Flowing with the 'River of Smoke'

It is difficult to miss Amitav Ghosh. He enters the lobby of the hotel, and his snow-white hair marks him out. Dressed casually in a pair of light blue jeans and a checked blue shirt, with a brown Nehru jacket thrown over, on a day when Bangalore sees strong winds.

Ghosh has been on the road for a while, attending events marking the launch of River of Smoke. Bangalore is his fourth stop. The toll of travel is clearly visible, as the author orders his lemon-honey tea. We settle to talk about the second book in the Ibis trilogy, the trilogy that draws its name from the storm-tossed ship making a journey from Calcutta to Canton in China, with a load of convicts and indentured labourers, in the nineteenth century.

There is a clear understanding that there will be continuation of sorts between the three books, River of Smoke being the second of a trilogy. However, the author himself says, “I wanted to write these books in a way that they are not a direct continuation of the previous book. Each of these could be read on its own.”

“A novel is about the language,” says Ghosh, “Just as much it is about the story. “You have to be able to recreate the language that was spoken at that time.” So, the Gujarati that Bahram Modi speaks is not deliberate, it is, in fact, just the opposite. “It is his mother tongue, and slipping into that language only goes to indicate that,” he says.

Detailed description is Ghosh’s forte, and that is what makes River of Smoke especially engaging. The ambience that is recreated in the book is actually a ‘visual’ treat. The spotlight is on people who mattered, in the India of those times.

Characters like the Parsi Bahram Modi and the Armenian Zadig people the pages of the book, reminding us of these communities that are dwindling in modern-day India. “I have included these characters as the communities were there when the events occurred…they contributed much, and were very enterprising.”

One cannot escape the feeling that the storyteller in this case is also a historian. The opium trade in Canton is recreated with the precision and exactitude that only a historian could manage. Ghosh maintains that he is a “storyteller interested in history.”

“The Opium Wars are an important event in history, but there is little written about them in Indian history.” He holds that the book could thus serve as a point of reference for events. “I do feel a great sense of responsibility to get it right, to provide a sense of what the place was really like at the time,” the researcher-author says.

Although the language does appear tedious at times, one is able to relate to the characters. Ghosh’s use of pidgin makes the reading initially rather laborious, but after a while, it appears an inevitable part of the storytelling. So whether it is Gujarati or creole, the story is imbued with a local flavour. Ask Ghosh about the effort involved, the research, and he says, “The characters drive the research.”