Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

Next morning Shireen arrived at the dock, with her daughters and their families, to find that a large crowd had already assembled there. Many of Rosa’s relatives had also come to see her off and Vico had hired a band, to play rousing tunes.

The captain of the Hind had been alerted to Shireen’s arrival and was waiting for her with a bouquet in his hands. A tall sunburned man with muttonchop whiskers, he led her personally to her stateroom, which was in the roundhouse, on the starboard side. It was actually a suite of cabins, a small one to sleep in, and another slightly larger one, with both a sitting and a dining area. Attached was a pantry with a bunk for Rosa.

‘I hope it’s to your satisfaction, madam?’

Shireen could not have hoped for anything better. ‘It’s wonderful!’ she said.

After the captain had left, Shireen’s daughters and grandchildren helped her settle in. In a very short while the cabins were arranged to the satisfaction of everyone except Shireen herself — she could not rid herself of the feeling that something was missing. She remembered just before it came time for all visitors to go ashore. Plunging into a trunk she brought out a toran — an embroidered fringe of the kind that hung around the doorways of all Parsi homes.

Shernaz, Behroze and their children helped her drape the toran around the entrance hatch. When it was properly affixed, they crowded into the gangway to look at it.

Ekdum gher javu che , said Shernaz with a sigh. It’s just like home now, isn’t it?

Yes, said Shireen. It is.

Zachary’s initiation into the opium trade began on Calcutta’s Strand Road, which adjoined the busiest section of the Hooghly River. Pointing to six sailing vessels that were anchored nearby, Baboo Nob Kissin explained that the opium fleet had just arrived from Bihar, with the year’s first consignment from the East India Company’s opium factories in Patna and Ghazipur. This year’s crop had exceeded all previous records; despite the troubles in China, production had continued to increase at a tremendous pace in the Company’s territories.

‘Opium is pouring into the market like monsoon flood,’ declared Baboo Nob Kissin.

They watched for a while as the drug was unloaded. Each of the cargo ships had a small flotilla of sampans, paunchways and lighters attached, like sucklings to a teat. Under the scrutiny of armed overseers and burkandazes, teams of coolies were transferring the chests of opium from the ships to the brick-red godowns that lined the riverbank.

Each chest held two maunds — roughly one hundred and sixty pounds — of opium, said Baboo Nob Kissin; the cost to the Company, for each chest, was between one hundred and thirty and one hundred and fifty rupees. Of this the farmer received perhaps a third if he was lucky: there were so many middlemen — sudder mahtoes, gayn mahtoes, pykars, gomustas — to be paid off that he often ended up earning less than he had spent on his poppy crop. The Company on the other hand would earn eight to ten times the cost-price of each chest when they were sold off at auction — somewhere between one thousand and fifteen hundred rupees, or five hundred to seven hundred Spanish dollars.

Then the chests would travel eastwards, to China and elsewhere, but even before they went under the auctioneer’s hammer, they would pass through another market, an informal one — and it was at this very unusual bazar that Zachary’s initiation into the trade was to begin.

Plunging into a side-street, Baboo Nob Kissin led Zachary to Tank Square, which was within hailing distance of the Strand. This was the heart of official Calcutta: at the centre of the square lay a rectangular ‘tank’ of fresh water; overlooking it was the East India Company’s headquarters, a great pile of a building, honeycombed with columns and arches and crowned with elaborate tiaras of wrought iron.

On the other side of the tank lay the Opium Exchange: a large but unremarkable building with the reassuring look of a reputable bank. This was where the East India Company’s opium auctions were conducted, said Baboo Nob Kissin: the next one would be held there tomorrow morning — but for now the building was empty, and its heavy wooden doors were locked and under guard.

The bazar that they were heading for was in a dank, dirty little gali behind the Opium Exchange. Mud and dung squelched under their feet as they walked towards it, pushing past ambling cows and loitering vendors. The marketplace consisted of a small cluster of lamplit stalls: turbaned men sat on the cloth-covered counters with ledgers lying open on their crossed legs.

To Zachary’s surprise there were no goods on display: he was at a loss to understand what exactly was being bought and sold — and it didn’t help much when Baboo Nob Kissin explained that this was not a bazar for opium as such; rather it was a place in which people traded in something unseen and unknown: the prices that opium would fetch in the future, near or distant. In this bazar there were only two commodities and both were pieces of paper — chitties or letters. One kind was called tazi-chitty or ‘fresh letter’; the other kind was mandi-chitty — ‘bazar letter’. Buyers who thought that the price of opium would go up at the next auction would buy tazi-chitties; those who thought it would go down would buy mandi-chitties. But similar chitties could be written to cover any period of time — a month, a year or five years. Every day, said Baboo Nob Kissin, lakhs, crores, millions of rupees passed through this bazar — there was more wealth here than in any market in Asia.

‘See! In every nook and corner there are beehive activities!’

The riches evoked by Baboo Nob Kissin’s words cast a new light on the bazar: Zachary’s pulse quickened at the thought that fortunes could be made and lost in this dirty little alley. Through the odour of dust and dung he recalled the perfumed scents of Mrs Burnham’s boudoir. So this was the mud in which such luxuries were rooted? The idea was strangely arousing.

‘You see the men who are sitting there?’ said Baboo Nob Kissin, pointing at the stalls. ‘They are shroffs — brokers. From all over India they have come. Many are from far-away places — Baroda, Jodhpur, Mathura, Jhunjhunu. All are lakhaires. Some are millionaires and some are even crore-patters. So much money they have, they can buy twenty ships like Ibis.’

Zachary looked at the shroffs with renewed interest: their clothing seemed to be of the simplest cotton and there was nothing of any expense on their persons, apart from a sprinkling of gold jewellery — mainly studs in the ears, and neck-chains. Elsewhere in the city these men would scarcely have attracted a second glance. But here, enthroned upon their counters, with their solemn, unsmiling faces, they exuded a gnomic aura of authority.

Soon it became clear that Baboo Nob Kissin was intimately familiar with the sellers and their procedures. Zachary watched carefully as he went up to one of the counters to greet the proprietor.

Now began a curious charade: without saying a word aloud, both men began to make rapid gestures with their hands and fingers. All of a sudden, the Baboo thrust his hands under the shawl that lay draped over the broker’s lap. The shawl began to bounce and writhe as their hidden fingers twined with each other, twisting and turning in a secret dance. Gradually these motions built to a climax and a shudder of understanding passed through both of them; then their hands fell inert under the shawl and they exchanged a quiet smile.

Hardly a word had been said all this while, but when Baboo Nob Kissin stepped away the broker bent quickly over his ledger and began to make rapid notations with a pencil.