When Narcotics Rule

Narcotics? The sinister world of opium within colorful Mumbai (called Bombay in the book, in the author's preferred term)? Bit of heroin that marks the changing era? Sold. Had to pick up 'Narcopolis' by Jeet Thayil. A self-confessed heroin addict, the author's choice of material for his first book isn't unusual. However, he insists that it isn't an autobiography of any sort. I don't care about that. (Read reviews here, here, here and here.)

In the underbelly of Bombay's streets, opium, brothels and its humans revealed the chain of events, characters and political history of the times. We're introduced to Dimple, one who was castrated as a boy, and now a woman making a living at the brothel "Number 007" on Shuklaji Street.

Shuklaji Street was a fever grid of rooms, boom-boom rooms, family rooms, god rooms, secret rooms that contracted in the daytime and expanded at night. It wasn't much of a street. It was narrow and congested, and there was an endless stream of cars and trucks and handcarts and bicycles. But it stretched roughly from Grant Road to Bombay Central and to walk along it was to tour the city's fleshiest parts, the long rooms of sex and nasha. In the midst of it, Rashid's opium room was becoming a local landmark. Trained staff. Genuine Chinese opium pipes. Credit if you're good for it. Best quality O. He was getting opium tourists who had heard about the khana from a friend on a beach somewhere in Spain, or a café in Rome, and they'd come all the way to Shuklaji Street to see for themselves.

There's the relationship between China and India regarding the opium trade, cleverly brought in through one Mr Lee, an ex-officer in the Chinese army that lost the war, and his relationship with Dimple who learnt how to make opium pipes from him. There're 10 chapters written about Mr Lee and his family in China, and his time in India. Of course Mao Tse-tung came into the picture. Mr Lee on his deathbed, passed on his treasured supposedly 500-year old opium pipes to Dimple, who in turn used them to trade with Rashid, an opium den (khana) owner for some form of employment and a roof over her head, making the slow transition out of life at "Number 007", the only life she knew for the past 15 years. Rashid gave her a new name "Zeenat", to mark the new chapter, and a new identity as a Muslim woman, years later, a desire to go to church.

Then the book moved to the early 90s and the mess that followed when a series of bomb blasts rocked the city in 1993, sparking wide-spread riots and inciting hatred between the Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Opium's popularity declined. Cocaine and heroin moved into the city. And it spiraled off into another Bombay for the next generation to endure.

As she got older it took more work to look good. The more difficult it became, the more she smoked. The more she smoked, the more difficult it became. She thought: If I lose my looks I don't want to live. I don't want to be like the tai whose only joy in life is money. Dimple was the tai's chela, the tai-in-waiting. When she was old and no longer able to work, she'd take care of the business and oversee the other randis. She'd handle money all day long. She would know no other life. It was an inevitability that needed correction and she was correcting her life. So she asked Rashid to wait while she moved her things in small consignments, relocating herself a piece at a time. There was no question of taking her earnings with her. The tai would say that Dimple owed her for food and board, and besides, it was probably a fair exchange: she was trading money (her earnings) for pleasure (her freedom). Variations of this transaction occurred on the street a thousand times a day.