Sea Of Poppies And River Of Smoke Analysis

Dr. Sen spoke on the gendered history of migration via Amitav Ghosh’s novel “Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke”. She started with how indentured system affected the role and the conditions of women in the society in the 19th century, which was marked as mass human displacements, primarily from the labouring class across regions, nations and continents. With the growth of colonies as well as capitalist production system, a new labour regime was introduced in which labourers migrated from agricultural or cotton industries to gigantic industrial or plantation activities across the continent under the indentured system. Through the indentured system the Indian immigrants from Chota Nagpur to Eastern India, Saran, Chapara, Shahabad, Champaran,

It concludes at the beginning of their sea journey abroad the Ibis. The non-linear narrative of “River of Smoke” opens several years in the future, about fifty years ahead from where Sea of Poppies had left off, before going back to the events aboard the ship and what follows for some of its characters Deeti, now the matriarch of the (Colver anglicisation of Kaula’s name) clan, visits her memory temple, Ghosh invites the readers to witness the perils of the difficult marine transportation and the extreme working conditions on the plantations. The point the author wishes to highlight here is that while Deeti and Kaula, like thousands of others were willing participants in the trade, the author effectively questions the historical and structural compulsions underlying such a’choice’ as well as the mobility’ it facilitated. By reading the sea journey and situation in Mauritius alongside the events of Deeti and Kaula’s lives in Bihar in Sea of Poppies, the author argues that Ghosh is able to effectively narrate the reality of many grimitiyas like them and how the rise conditions in these