The Panda's Thumb. By Stephen Jay Gould

The Panda's Thumb

Stephen Jay Gould

Penguin Books. First published 1980.

A set of 31 essays on paleobiology and evolutionary biology by a master. I have read and enjoyed (and learnt much from) Gould's books before, and this one is no exception. Except that they are all about the above two topics, the essays are only loosely connected. In the first few pieces, Gould tells something, but not much, about his theory of punctuated equilibrium as an alternative to the (then?) commonly held theory of slow steady evolution by random variation and natural selection. As 'evidence' he talks about repeated sudden extinctions. He does not say anything about Kimura's theory of neutral drift which I find an attractive way of explaining biological diversity. This is not to discount natural selection as the prime agent of evolution, only that it does not operate to always make organisms 'better and better'. Gould also talks about the Piltdown fraud; the evolution of how Mickey Mouse is drawn to make 'him' look more and more childish, and therefore more attractive; about politically and racially motivated biological and evolutionary theories about such features as the size and weight of brains of women and black people; about how to define species; about cladism; about the intelligence of dinosaurs; and about whether birds are descended from dinosaurs (they are) or whether they are a product of convergent evolution that produced feathers in two separate events - archaeopteryx and birds (no, they are not). Some of the essays are, well, not outdated, but dated, since surely much evidence has accumulated in the last 30 years that would have settled some of questions raised in them. For example, Gould speculates that the evolutionary relationship between ciliates and acoeles (whatever they are) will be settled by analyses of DNA sequences, of which very little were available at the time Gould wrote his essays. With the enormous amount of sequence information now available, that question must have been settled. 


I record one final piece of information - magnetotactic bacteria carry nanocrystals (Gould calls them 'single domain crystals' - the 'nano' terminology was not known then) of magnetite (i.e. one of the iron oxides) to help them orient themselves to magnetic fields. But not, in general, North/South but Up/Down, using the force of Dip or the vertical component of the earth's magnetic field. The nano size (~ 500 Angstroms) is apparently just right - smaller and they would be paramagnetic, any larger and they would have too many domains to act as a proper magnetic sensing device. 

One Hundred Years of Solitude. By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (of course!)

Penguin Books. Published 1996. First published in 1967.

While reading the first few chapters of the book I felt it was overrated and over-hyped. It seemed (and yet seems, when I think of it sometimes) a standard 'stream of consciousness' book in the style of some of books of Kazuo Ishiguro or Salman Rushdie, or even Orhan Pamuk. Maybe they all have the same style. And maybe it's a great and important style. But I find it difficult to understand. Or enjoy. Or derive any great satisfaction from it. I think to be really able to understand books such as these, one must be either a serious student of literature and philosophy, or have someone explain the whole book in detail, or be aware of every possible historical and political context of every sentence in the book (if there are, in fact, any) or most of them, anyway. Or maybe it's simply that 'the Emperor has no clothes', or well, very little. Certainly I don't understand why Salman Rushdie (or anyone) should call it 'the greatest novel in any language in the last fifty years', almost like there was a rating system for books, like cricket or tennis ratings. Likewise the New York Times' opinion that the book 'should be required reading for the entire human race' seems far too overblown. Of course these statements, which appear on the cover pages of the book, may be the publisher's attempt to overawe a potential buyer into completing the purchase. Maybe the context in which the comments were originally made nuanced them a lot more. But does the book deserve the Nobel prize? A question more to the point is, does the author deserve the Nobel prize? Who am I to say? I do know that most of my attempts to read Nobel prize winning authors have ended in confusion and boredom, except for a few instances - Steinbeck, Tagore, and one or two books by Pamuk and Gao Xingjian. But let me not digress too much. Let me get back to the 100 lonely years.

The book is a tale (or history) of one Colombian family over six generations, narrated in the 'magic realism' style. This means that there are a lot of strange happenings scattered through the book, such as flocks of yellow butterflies always announcing the presence of one of the characters, or the sudden ascent to heaven of another character, the most beautiful female in the book. These events probably represent something else, but I don't understand them. Sometimes they are humorous, sometimes sad, sometimes horrible, but only  rarely clearly related to what the author is trying to convey. The tale begins with the founding of the village of Macondo by the patriarch of the family Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife Ursula. Beundia becomes demented after about 50 years and has to be kept tied to a tree until he dies, but his wife survives to see the birth of the sixth generation, and for the first few generations acts like a Michael Corleone, remaining 'strong for the family'. Among the other notable characters in the family is General Aureliano Beundia, son of Jose, who fights some kind of revolutionary war off and on, fighting first in favour of the 'liberals' against the 'conservatives' and then against the 'liberals'. There are other characters almost equally notable - Pilar Ternara, whore/mistress to more than one member of the family, and mother to one; Remedios the beauty who likes to walk around naked and finally ascends up into the sky; Melquiades, the gypsy, who comes to Macondo every year, each time bringing strange devices, like magnets, or flying carpets; and Mr Brown of the banana company who is the typical American (US) executive, only interested in the profits of his company, who oversees the slaughter (and then the cover-up of the slaughter) of '3000' people striking along with the company workers for better conditions. There is love, hatred, sacrifice, adultery, incest, birth and death, and generally high and low points in the struggles of the family, until it decays away to almost nothing. There are several memorable scenes, and no doubt I will come across situations in life where they will be recalled. The family story is set against the background of the typical (probably) history of a South or Central American country. It starts with the founding of Macondo in the wilds, its development, the internal wars, the politics, the dictatorships, the hyper-capitalist US company, the coming of the railway and the changes this 'modernity' brings, until finally decay sets in and the once prosperous and thriving town fades away, before being utterly destroyed (off stage, after the end of the book) by a storm. (This may be blasphemy, but some of these aspects, especially the ones featuring General Aureliano, are reminiscent of the book 'The Adventurers' by Harold Robbins! I kept thinking of that book while reading this.)

After the first few chapters, which as I said, I had to push myself to read, I enjoyed reading the rest of it. Once you get some sort of handle on the writing style and the innumerable Arcadios and Aurelianos, it is enjoyable, and frequently strikes a personal chord. Something or the other in my life is often like something described in the book. Apart from the loose structure I described above, the book does not have a real plot. Almost every third or fourth page of the book takes up a different thread and follows it for a short while. Sometimes, it reverts to a thread that was dropped earlier on, and takes it a little further. But on the whole the novel was probably written down like a poem, rather than like the novels that PG Wodehouse painstaking constructed (as described in his 'Performing Flea'). It does have a denouement at the end. This has to do with some mysterious manuscripts that Melquiades the gypsy has entrusted to the care of the first Jose Arcadio Beundia. The last Aureliano, after six generations, finally finds it is written in Sanskrit, learns that language, finds that it is actually coded in many different codes and then translated into Sanskrit, deciphers the codes, and understands that the manuscript is the history of the Buendia family written in a form compressed in space and time, or in other words, the novel we have just finished!

Some quotations - sentences that struck me as I read the book.

'The best friend a person has is one who has just died'

'She began to make mistakes, trying to see with her eyes the things that intuition allowed her to see with greater clarity'

'...he was the only one who had enough lucidity to realize that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave eternalized fragments in a room.' 

'It had never occurred to him until then to think that literature was the best plaything that had ever been invented to make fun of people...'    

'...the history of the family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle.'

Of course the original in Spanish may be different, almost certainly better. What I have written above are my 'raw' reactions. I will probably read the book again, after I read reviews and essays on Marquez, and perhaps understand why the book is considered so great. Not that I don't like the book now, I like it a lot. But 'greatest'? I don't know. Perhaps it's just that I don't see all of its merit.

The Chosen. By Chaim Potok

The Chosen

Chaim Potok

First published 1967 by The Random House Publishing Group

Maybe I have read another book by Chaim Potok. It was in 1990, I was temporarily in the guest house at the Department of Botany, I think, of the Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, waiting for more permanent accommodation. One of the earlier guests had left behind a book about hasidic Jews in New York. I only vaguely remember it, but the description of their habits and traditions now seems to me like what I just read in 'The Chosen'. One thing I do remember clearly from that long forgotten book is how the hasidim discuss whether turning on the electric switch on Sabbath constitutes a violation of the religious law, which requires a hasid to do no work at all on that day, but only study the Talmud. 'The Chosen' was Potok's first novel, and the title seems somewhat ironical, but maybe I've just layered my own feelings on it. For, the book takes itself seriously enough, describing an encounter between an extreme view of Judaism and a slightly less extreme one, but representing the two as diametrically opposite. The hasidic family is represented by a Rabbi and his brilliant son Danny, who is being trained in a harsh and unforgiving manner to take over from his father as the next Rabbi. The slightly less extreme tradition, Zionist, is represented by a teacher of the Talmud at a Yeshiva (Jewish seminary) and his son Reuven, also brilliant, also being instructed by his father in the Talmud, but less harshly. The training, in both cases consists of endless scholasticism regarding the Talmud and its interpretation. The story takes place in New York at about the time World War II was coming to an end, and Israel was being created. The book is well written, good to read, and opens a few mental windows, but is very insular. The messages and attitudes it conveys cannot really translate into the world outside the Jewish culture. I dislike the way the author assumes that it was right to displace an entire population (the Arabs) simply because, after Hitler and all the centuries of persecution, the European Jews desperately needed a homeland of their own. Wouldn't it have made more sense to carve out such a homeland in Europe itself, or, failing that, in the vast underpopulated regions of the New World (America and/or Australia). The British (and now, the Americans) did what they did (and continue to do it) because they can - not because it is right. I remember the argument (actually shouting match) I had with Osnat Herzberg on this topic when she was in Bangalore for a conference. I think I was stupid then, not for what I said, but how I said it. Anyway, these politics forms a vague background to the story, which is really about how to bring up your children, in particular contrasting a very traditional and harsh way with a more liberal (but only slightly more so) method. 

Uncle Dynamite. By P.G. Wodehouse

Uncle Dynamite

P.G. Wodehouse

First published 1948 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd.

It must be about 15 years since I last read this book - with the result the story, was new to me, as were many of his 'nifties'. Uncle Fred (Lord Ickenham) is in his usual springtime form, and at the receiving end, besides Pongo Twistleton, are, Sir Alymer Bostock, Bill Oakshott, Constable Potter and Major Brabazon-Plank. The story is the standard complicated one of couples falling apart and reuniting, country houses, odd doings in the night, bonny baby contests, etc. The following memorable joke occurs in it, and is one which I have often used in class to describe the major and minor grooves of DNA, and how they change size in the different forms of the double helix.   

"Lord Ickhenham laughed amusedly.

"Just a slip of the tongue, such as so often occurs. He meant Brabazon-Plank, major. As opposed to my brother, who, being younger than me, is, of course, Brabazon-Plank, minor. I can understand you being confused", said Lord Ickhenham......"And what renders it all the more complex is that as I myself am a mining engineer by profession [and my brother is an army officer], anyone who wants to get straight on the Brabazon-Plank situation has got to keep steadily before him the fact that the minor is a major and the major a miner. I have known strong men to break down on realizing this" 

The People's Train. By Thomas Keneally

The People’s Train

Thomas Keneally

Published in 2009 by Sceptre (Hodder and Stoughton)

Keneally’s best known book is ‘Schindler’s Ark’, but I have also read and liked ‘The Commonwealth of Thieves’, about the establishment of the first English colonies in Australia, and ‘Towards Asmara’, about the Eritrean struggle. ‘The People’s Train’ is named for a monorail designed by a Russian exile in Brisbane, Australia, in the first decade of the 20^th century, but the title also refers to the Russian communist revolution which forms the main backdrop of the novel. The book follows the revolutionary activities of Artem Samsurov. The story starts in Australia, before moving to Russia. But in chronological order, Samsurov is a worker in Tsarist Russia, a comrade of Vladimir Illich Lenin. He tries to organize the workers in Russia and is sent to a Siberian prison for his pains. After a year or so in prison camp, he escapes, via China and Japan, to Australia, where he takes up work as a labourer in a meat warehouse (reminiscent of Conrad Hensley, the character in Tom Wolfe’s ‘A Man in Full’). Here he organizes the labour, and along with fellow Russian exiles, other ‘English’ Australian workers, and lead by Australian socialist politicos, journalists and lawyers, takes part in a general strike. But the war (WW I) puts paid to his efforts at internationalism – nationalism trumps everything, and it becomes more important to defeat Germany than the capitalist bosses. In the meantime, Artem has a love affair with his lawyer Hope Mockridge. When on a picinic with Hope and other friends, a Russsian blackleg and police informer shoots himself. Artem and couple of others are arrested for murder, but with the help of Hope’s cuckolded lawyer husband and some journalists sympathetic to the cause, Artem and the others are set free. Artem then goes back to Russia, where the revolution is heating up. He takes his Australian journalist friend Paddy Dykes along. The revolution is going through the expected chaotic and confusing stage. The Tsar has been overthrown, but the new administration is not in place. Lenin (and Stalin – who has a ‘walk-on’ role) along with Trotsky and others are organising for the Bolsheviks come to power. There is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, with an important role, at least in this novel, for Artem. The novel ends inconclusively, the revolution is not as yet over, but clearly the future belongs to the Bolsheviks.

Keneally is always good to read. Like the other books mentioned above, he has based this novel on the true story of a Russian exile, though the true information he has is apparently mainly to do with the Australian part, the part narrated in the first person by Artem. The Russian part is supposed to be written by Paddy, and, maybe deliberately, it’s an outsider’s view. Perhaps because of that, it’s somewhat less convincing. The writing, as on critic on the blurb says is ‘remarkably uninformed by hindsight’, meaning, probably, that though the novel  was written in 2009, there is no criticism even implied of communism, Soviet Russia, Lenin and, of course, Stalin. The critic may have meant to snidely disparage Keneally, but the novel is as honest as possible and as neutral as possible, though, of course, any fair-minded reader of history would have to support the Bolsheviks at that point of time in Russia. Keneally, to his great credit, doesn’t try to establish his neutrality by going the other way to point out to the futility of what happened, but he doesn’t overdo the idealism, either. On the whole a very good book, though it drags a bit towards the end. I must read more books by Keneally.

China - A History. By John Keay

China - A History

John Keay

Harper Press, 2009.

This is my introduction to a 'complete' history of China - beginning from prehistory and ending up in the 1970s, with a final brief nod to current events. The history is written in Keay's apparently usual style (see his 'India') - which means lighthearted use of the language, going through the facts at great speed, but trying to be as comprehensive as possible, a great many references and some analyses. Aa an introduction, the book is good, I suppose. But I don't think a China scholar would think much of it. I don't know why I think so, perhaps it is because of the writing style. The narrative appears unbiased - well, maybe there is a slight anti-western bias. But Keay does not shy away from the great cruelties Chinese inflicted on each other and on others. He is particularly condemnatory in discussing female foot-binding and talks highly of the communists for doing away with this practice. 

Before I sketch out the historical story line let me mention, as Keay explains in the first few chapters, that 'China', through most of its history, meant the middle eastern part of the present-day land area, essentially the area encompassing the two great rivers - the Yangtse (or Yanzi in the present day script) in the south and the Yellow river in the north. Thus Tibet, Mongolia, much of northern Manchuria, the western desert or steppe lands of Xinjiang (adjoining the 'stans' of central Asia) and even parts of the southern country, just north of Vietnam, were considered to be 'fringe' areas, either occupied by, or paying tribute to the central kingdom. Chinese history, at least according to Keay, is thus a list of kings, emperors and dynasties holding sway chiefly over this large and productive piece of land, called the 'middle kingdom' or Zhongguo in Chinese (which is also the present-day official Chinese name for itself), but not necessarily the fringe areas.  Here, then, is the list of dynasties. Mythologically there were five great emperors, one after the other, who are credited with the early origins of Chinese civilization. These and later empires and emperors were conferred legitimacy by establishing that they, and no one else, had 'Heaven's mandate' to rule 'All under Heaven'. The conferment of the mandate was indicated by the absence of natural disasters during their reign, and the presence of ‘good’ omens, as much as the loss of the mandate was indicated by the occurrence of such disasters, and ‘bad’ omens. (I suppose the mandate was assumed by the Emperor analogous to the way the ‘taking of silk’ was assumed at a specific time by lawyers in Victorian England.) The first of the more historical dynasties (kings now, rather than emperors) starts at about 2000 BC with Xia, followed by Shang and then the Zhou dynasties. The last one is most notable for a 'General Zhou' who put in a place a perfect administration in around 1000 - 250 BC, much admired by Confucius (ca 500 BC). These dynasties were during the bronze age, and China reached great technological heights in working bronze - presumably other stuff as well. The latter part of the Zhou dynasty overlapped with a period of confusion called the 'spring and autumn' period, followed by a period of the 'warring states'. At this time, there was no king clearly superior to the numerous dukes and other lesser nobles who ruled bits and pieces of the land. This period was followed by the first known imperial dynasty, the Qin dynasty, ruling a large portion of the middle kingdom. The first historically recognized emperor was Zheng Shi Huangdi (246 to 210 BC) who actually called himself 'the first emperor' expecting to be followed by the second, the third and so on. In the event he was followed by just two more. Huangdi has been credited with building the great wall of China, but the archaeological evidence says he built a small portion of it, at a location not identical to the present site, and using stamped mud as the building material, rather than the stone structure seen today. But the chambers of the 'terracotta army' (which has been identified as the tomb of Huangdi) discovered recently, and not yet fully explored or analysed, points to a sophisticated technology (armor made of jade stones!) and advanced administrative systems (e.g. a common examination in the classics - the writings of 'General Zhou' and Confucius, the 'I Ching'.... all of which literature is reliably dated to the first millenium BC or even earlier - for admission to the Emperor's administrative service, much like the ICS or IAS exams). The Qin empire suffered a period of decline and was reconstituted as the Han empire which lasted about 400 years until about 220 AD. The Han Empire is the first of the five great empires that define Chinese history. Thus, even today, the Han Chinese are the 'real' Chinese - others are minority ethnic groups  such as Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchurians, Uighurs, etc., etc. This period of great cultural and technological advances (carts, paper, printing, astronomy, bronze and iron working, irrigation, canal building) was followed by the so-called 'period of the three kingdoms' (Wei, Shu and Wu, each contending for supremacy, and the subject of a popular later - 17th century -  novel called 'The Romance of the Three Kingdoms') followed in turn by a 'period of disunion' for about four hundred years during which 16 - 20 dynasties held and contended for portions of the middle kingdom, against each other and local chieftains.The second great empire, the Tang empire, followed from 550 to 907 AD, and was once again a period of great cultural and technological advances, especially in administrative structures, tax reforms, etc. The period is also notable for the reign, during a large part of it, by the Dowager Empress Wu Zetian, who ruled as regent in the name of her son, nephew and grandson. Buddhism also became more firmly established during this time, presumably the time Bodhidharma travelled from Kanchipuram (?) to the Shao Lin temple (?). From being the ‘greatest power in Asia’ during the early days, the Tang empire fell into bad times from around 750 AD. In the mid tenth century there was the usual period of confusion with five dynasties and/or ten kingdoms contending to be top gun. Among these were some from Manchuria and Mongolia (Jurchen, Jin) and the Song. This last named was considered the most representative of the lot and this period is identified with it. The period is counted as the ‘Golden Age’ of China, culturally and, again, technologically and administratively. This confusion yielded to rule by the Mongols. While Chengis Khan and his earlier successors were content to invade China (and other parts of Eurasia) and return to their homeland, the later sucessors overthrew the Song dynasty in about 1280 AD and established the Yuan dynasty, with Kubhlai Khan as its most notable Emperor. This dynasty was followed by the indigenous Ming dynasty from about 1375 AD. The Ming period is associated with the voyages as far afield as Africa of Admiral Zheng He, with the increase in trade between China and not just Asia but also Europe, the articles traded being now, more and more, tea and porcelain, rather than just silk, and again great technological advances, including sailing and navigation. The Great Wall worked on in bits and pieces over the years by various Kings and Emperors, was given its final shape in stone during this period. The great canal connecting the Yangxi and the Yellow rivers, was also rebuild, renewed and opened to a great deal of traffic and trade. The Ming period ended in about 1650, when the Manchus (from Manchuria) conquered China and started their own Qing dynasty. The kingdom was consolidated during this period, and slowly opened up to foreign trade, specifically European and American. It was in the Qing period that the British expanded their empire also into China, pushing opium into the country, as described by Amitav Ghosh in ‘River of Smoke’. Other powers were not far behind in humiliating and overpowering the remanants of the Qing dynasty. The dynasty lingered on until the early 20^th century with the ‘Last Emperor’ Pu Yi memorialized in the Hollywood movie of the same name. The mandarins (‘IAS’ officials) did much of the actual ruling – Commissioner Li (described in ‘River of Smoke’ being one of them). China was parceled out between the Europeans, the Americans, the Japanese and a huge number of warlords, each a King or the ruler of his piece of land, and constantly bickering with the neighbours. This went on until the Nationalists under Sun Yat Sen and, later, Chiang Kai Shek united large portions of the empire to form a republic. The Communist party was slowly building up its strength under Mao, Zhou Enlai, Lin Biao and others. After first joining the Nationalists to push out the foreigners,a nd in particular the Japanese, they took over the country after the famous ‘Long March’ and established the People’s Republic of China, still called the ‘Middle Kingdom’ - Zhongguo - in Chinese.

In brief: Five Mythical Emperors – Xia, Shang, Zhou – the first empire Qin (Huangdi) – Han – the three kingdoms – Tang – Song – Ming – Qing – Europe – PRC. 


Perhaps I looked forward to too much, but the book fails to explain or give some rational lead up to China’s current status as a poor, developing country, albeit developing very fast. With India, firstly there was never such high technological development, secondly our history of being a colony, and thirdly  the sub-continent was never, or only very rarely, one integrated nation, fourthly the caste system, and fifthly the existence of tens of different important language groups and hundreds of different languages, many with their own literature and mostly with their own culture – these may be used to plausibly explain the state of our economy and our polity. None of these factors apply to China. Technology was far in advanced of the Europeans hundreds of years before them, as was their culture, and most importantly they had in place a terrific administrative system a couple of millenia before such things were thought of elsewhere. They have had a continuous ‘Chinese’ culture extending back 4000 years to the second millennium BC. And yet, and yet…..For example they knew gunpowder, they knew bronze and iron working – why did they not make cannons and guns? They knew shipbuilding, they knew navigation, they had adventurers – why did they not cross the Pacific? They knew bureaucracy, administration, accounting – why did not not build colonies? Why did they not colonize even their neighbours Japan and Korea, let alone India, Europe, America, Africa? My reading of this book raises these questions in my mind, but I do not find any answers to them in it. Except one. Both India and China did not have western democracy (communism is after all a post-feudal democratic order, also imported from the west) until recent times. Maybe that is what kept both of the peoples behind.

Before I read the book, I thought Chinese history would more or less parallel India’s, and there are indications in the book that Keay thinks so, even after all his research. However, I think there are real differences. I think China has been, as a civilisation, far in advance of the rest of the world. At least that is the sense I get from this book, though Keay himself seems to notice nothing particularly remarkable. So even though the book itself narrates the history as one king after another, and one dynasty after another, the meta message I got is the one I have stated above. However reading the book again would probably be a bore.

River of Smoke. By Amitav Ghosh

River of Smoke

Amitav Ghosh

Published by Hamish Hamilton, 2011

This is the second part of the triology, following Sea of Poppies. As I have said many times to my friends in describing these two books, and also as said in some of the reviews, this is more history than fiction, kind of fictionalized history. The individual characters and their stories are fiction, but the major events and the background are historical. The first book, Sea of Poppies, brought together at its end a diverse set of characters all going away from British Calcutta around 1835 in a ship which meets up with a severe storm. The characters include a lady fleeing from sati, the lower caste lover who rescued her, a former zamindar who has been cheated by the British govt. (actually the East India Company govt.) of his wealth, a half-French half-Indian young girl, and so on. In the confusion caused by the storm, some of them escape. The present book starts more or less after the storm, and traces the careers of some of these characters. One of the main protagonists of River of Smoke is Bahram Modi, a Parsi opium merchant from Bombay, who sails to Canton with a ship load of his merchandise. Also coming to Canton is a botanist from London,  in search of rare flower, and who is accompanied by the half-French girl. Most of the action takes place in Canton. The underlying history is that of the opium wars that the British conducted against China. The two-fold horrors perpetrated on both India and China is what Ghosh wants to expose, apparently. The British forced Indian farmers to grow poppy in the fields in Bihar and Western UP, instead of food crops, and then bought that crop at a pittance, thus driving the farmers into wretched poverty. The poppy seeds were processed in Calcutta into opium, and shipped to China to be sold there. When the Chinese government, fearing the wholesale corruption of their entire population, acted to ban the sale of opium there, the British brought on their warships and forced the Chinese to revoke the ban. Obviously, this is reminiscent of what happens even now - Pepsi, various drugs, GM seeds, SUVs and so on, though Ghosh does not even faintly indicate the parallels. 


The book is written in a scholarly fashion. It is rather emotionless, perhaps deliberately so, for one can nevertheless sense the underlying rage against the depredations of colonialism. Some portions seem laboured. The opening sequence, for example, is apparently intended to be a kind of introduction, based on the previous book, to what happened in the story till then. However, even for those, like me, who read the previous book, it is somewhat confusing. But the book picks up after that. It chiefly follows the doings of Modi, mainly in Canton, up to his  ultimate downfall, upon which the books ends. It also tells the story of Paulette, the half-French girl, and her attempts to get a sample of a rare orchid; and of several other characters. One of the ideas behind this book and the the previous one is to explore the different forms the English language assumes in different circumstances. In Sea of Poppies, we are introduced at great length to English as spoken by the Englishmen who have spent almost all their lives in India (i.e. it is full of Hindi and Bengali words and usages). We are also shown the English spoken by the shipboard lascars, who come from a variety of different countries and end up communicating with each other in their own version of the language of their bosses. In the present book we are made familiar with the pidgin English spoken by and between all those involved in the opium trade in Canton.


Despite the lack of emotion (or perhaps because of it) this is a good book to read, as a novel, as fiction. It is gripping, except, as I said, for the introductory sequence. The language, of course, is marvelous. The next and perhaps last book of the series promises to be even more like a history textbook. Most of the stories of the characters from the first book have been  completed in the second one. It is hard to see how Ghosh can continue from here. Maybe he will go back to the end of the first book, and follow the lives of some of the characters from there who are not mentioned in detail here. That is, the trilogy will not be linear, 1,2 and 3, but will split into 2 and 3 at the end of 1. We may have to wait a few years to find out.