Sea of Poppies

One of my favourite reads last year was Amitav Ghosh's first, Shadow Lines. In fact it made its way to my shelf of all-time favourites. What I loved about Shadow Lines was the unusual flow in the narrative. The story moved between different time periods with a nonchalance that made me envy the writer's genius. I have read one more book by the author, The Glass Palace. In this one, the author displays his prowess in placing created characters against actual events and real people. I remember wanting to visit the Burmese King's palace in Ratnagiri after I finished the book.

Sea of Poppies, thus, had a lot to live up to even before I had read the first line. Ghosh once again experiments with the narrative. The story starts off with three-four different threads which appear unconnected in the beginning but soon it is clear that at some point they are all going to intertwine. The author gives space to the back stories of all key characters so much so that as the reader I felt a bond with them and I connected with their angst. And by the end of it I was rooting for each one of them to get their desired resolution.

The irritation in the story-telling was the use of vernacular dialogue followed immediately by its translation. As a writer it is something that I fight to not do with a vengeance, however tempting it may be at times. And as a creative writing teacher, I have had many a classes run into overtime, because of a discussion on this subject. I wonder what Ghosh's reasons were to write so much of the dialogue in this manner. But, the plot was the winner, it gripped me and compelled me to push through the dialogue to reach the end.