Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies

Every book has its own language. And that is besides the medium chosen by the writer to get the words across. The language of the book is the manner in which words flow through the story and the manner in which those words paint out pictures, for it is these that set the tone and tenor of the tale.Works of authors who hail from countries where English is not the mother tongue often carry a smattering of words in the native language; they could be local terms of endearment (Amir jan in The Kite Runner), names of dishes in the native cuisine (Roti in The Good Mm), or just a word or two in the dialogue (“Naaley?” — The God of Small Things). The use of vernacular terms actually brings out the ‘flavour’ of the story, giving the reader a feel of the characters and their daily lives, and of the place where their tale unfolds.
It is not often, though, that one encounters long sentences spoken by the protagonists in their native language. But the characters in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies are prone to breaking into their mother tongue every so often, mystifying the reader as well as enchanting him. The book explores the days of British colonialism in India, their forced cultivation of poppy here and the shipping of slaves to the island of Mauritius aboard the ship Ibis. There are people of all kinds and classes populating the book — Deeti, the wife of a poppy grower who is saved by the skin of her teeth from becoming ‘Sati’ on the funeral pyre of her husband, Kalua, the lowly village man who saves her, Raja Neel Rattan, the anglophile king, more familiar with ‘the waves of Windermere and the cobblestones of Canterbury’, Serang Ali the mysterious seaman and a host of others.
The most fascinating thing about the characters is not the variety in their origins; it is the variety in their way of speaking that hits you smack in the face. So while Deeti’s village tongue is obviously different from the rest, even the English spoken by the men differs from one to the other. Ghosh has painstakingly brought out the Hindi influence that affects the language of the British men and women living in India for long periods, and their particular — and often hilarious — pronounciation of Indian names. So Raja Neel Rattan becomes “Roger Niel Rotten” and Babu Nobo Kishan becomes “Babu Nob Kissin”!
Most amusing are the Hindi words that sprinkle the conversation of the ‘Sahibs’ and the ‘Mems’, such as the very Indianised Mrs Lambert: “Where have you been chupaowing yourself?” or “Don’t you samjow, Paulette?” and another officer who exclaims, “Just won’t ho-ga; that kind of thing could get a man chawbuck’d with a horsewhip!”
Of course, such a pot-pourri of dialects does exhaust the reader, who has to make quite an effort in trying to decipher the meanings! For instance, the Lascari tongue, language of the seafarers, becomes baffling to say the least:“What for Malum Zikri make big dam bobbery’n so muchee bukbuk and big-big hookuming? Malum Zikri still learn-pijjin. No sabbi ship-pijjin. No can see Serang Ali too muchi smart-bugger inside?”
Ultimately, that is the way the story unfolds, with diverse souls mingling together and rubbing off a bit of themselves on each other. How’s that for a glimpse of the Tower of Babel?