Reading between the lines with Amitav Ghosh

WRITER'S SPACE: Ghosh has been winning awards since his first book The Circle of Reason was published in 1986.

          

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Keywords: The Glass Palace, Sea Of Poppies

Author Amitav Ghosh has been winning awards since his first book The Circle of Reason was published in 1986.

His credentials are top drawer, the ex- Stephanian and Oxford alumnus has also taught Comparative Literature at universities in India and the US.

A one-time journalist, Ghosh writes essays and fiction as well as perhaps what he is most famous for, historical fiction.

The 52-year-old is back on the literary map this year with his book Sea Of Poppies, the first book in it's ambitious abyss trilogy, set in the historical period leading up to the opium wars.

Sea of Poppies deals with slave trade, forced opium cultivation and colonial attitudes with language ranging from nautical jargon to even Bhojpuri.

Amrita Tripathi: Tell us a little about this book, this is the first time you are doing a trilogy as well.

Amitav Ghosh:It's a story of a group of people who are on a ship in the 19th century and it really tracks the paths by which they find themselves on this ship as with any ship in those days. There are people of many different kinds, of origin and places. The captain and the officers of the ship are English and American, then there are some convicts and some siladars or armed guards, then there are the migrant labourers or the girmitias as they are known, who are going to Mauritius to work.

Amrita Tripathi: Does the slave ship, the Ibis, play a key role throughout the book, and throughout the trilogy as well?

Amitav Ghosh: I think it will certainly play some part in the rest of the trilogy but it doesn't matter if it does or not. One of the most wonderful things that happened historically with Indian indentured labours as they went to other countries abroad was that when they were in the ship they began to think of themselves as jahaz bhais (ship brothers). So once they would settle in Mauritius or wherever, that relationship between them continued as they continued to think of themselves as jahaz bhais (ship brothers). So if someone had come over on the Ibis, his children would also think of that man's children as their jahaz bhais (ship brothers). So it became a family, not a natural family, but as it was a family of accidents. In a way I found that concept to be very beautiful when I first came across it, so that was in a way the inspiration of the book.