Following the Sea of Poppies, the second installment of Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy, River of Smoke, takes the reader on an opium-infused, historic chronicle of panoramic proportions, as tide and fate wrestle in Canton's unpredictable waters. Sunday Mid Day listens in on its ripples

Mumbai's literati will love the sound of this. Amitav Ghosh is waxing eloquent about the city; Marine Drive comes in for special praise -- "Isn't the view simply spectacular?" he observes from the rooftop at The Trident, in between sips of tea. The overcast skies, despite casting a hazy blanket over the Queen's Necklace and the Arabian Sea, inspire Ghosh to marvel about Mumbai's sights, smells and sounds.



Then again, this fixation with coastal cities might have something to do with his love affair with Canton (Guangzhou) -- the epicentre of River of Smoke, the second installment of the Ibis Trilogy. The action moves eastward, to this floating British colonial jewelpiece that drew the Chinese, rather reluctantly, into a world-order changing scenario. The fortunes of Bombay opium magnate Bahram Modi aboard the Anahita, of Mr Fitcher and Paulette on the Redruth and of the slave ship, the Ibis, get tossed in storms, wars and politics. We got the master storyteller to sail us through time and tide.

Why and how did you decide to include the long-reaching arm of opium trade to play a central role in the Sea of Poppies and now, with River of Smoke?
The Sea of Poppies began as a story about departures. It chronicles the earliest journeys from India, those of indentured workers who left the hinterland in the 19th century. I was particularly interested in the fact that they hailed from the region where Bhojpuri was spoken (Benaras-Patna belt). I wondered why so many from these parts harboured deep intentions of leaving India. Ideally, the influx should have been from India's coastal belt, right? In 2004-05, as I began my research by looking into these journeys, I discovered that opium trade had become a major development, of course of their movement, with the blessings of the British East India Company. The two paths (indentured labour and opium) couldn't escape this reality -- there was a connection as the two drifted towards an unexpected direction.