book…’ I was so happy and relieved…and then he proceeded to very carefully (with a paper knife) remove the transparent polythene cover that I had stuck with a tape to the hard cover of the book…after removing it, he then proceeded to cover the new copy with it, again very carefully…I was touched with his gesture…I told him, I’d do it once I’m home…but he insisted and I didn’t know what to say… I was more than happy…

I am going to read Sea of Poppies once again…and thank the good people at Book Selection Centre while sailing on the Sea of Poppies…