FICTIONALIZATION OF HISTORY IN SEA OF POPPIES

“If history forgets, fiction can remind us of many things.” Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh, one of the chief fiction writers of contemporary Indian English writing has mingled history in fiction in such a way that both not only look as inseparable entities but also work as complimentary of each other. In his narration of history he becomes fictional and in his each mnemonic effort of recollection, he becomes an historian. In his constant engagement with historiography, the method involved in writing history evinces itself in his historical works like The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta Chromosome, in An Antique Land and Sea of Poppies. These novels appear more to be an attempt to reconstruct history on their own terms and condition of memory, interpretation, analysis and expression. Unlike other novels The Shadow Lines that provides an ‘alternate interpretation of Nationalist history’, The Calcutta Chromosome seems to ‘question the process of historical construction’, An Antique Land emerges as ‘subversive history in the guise of traveller’s tale’ and now Sea of Poppies, an Ibis trilogy ‘celebrates the sea-faring lives of the lascars, the multi-cultural, multi-national groups of sailor’s sailing across the Indian ocean from Calcutta to Mauritius’ establishes Amitav Ghosh as an excellent past-master. Though having much traits of a historian, Ghosh is primarily a fiction-writer, the weaver of history into story, who himself asserts:
History can say things in great detail, even though it may say them in rather dull factual detail. The novel on the other hand can make links that history cannot.[1]
Keeping history as an object of research, Ghosh finds himself averse to writing and more even to writing the past in terms of present which is full of freshness of liveliness and devoid of dullness of historical details. He dives deep into texts but swims with another discovery of fiction drawn out from the unfathomed regions of history. Sea of Poppies is one of such novels in which Ghosh has attempted to revive the past mixing it with romance of fiction. In the novel, says Michel Binyon, “Coarseness and violence, cruelties and fatalism are relieved with flashes of emotion and kindness. This is no anti-colonial rant or didactic tableau but the story of men and women of all races and castes, cooped up on a voyage across the “Black Water” that strips them of dignity and ends in storm, neither in despair nor resolution. It is profoundly moving.[2] Here, he has explored certain those regions where even history can not access. And here, again he has succeeded in making a ‘sense of place’ – a world of his own. He sees aright when says:
For me novel is the most complete form of expressive utterance. Not only does it allow you to tell a story, but it also permits you to create the world within which the story is told. This means that a novel can create is own linguistic universe, and this say to me was one of the most exciting things about writing Sea of Poppies.[3]
In Sea of Poppies which has been “hailed as the most eagerly awaited fiction title of the year” or as an ‘epic work of exceptional beauty and power”, Amitav takes us back to India of 1838 and to the scene of opium wars and the heat and dust of India under British colonialism, which commences from ‘a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean to Mauritius islands on ‘an old slaving ship whose ragtag crew is made up of sailors, stowaways, convicts and the English men. The novel opens in a remote village of Deeti, the first character, introduced by Ghosh by giving a picture of Indian village life, as follows:
The village in which Deeti lived was on the outskirts of the town of Ghazipur, some fifty miles east of Banaras. Like all her neighbors, Deeti was preoccupied with the lateness of her poppy crop: that day, she rose early and went through the motions of her daily routine, laying out a freshly-washed dhoti and kameez for Hukum Singh, her husband, and preparing the rotis and achar he would eat at the midday.[4]
From the beginning, the lot of Deeti is sketched as pathetic, full of struggle for existence and ups and downs. She is married to an incorrigible afeemkhor, an addicted husband Hukum Singh, a high caste rajput who collapses at the opium-packing factory. Here the workers are as slow as ants in honey and later on passes away. The widow Deeti has no other option except being Sati on the altar of her husband. She is eloped away with Kalua, the ox-cart driver and in whose company she is having ‘a curious feeling of joy mixed with resignation’ she feels ‘as if she really had died and been delivered betimes in rebirth, to her next life: she had shed the body of the old Deeti, with burden of its Karma’; (178). But she is ‘free passing rest of her life with Kalua.
The novel, divided into three sections of ‘Land’ ‘River’ and ‘Sea’ has different historical and social set ups and life and each has ended in a new beginning.The first section ends with the beginning of new life of Deeti, the second section ends with the beginning of new life of Neel Rattan, the insolent in particular and the third chapter ends with new fate of all the characters of the novel. But historical set up or the ‘sense of time’ and ‘place’ is never absent in the book. The sense of time of colonial India when Indian life was so English that even language could not escape impact and Hindi became ‘Hinglish’. The canvas of Amitav is wider than historical plot; he uses history only to an extent from which one may look at life in its totality or it may not overpower delicacies and emotions of human life and not in fragments. He himself asserts it in terms of Sea of Poppies:
Sea of Poppies is not about any one thing, any more than the past (or the present) are about one thing. There can no doubt that colonialism was the dominant political reality: 19th century India. Yet it is important to remember that it was just one aspect of that reality: people also lived and laughed and loved as indeed people do everywhere no matter what their political circumstances.[5]
Rather the vision of Ghosh on 19th century India appears to be different. He adds:
When I look back at 19th century, what strikes me is the resilience, the resistance, the willingness to change and determination to learn. The past cannot and right not to, be planned down to one dimension.[6]
Ghosh, on the other hand portrays the lives of the people residing near the coast of old Calcutta where Raja Neel Rattan who is entertaining British merchants and sea-man aboard his budgerow with Champagne and chicken and top of forthcoming Chinese hostilities but soon the tables are turned and the same fastidious Bengal potentate is ruined because he is convicted of fraud and is bankrupted. Here at this point, Ghosh’s narration is quite impartial and especially the treatment of the Englishman with the Indian is also worth-noticing. The judges treat Raja Neel Rattan unmindful of his position and place:
The temptation that afflicts those who bear the burden of governance’, said the judge, ‘is ever that of indulgence, the power of paternal feeling being such as to make every parent partake of the suffering of his wards and offspring’s. Yet, painful as it is, duty requires us sometimes to set aside our natural affections in the proper dispensation of justice… (236)
The trial of Neel Rattan and later on the treatment with the Raja like an ordinary man and his painful conviction of Kalapani seems to touch the pulse of time.
The ship Ibis which is making preparations to set for sail to Madagascar loaded with a cargo of Girmitias (in which Kalua and Deeti are also present) and convicts (like that of Raja Neel Rattan). The characters like Zachary, the captain Chillingworth, Sarang Ali (boatswain) and his cruel treatment with the sailors and convicts remind of the India under colonialism. With such outlining events Ghosh intends to show something else. He does not pose himself bending towards a peculiar direction rather; he looks at the things without any personal indulgence. Another significant character Paulette, the daughter of French botanist fostered in Indian atmosphere is forced back into European pretensions of close class and snobbery in the household of Benjamin Burnham, the rich merchant of Calcutta, makes the reader think in another direction against the archetype of British rule.
The historical fiction of Amitav Ghosh are driven by what he said in a note to The Glass Palace as ‘a near obsessive urge to render the backgrounds’ of his characters’ lives as closely as he could’. In Sea of Poppies, he seems to trace the history of late 18th century Asia when in 1838 the opium wars are about to begin. Though at the centre of the novel is the Ibis, an old slaving ship voyaging across the Indian Ocean, yet it is not just a sea faring yarn. Here the comment of Sanjay Sipahimalani appears appropriate:
Ghosh takes his time in building up the characters, filling in their backgrounds and circumstances leading to their current predicament. In characteristically limpid prose and with the eye of a social anthropologist- a discipline in which he’s well- versed- he details the customs, diet, cloth and social restrictions of these individuals who are to be thrown together on the ibis to become ‘Jahaj-bhais’.[7]
Like his previous novels, in An Antique Land the blending of fact and fiction or a coalescing of different areas of human knowledge, Ghosh mingles History Geography, Voyages, trade, adventure, magic memory and multiple points of view in this novel. Though it is quite improper and injudicious to put a historical novel in comparison with the History because the former is concerned with reality or the fact and the latter is concerned with fiction or imagination. Here, the comment of R. K. Dhawan is worth-mentioning:
The novelist concerned with history is beyond the traditional way of assessing events; he has to blend history with his vision and philosophy. The novel deals with the history though a camouflage. P. V. Narasimha Rao’s maiden novel The Insider for example is fictionalized biography of an ex- Prime minister. Anand, the protagonist of the novel, is alter- ego of Rao, the major events of his life’s run parallel to the author’s life’s history. Also, it is an interesting account of the life and times of this country’s politics. The loss of idealism and honesty from public life in India, portrayed candidly in the novel, makes a terrific indictment of the system. It is a historical novel that throws useful light on the country’s socio-political life.[8]
Sea of Poppies in a sense is a unique experiment in fiction writing in which a reader can be seen floating on different levels of History, Anthropology, Travelogue or different channels of human emotions. In the present novel, Ghosh opens many floodgates of knowledge about the co-existence of different cultures, caste and creed in Indian and Britain. Ibis, the ship is a platform where different characters like Paulette, Sarang Ali, Zachary, Deeti, Kalua, Neel Rattan and Baboo Nobkissin exchange their ideas and represent different cultures and the ship and in fact the ship becomes a conglomeration of diverse cultures, tradition, customs and even religious. Ibis again becomes a distinct place which can be clear from the words of captain which are translated by Babloo Nobkisssin:
The difference is that the laws of the land have no hold on the water. At sea there is another law, and you should know that on this vessel I am its sole maker. While you are on the ibis and while she is at sea, I am your fate, your providence, your lawgiver. This chabuk you see in my hands is just is just one of the keepers of my law. But it is not the only one- there is another… (404)
In fact, the atmosphere of ship is quite different to the atmosphere of the land. The cruel treatments with the slaves or the Girmitias, the snobbery of the English, the ruined mental state of Neel Rattan create the feeling of anger, despair and even hatred but the activities of Paulette and the incidents like Deeti’s singing of Bhojpuri songs in the escalating din of ship make both the characters of the novel as well as readers nostalgic:
Talwa jharaile
Kawal kumhlaile
Hanse roye
Biraha biyog (397)
X X X
The pond is dry
The lotus withered
The swan weeps
For its absent love (398)
X X X
Kaise kate ab
Birha ki Ratiya?
How will it pass?
This night of parting (ibid)

Ghosh himself points out the importance of Bhojpuri language and says:
Bhojpuri was the language of this music; because of all the tongues spoken between the Ganges and the Indus, there was none that was its equal in the expression of the nuances of love, longing and separation- of the plight of those who leave and those who stay at home. (399)
By the tool of language, Ghosh attempts to leave a deeper impact on the readers as well as exhibits his wide and in-depth knowledge. There are three languages visible in Sea of Poppies which are rightly judged by Inderjeet Hazara who says:
… language plays a pivotal role to bring every character in Ghosh’s book alive- whether it’s the Bhojpuri of Deeti, a woman married to an afimkhor in Ghazipur, the chameleon like language of the han solo-ish Zachary Reid, an American whose mixed descent makes him ‘Go East’ and join Ibis crew; or the Bengali of the humiliated and tragic Raja Neel Rattan Halder of Raskhali; or the rapscallion hobson-jobson of merchant-nabobe like Burnham.[9]
Ghosh is much confident in his choice of words, phrases and idioms and is quite away from the British ways of using English. He rather coins his own spellings, sentence structure or grammar. Alike Rushdie or Arundhati Roy, he uses English in his own way which is now another milestone achieved by him. In Sea of Poppies, the quality of experimentation is chiefly visible in the characters like Deeti, Zachary, Neel Rattan Haldar, Sarang Ali and Ben Bernhum who sometimes seem clashing or another time mixing with each other and consequently leave a lasting impression of live images. Shirley Crew is right when she says:
With the colourful characters, another bedazzling aspect of Sea of Poppies is the clash and mingling of language. Bhojpuri, Bengali, Laskari, Hindustani, Anglo-Indian words and phrases and a fantastic spectrum of English… create a vivid sense of living voices as well as the linguistic resourcefulness of people in Diaspora.[10]
The words like thug, pukka, sahib, serang, mali, lathi, dekko and punkah-wallah; dhoti, kurta, jooties, nayansukh, dasturi, sirdar, maharir, serishtas and burkundaz have succeeded in creating Indian true atmosphere in the novel.

In the past few years fiction writers have adopted a new way of writing, the writing of the past on the basis of their memories mingling them with fiction. May be, they are trying to trace the deepening mood of nationalism as to cherish the memories of bygone days or they are enjoying the job of mingling the fact with the fiction. Writer like Salman Rushdie, Shashi Tharoor, Manohar Malgaonkar, Chaman Nehal, Khushwant Singh and Amitav Ghosh are some fine practitioners of this trend.
The fiction of Amitav Ghosh reveals his prime obsession with History. He gives a new dimension to History even when he fictionalizes the fact. As his fiction is replete with political, historical and social consciousness, he excels his contemporaries and shapes his novels according to the need of History. Therefore, fact is fictionalized without any loss of grace and dignity adds the charm of reading. In Sea of Poppies the fact of opium wars remains the chief theme, yet the characters, dialogue and language are supporting factors. David Robson says rightly:
If opium were the dominant theme of Sea of Poppies, it would probably be a less interesting book. Instead, Ghosh has used the voyage of the ibis as the centerpiece of a much broader canvas, a seething human diaspora in which every character has a story to tell and every passenger is on the run from someone to something.[11]
Therefore, in this remarkable confluence of fact and fiction, historical facts of 1838 opium wars with the support of imaginary characters are revitalized with such care that each remains intact and graceful without overpowering the other. As the works of Amitav Ghosh are underpinned by a mass of research and specialists information, he remains unquestionable and impartial in his narrations and he succeeds in peeling off the multiple layers of complexities of History which really ‘enables us to deal better with contemporary realities’.













References

[1] Ghosh A. The Past-master. Sunday Hindustan Times, 15 June 2008.
[2] Binyon, Michel. ‘Sea of Poppies by Amitabh Ghosh’, The Times Review.
[3] Ghosh, Amitav. ‘Confronting the Past’, Interview with Priyamvada Gopal. The Hindu. ‘Literary Review’, ‘Dialogues’ 1 June 2008.
[4] Ghosh, Amitav. Sea of Poppies. New Delhi: PenguinGroup. 2008. (All subsequent references are from this book)
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Sipahimalani, Sanjay. ‘A Sea Change into Something Rich and Strange’, Sunday Hindustan Times. 15, June 2008. New Delhi, p.14
[8]Dhawan, R. K. ‘Introduction’, The Novels of Amitav Ghosh, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1999. 14
[9] Ghosh, A. Op.cit.
[10]Crew, Shirley ‘Advance Praise of Sea of Poppies’ The Independent, Friday-16 May 2008. www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/05/amitav-ghosh
[11] Robson, David. ‘Into the Opium War’, The Telegraph.