Book Review - River of Smoke

River of Smoke traces the stories of three sets of people on their journeys across the sea to Southern China where they are headed for different reasons. Bahram Modi, the Gujarati Parsi Opium Merchant and his friend the watchmaker Zadig are bound to Canton for their respective businesses. Modi's son with his lover, a chinese boat woman, Ah Fatt and his acquaintance, Neel Ratan, a raja who is now in hiding for having escaped from jail for forgery, join Modi in his trip to the Cantonese factories for employment. Paulette, an amateur botanist and her Mentor Firth are seeking a rare variety of camellia - the golden camellia which is supposed to have amazing properties of rejuenating a person, also make they way to the gardens of Canton and their search brings Paulette once again in contact with her childhood friend and artist, Robin Chinnery.

The Pearl River winds the stories of these people together to form a rich tapestry of different cultural landscapes. The story of Opium Trade in China and the attempts of the government to put an end to it makes for interesting reading and the story of Robin and Paulette lends colour and excitement to the narrative.

Robin's character - an ebullient Bengali youth - is reminiscent of a character from one of Ghosh's earlier Books - Tridib in Shadow Lines - One wonders whether they were inspired by the same character.

There are real-life characters that we recognise immediately, for example Napolean Bonaparte... there are also others whom we suspect were based on real characters - for example the single honest American merchant among the scores of others who are bent on trading opium without a principle or care on how it would affect the people and whether it is an ethical practice. Also the Character of John Slade, editor of a news paper and a starkly sketched picture of opinionated journalist seems to have existed in reality.

I have still not finished reading the book and it seems there will be more incidents to marvel at. What everyone will notice at first instance is the lingo... as someone at the launch pointed out, there are so many languages that Ghosh touches on in this book - lascar pidgin; the kreole of people in mauritius, gujarati parisi, chinese-english etc etc... all tied to his own mother tongue bengali somehow, just as he manages to tie the Pearl River to his own Hoogly....