Sea of Poppies

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-11

Part 2, Chapters 12-15

Part 3, Chapters 16-17

Part 3, Chapters 18-20

Part 3, Chapters 21-22

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Part 1, Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary

Paulette lives on the top floor of the Burnham mansion; her new life under the Burnhams is extremely restrictive, as everyone—servants included—hold strong views on what’s appropriate for Europeans. She is unable to dress in a sari, for example, and she is ignored if she speaks Bengali. Her apartment contains its own water closet, an amenity Paulette would appreciate greatly if not for the fact that it includes no arrangements for bathing, as Mrs. Burnham believes daily baths to be inappropriate for women.

Paulette’s schooling has previously consisted of helping her father go about his own work as a botanist; following his death, the Burnhams agreed to take her in, and her only expectation was that she study scripture and accede to what they believed to be appropriate for a woman. She tried to tutor the Burnhams’ daughter, but this was declined due to the fact that Paulette’s English was rather weak, having grown up with a French father and a Bengali caretaker. She tried to oversee the garden due to her skills as a botanist, but was pushed away by the Burnhams’ current gardener, and could only tend to a single tree in the corner. As a result, her practice is to rise early to work on her father’s manuscript and tend to her tree.

On this particular morning, she receives a visit from Baboo Nob Kissin, Burnham’s gomusta. The gomusta is there to see her in secret in order to give her a locket with an image of her mother. Paulette believed the locket to be lost, but in fact her father, shortly before his death, had given it to the gomusta to sell, in order to provide Paulette passage back to France. As he died before the gomusta was able to sell it, however, he held onto it in order to give it back to Paulette when able.

As they complete their conversation, the Ibis arrives; simultaneously, Paulette recognizes Jodu’s boat, which has become unmoored and is directly in the path of the Ibis. Having slept too soundly, Jodu awakes just in time to abandon his boat, which is shattered by the schooner. Zachary, however, is able to throw him a lifeline and bring him aboard. While Zachary goes to fetch him clothes, Serang Ali brings him below deck to the cargo hold, which is still outfitted to hold slaves. Jodu briefly fears that he’s been taken below deck in order to be kidnapped and sold. When he looks up, however, instead of seeing a captor, he sees Paulette.

While Zachary is finding clothes for Jodu, he comes across his flute, which he believed to be lost. Hearing it, Baboo Nob Kissin believes it to be a sign that he is an avatar of Krishna, for whom he has been waiting. Zachary is startled by the intensity of the gomusta’s interrogation and is eager to depart after fetching him the papers he requires.

Back below decks, Paulette and Jodu reunite with one another. When Zachary walks in on them embracing, Paulette initially struggles to come up with an excuse for why a white woman would be in an embrace with a native; however, she notices that Zachary doesn’t seem to think much of it. She explains her past with Jodu in order to explain her gratitude. Zachary is immediately taken with Paulette, so when she relays Jodu’s request to be brought aboard the ship, he acquiesces.

Meanwhile, Hukam Singh’s condition has worsened. Further, after the harvest, Deeti is surprised to discover that he had taken out a larger advance than usual on their land, meaning that their meager harvest is barely enough to cover their debts. The muharir is unsympathetic, suggesting first that she sell her sons into indentured servitude, then that she sell her lands, asking, “who’s ever seen a peasant starve?” (152). She goes to the market for supplies, and when she is unable to afford much, the shopkeeper offers to loan her supplies. Only after she impresses her thumbprint does she think to ask what the interest rate is, which she finds to be exorbitant, though the shopkeeper refuses to take back the supplies.

In desperation, she accepts satua from her brother-in-law; as a result, he begins to visit more frequently under the pretext of visiting his brother, though as soon as he arrives he attempts to touch Deeti and fondles himself while staring at her. Finally, he admits to his initial rape and tries to convince her to have another child with him in order to retain Hukam’s lands following his death. This prompts her to tell him she “will burn on [her] husband’s pyre rather than give [herself] to [him]” (154).

Though stated in anger, she begins to seriously consider dying as a sati on her husband’s funeral pyre. She sends Kabutri to live with her own relatives, then begins to make preparations for her own end.

Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary

When Baboo Nob Kissin looks at the ship’s papers provided by Zachary, he discovers the line stating that Zachary is black, taking it to be a further sign that Zachary is an avatar of the Dark Lord. Some years prior, Nob Kissin had been slated to take over the family temple, having been raised to be a holy man; upon his uncle’s death, though, his uncle asked him to first accompany his wife, Taramony, to an ashram to live out her days. On the journey, Baboo Nob Kissin became enamored with Taramony, and though she told him they could never be together as lovers, he promised himself to her, and they fled to Calcutta, where Nob Kissin had taken on as much work as possible in order to save for their own temple. However, Taramony died unexpectedly young from a fever, promising him that she will come back to him, and to look for the signs of Krishna, which he now sees in Zachary, ten years after her death.

In the early evening, the police arrive to arrest Neel on charges of forgery. Neel explains that it has always been the custom for he and his father to simply sign Benjamin Burnham’s name, and to speak with Burnham to clear up the matter, but the police explain that it was Burnham who filed the charges. Parimal suggests that he and his men will fight if Neel asks them to; Neel recalls “the map that hung in his daftar, and the red stain of Empire that had spread so quickly across it. Where would [he] hide?” (170).

Back in Ghazipur, the narrator reveals that Kalua was aware of Deeti’s kindness toward him two years prior, and that he thinks of her often, despite knowing that no real connection can exist between them. Twenty days after he took Deeti to pick up her husband, he is stopped by two passers-by looking to get to Hukam Singh’s residence, who ask him to take them in his cart, as it is complicated and they don’t know the way. Their manner of speaking leads Kalua to believe that it will be a widow’s pyre. After dropping them off, he parks some distance away; once he ascertains his suspicions, he frees his oxen, dismantles his cart, and thinks of a plan. At the right moment, he rescues Deeti from the flames and disappears with her to the river on a makeshift raft.

Deeti is not surprised to be floating on a river upon waking, but initially believes it is because she is afloat in the netherworld. When she discovers the truth, however, she is not dismayed:

[F]or 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 karm; 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 (175).

On the banks of the river, Deeti and Kalua hold a makeshift wedding; she is “swept into the embracing warmth of his body, as wide and sheltering as the dark earth” (176).

Part 1, Chapters 6-7 Analysis

Part 1 does a lot of heavy lifting, setting the scene not only for the novel but for the trilogy as a whole; as a result, it helps to think of Part 1 as split into three distinct sections. The first three chapters establish the backstories of many of the main players, excepting Paulette (though she is discussed as part of Jodu’s story). If the first three sections are largely expository in nature, the next section, Chapters 4-5, is philosophical in nature, laying the groundwork for what could be described as the central conflict of the story—that of imperialism and colonialism, free trade, and white supremacy. Burnham’s backstory largely serves that purpose; he does not travel with the Ibis upon its departure from Calcutta, so his main function in the story is to represent the darkest impulses and most zealous ideological conclusions of those philosophies and endeavors.

Chapters 6-7 set the main stories into motion, as an extended series of inciting incidents: Jodu’s boat is destroyed, which brings him aboard the Ibis; Baboo Nob Kissin encounters Zachary, whom he believes to be an avatar of Krishna and thus a sign of the return of his beloved Taramony; Zachary encounters Paulette, with whom he will become infatuated; Paulette is reunited with Jodu, whom she will join, secretly, aboard the Ibis; Deeti’s husband dies and she chooses to join him on the window’s pyre, which leads to Kalua’s decision to rescue her and their decision to reject caste and begin life anew; and, finally, after refusing Burnham’s final offer to relinquish his lands, Neel is arrested on trumped-up forgery charges, a move which will destroy his social standing even if he is acquitted entirely—which, he won’t be, due to the aforementioned power structures.

Language and social convention continue to play key roles in the novel, this time brought about through Paulette’s existence in a liminal societal place. Paulette’s upbringing would have already been unusual, given her parents’ French backgrounds (though her mother was from Mauritius) and the English dominance of Calcutta. This is further complicated due to her father’s atheism, which, it is suggested, is why the family found themselves accepting the post in Calcutta in the first place. As a result of her father’s inclinations, Paulette is given an unusual education for a woman and interacts very little with European society in Calcutta; as a result of her mother’s death, she is raised by Jodu’s mother and adopts largely local Bengali ways. Like Zachary, she finds herself moving between multiple ethnic and cultural spaces. However, each has their own privilege: Zachary is male, but must pass as white; Paulette is white, but is a woman in a male-dominated society and era. This is disrupted upon her father’s death, when she is taken into the Burnham’s household, and Paulette finds herself uncomfortable not only because she must learn scripture (which, we’ll see, has deeper implications for her), but also because she must now dress and speak in the manner that the Burnhams believe is appropriate for a woman of European descent, as opposed to the native Bengali ways with which she is accustomed.