> This may sound a bit odd, but I knew as I opened the book to the first page that I would enjoy this read. The paper felt so good to the touch...it is a longtime thing for me that part of the pleasure of reading an actual book is the feel of it, the type used, the paper. You know how nowadays you can pick up a book of 300 or more pages, but the weight of the book is very light? This hardcover edition has heft! And the glossary....it is so much more than a glossary...it is a conversation about the love of language. I have never seen that before. And all of that is before even starting to actually read the book.......
> p.3...Opening line is lovely...."The vision of a tall-masted ship, at sail on the ocean, came to Deeti on an otherwise ordinary day, but she knew instantly that the apparition was a sign of destiny, for she had never seen such a vessel before, not even in a dream; how could she have, living as she did in norther Bihar, four hundred miles from the coast?"
> p.35..."...how frail a creature was a human being, to be tamed by such tiny doses of this substance! She saw now why the factory in Ghazipur was so diligently patrolled by the sahibs and their sepoys--for if a little bit of this gum could give her such power over the life, the character, the very soul of this elderly woman, then with more of it at her disposal, why should she not be able to seize kingdoms and control multitudes?".....Deeti begins to see the power of opium
> p. 87...absolutely horrifying imagery of men squashing opium with their fee while totally wasted by its opiate power
>. As I began reading the first 100 pages or so, I am reminded of the way I felt when I started reading Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie.....overwhelmed. However, taking the same leap of literary faith now as I did then, i had confidence that it would all start to make sense......and it does. So many interesting characters and themes.....opium, castes, India as the place Europe hides its shame and greed, life amidst innumerable languages and beliefs.....Ghosh has tackled a mammoth story.....enjoying it thoroughly!
> p.159..."...it was as if the uncovering of her face had stripped the veil from his own masnhood, leaving him naked and exposed to the gloating pity of the world, to a shame that could never be overcome."....Neel seeing his wife's veil dropping as the police take him away....also a metaphor for the stripping of the dignity of millions
>. Kalua's rescue of Deeti from the funeral pyre.......love it and their wedding! I also loved Neel's grand meal....complete with chamber pot for a vase!
> p.163..."Even then she did not feel herself to be living in the same sense as before: a curious feeling, of joy mixed with resignation, crept into her heart, for it was as if she really had died and been delivered betimes in rebirth, to her next life; she had shed the body of the old Deeti, with the burden of its karma; she had paid the price her stars had demanded of her, and was free now to create a new destiny as she willed, with whom she chose--and she knew that it was with Kalua that this life would be lived, until another death claimed the body that he had torn from the flames"
> p.169..."...or having discovered that life ashore was far more attractive when you were at sea than when your feet were a-trip on the slick turf of lubber-land."....like that
> p.219..."Would it not be the duty of this court to deal with such a man in exemplary fashion, not just in strict observance of the law, but also to discharge that sacred trust that charges us to instruct the natives of this land in the laws and usages that govern the conduct of civilized nations?"...First, who entrusted the English, Second....who entrusted the English?
> p.221..."In the course of his trial it had become almost laughably obvious to Neel that in this system of justice, it was the English themselves...who were exempt from the law as it applied to others: it was they who had become the world's new Brahmins."
> p.223..."Each woman had always practised her own method in the belief that none other could possibly exist: it was bewildering at first, then funny, then exciting...."....budding awareness of variation within their own culture, which is exciting to them but threatening to others
>p.232..."The table's centrepiece.....a stuffed roast peacock, mounted upon a silver stand, with its tail outspread as if for an imminent mating." How appetizing!
> I love the "Thermantidote"....the antidote to overheating which backfired! Like most of the government's antidotes in this book!
> p. 242..."We are no different from the Pharaohs or the Mongols: the difference is only that when we kill people we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretense of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history." Chilling words from Captain Chillingworth
> The story plays to opposites: kindness/cruelty, acceptance/rejection, loyalty/disloyalty
> Humor is delightfully dark
> So, I looked up the definition of "ibis" in case it had anything interesting to add to the understanding of the novel......
any of several wading birds related to the herons and constituting the family Threskiornithidae that inhabit warm regions in both hemispheres and feed on aquatic and amphibious animals and are distinguished by a long slender downwardly curved bill resembling a curlew's bill
Do you think the ship is feeding on the amphibious humans who come in contact with it?
> absolutely love the playfulness with the languages blending.....
> p.253..."There's nothing more annoying than to be puckrowed just when you're looking forward to a sip of laudanum and a nice long sleep."...LOL...I agree
> p.300...."...was it possible that the mere fact of using one's hands and investing one's attention in someone other than oneself, created a pride and tenderness that had nothing to do with the response of the object of one's care--just as a craftsman's love for his handiwork is in no way diminished by the fact of it being unreciprocated?"....Neel's exoerience with his cellmate ......parenthood
> p.325..."...:for when a moment arrives that is so much feared and so long awaited, it perforates the veil of everyday expectation in such a way as tio reveakl the prodigious darkness of the unknown."....Deeti boards the Ibis
> p.328..."On a boat of pilgrims, no one can lose caste and everyone is the same; it's like taking a boat to the temple of Jagannath, in Puri. From now on, and forever afterwards, we will all be ship-siblings....". Paulette with the women on the Ibis....I love the "ship-sibling" concept, seems true of sharing any important experience with another person.
> p.328..."It was now Deeti understood why the image of the vessel had been revealed to her that day, when she stood immersed in the Ganga (rebirth imagery); it was because her new self, her new life, had been gestating all this while in the belly of this creature, this vessel that was the Mother-Father of her new family....an adoptive ancestor and parent of dynasties yet to come....".
> I must admit to feeling genuine apprehension when the cat left the Ibis....
New Vocabulary:
1) elision: the act or an instance of dropping out or omitting something : OMISSION, CUT
> p.348..."...the young man burst into tears, weeping so artfully that the turban wound itself around and around the couple till they were sealed inside a snug cocoon."....wonderful imagery
> p.350..."they were more than plants to her, they were the companions of her earliest childhood and their shoots seemed almost to be her own, plunged deep into this soil; no matter where she went or for how long, she knew that nothing would ever tie her to a place as did these childhood roots."....literally and figuratively, lovely phrasing...Paulette's last views of her childhood home
> Foreshadowing in threes: cat left ship, Baboo Nob Kissin Pander's rumbling bowels, and the ship crossing the path of the drowned bodies when leaving the Ganga for the open sea.....
> p.363..."...it was impossible to think of this as water at all--for water surely needed a boundary, a rim, a shore, to give it shape and hold it in place? This was a firmament, like the night sky, holding the vessel aloft as if it were a planet or a star.".....Deeti's first thoughts upon seeing the open sea ahead of them
> p.365..."No matter how hard the times at home may have been, in the ashes of every past there were a few cinders of memory that glowed with warmth- and now,m those embers of recollection took on a new life, in the light of which their presence her, in the belly of the ship that was about to be cast into an abyss, seemed incomprehensible, a thing that could not be explained except as a lapse from sanity."
> p.367..."How had it happened that when choosing the men and women who were to be torn from this subjugated plain, the hand of destiny had strayed so far inland, away from the busy coastlines, to alight on the people who were, of all, the most stubbornly rooted in the silt of the Ganga, in soil that had to be sown with suffering to yield its crop of story and song? It was as if fate had thrust its fist through the living flesh of the land in order to tear away a piece of its stricken heart."..........I hope it is to take them to a better life?
> This dual personality, channeling thing of Baboo Nob Kissin and Taramony is quite fascinating.....I am wondering where it will lead for him and the passengers?
> p. 415..."She looked at the seed as if she had never seen one before, and suddenly she knew that it was not the planet above that governed her life; it was this minuscule orb--at once bountiful and all-devouring, merciful and destructive , sustaining and vengeful." Deeti looking at a poppy seed
>Title: The Ibis is a vessel named after a bird that wades in the shallows, yet it sets out upon the "Black Water" full of people, many of whose lives have been shaped by the almighty poppy, and who seem to be out of their natural element in one way or another. As a reader, I am left wondering, hoping, and fearing for these characters adrift in their story. Looking forward to seeing where each of them find a place to moor.
> LibraryThing Review: "Sea of Poppies" red like an Indian version of "The Fellowship of the Ring". No coincidence that it is part of a trilogy! Ghosh's story is a daring blend of social classes/castes, languages, religions and more represented in a wonderful array of characters, all of whom dare to begin their journey out into the sea aboard the Ibis, a schooner. This is a love story, an adventure, a metaphor for life and more. The reader meets and either loves or abhors each of the memorable characters, their marvelous names, their multitude of histories, and their multiple aspects. I am definitely looking forward to reading the next installment of the trilogy, "River of Smoke".
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