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Uttar Pradesh and Bihar India Co — the world’s first
have never recovered and narco corporation — with THE VICEROY'S ARTIST
remain the most back- official encouragement Anindyo Roy
ward regions of India to forcibly grew and mar- HACHETTE INDIA
this date — is that it not keted it without bothering Rs.599
only describes the impact about its crippling impact
of forced production of upon producers and con- Pages 284
the enduring poppy seed sumers.
in 18th and 19th century Now, says Ghosh, the
India, but also its devas- wheel has turned full circle
tating impact on China, and the opiod crisis that 75, scribbling in his journal A 19th century
the nation on which this stalks America and the and painting sketches in travelogue across
lethal narcotic was forc- West is history’s payback sepia-tinted water colours. India of Edward
ibly dumped. Ghosh cites for the vast fortunes that Roy chanced upon Lear’s Lear, a nonsense-
scholars who estimate that some of the most promi- journal archived in Har- verse writer and
far from official statistics nent families of Britain vard University and was sketches painter, is
which place the number of and the American east fascinated by what the art- pieced together by
addicts in opium dens in coast made out of drug ist inscribed and matter he academic-turned-
Qing China at the end of running to China and the relegated to parentheses, novelist Anindyo Roy
the 19th century at 14-15 Far East. articulations and silences.
million, the total number Ghosh’s historical From the study of Lear’s
of Chinese addicts may canvas which reads like a journal, Roy has deduced debate in Britain 150 years
well have been 200 mil- novel, is as revealing as it the story of Lear — an ago, whether the Indian
lion. is brilliant. individual haunted by Empire should be retained
Little wonder that in DILIP THAKORE loneliness, ill-health and or abandoned.
the 20th century, impe- deprivation, but blessed Roy perceptively identi-
rial China which less Surreal Raj with a child-like imagina- fies the fissures and cracks
than 200 years earlier tion, an artist’s spatial in the edifice of the British
was the wealthiest nation vision and perspective, Empire at its height. He
worldwide, was massively travels and sensibility to objectify fleshes out the personality
debilitated and suffered the humour of everyday of the artist, his compas-
crushing military defeats HO IS THE life while depicting the ec- sion and uncomfortable
by Western powers and Ja- Viceroy and centricities of friends and sense of guilt disturbed
pan in the years leading up Wwho is his art- acquaintances. by inevitable colonial ste-
to 1949, when the Commu- ist is played out over 284 Linearity of Lear’s reotyping while recount-
nist Party of China united pages of this historically travels as pieced together ing Mutiny folklore — the
the country and its leader contextualised tour de by Roy is fragmented in valour of British soldiers
Mao Tse Tung famously force fictionalised debut the telling by embedding and generals, the savagery
announced that “China has novel authored by senior historical events or experi- of natives.
stood up”. academic-turned-novelist, ences in moments of recall, Lear’s impatience with
In essence, this fasci- Anindyo Roy. Lord North- unravelling memories and trivial details of the mem-
nating history hitherto brook (Thomas Baring), venturing on journeys in sahib’s (Mrs. Cracroft)
ignored by historians un- Viceroy of India (1872- other times and spaces. everyday life in exile, is
earths the story of opium 1876) cocooned in Govern- When Lear with his Italian countered by his wander-
discovered 6,000 years ment House, a building de- valet-cum-travel compan- ing mind and deep concern
ago, and used as a painkill- scribed as an “epitome of ion, Giorgi, explores Delhi about “devastation in its
er and “pharmacologically opulence,” commissioned with their native guide rawest — arson, bloodshed
indispensable” medication Edward Lear, artist and Nunkoo Lal, the latter and famine” — that was
to this day. “Through most limerick writer, to paint gushes over Delhi describ- the reality of the British
of human history, opium the Himalayas, especially ing this Moghul heritage Empire in India. This peek
circulated in very small the mesmerising Kanchen- sadly laid waste by arson behind Raj glamour and
quantities and was used junga range for him. as a “truly glorious city, ri- splendour exposes colonial
primarily as a medicine,” Lear, a nonsense-verse valling Rome”. This trans- power to postcolonial
writes Ghosh. Yet with writer travelled across In- ports the author back to interpretations that under-
peculiar genius, the East dia and Sri Lanka in 1873- the agonising post-Mutiny line the artist’s vision and

80 EDUCATIONWORLD MARCH 2024