Some more aspects of River of Smoke - Part II

I completed the volume today. It must be marked out as a special day for it has been long since I spent as much time on a long novel on a per day basis. What was so special... As Ghosh said at the Chennai launch of the book - Creative writers often tell you to write what you know, my idea was to turn that around and write about the new things - he has really achieved that in River of Smoke. There are many many things that you come across for the first time, including words! In the "fanqui town" where the foreigners camp to do their business with Canton, words are being invented all the time to bridge the communication gaps between the varied nationalities of people who are interacting.
LIfe at Canton is new, mention of all the plants and flowers and how they made their way into Europe from Canton is a fascinating story. The life of seafarers in the eighteenth century is new, These are all reasons to read the novel in all its detail.
As mentioned in my previous blog on Amitav Ghosh and the same book, This is a story of various people coming to canton for business, in the main, Bahram Modi the parsi Gujarathi who is in the opium trade, Neel Ratan, who works under a false identity for Bahram in order to escape imprisonment, and Robin Chinnery the gay painter who is there to look for a certain species of plant - the golden camellia. While the others eventually turn into supporting actors, the main character here is Bahram Modi who is in the thick of controversy for smuggling opium into China against the growing opposition from the mandarins. He is destined to confront his own actions and face the consequences. His character has been brilliantly sketched and one can almost visualise the scenes when he is forced to look inward and later look at the other Brits involved in the trade.
Robin Chinnery adds colour to the narrative and his innocent adventures lighten the situation somewhat.Neel's character has been well carved out - his learned bookish frame of mind a pleasant contrast to the burlesque extroverted and strangely inspiring-of-loyalty personality of his boss - Barham.
Events come to a pass at the end and each person has to reap the consequences of their decisions - Not a disappointing read at all. In fact a Must Read one can say.

I felt it was a novel about the elites so perhaps the omission of differentiation of society was deliberate, yet it could have been avoided. Another aspect that was a bit jarring was the repetition of Barham's opium dreams. The author need not have used the word Pariah or having used it, he could have created a better context for it...after all it was such a minor incident where it came about, having avoided so many other things he could have avoided this too, but well! Worth reading for every other reason.