Book Review - Colour Me Red!

Title: Red Poppies – An epic saga of old Tibet

Author : Alai

Publisher: Penguin

Price:Rs295

Somewhere down page 5 of this first person novel, the hero confesses, “I am an idiot.” Such a statement notwithstanding, the `idiot’ is the brilliant narrator of an amazingly well written book of how the cultivation of poppies turned the political and cultural fortunes of old Tibet. The book is a translation from the original Chinese written by Alai, an ethnic Tibetan who lives in Chengdu in Sichuan. The writer is also the editor of Science Fiction World, China’s largest science fiction journal. This you learn from the little blurb at the beginning of the book. More is revealed by the translator’s note a few pages later.

The `idiot’ is the second son of a chieftain Maichi, a son who has no hopes of ever succeeding his father, given a handsome and gifted elder brother, Tamding Gonpo. Life for the Maichi family changes when Special Emissary Huang arrives from China with a special gift – poppy seeds.

Old Tibet’s fascinating social hierarchy, it’s customs and it’s everyday life, all form part of this lyrical narrative. It’s the bone, you learn, that separates people into `high and low’.

With the arrival of the poppies, the fortunes of the Maichi family take an upward turn. The crop is sold to China for a huge amount of silver. Greed prompts the other chieftains in Tibet to steal the poppy seeds, so that they too may reap such a bumper harvest.

The narrator, in his privileged role of the `idiot’ makes an excellent mirror for the people around him – the comical Lamas, the lusty chieftain, the serfs, and of course, the ‘idiot’ himself, who sometimes makes more sense that the smarter ones around him.

It is a gripping and unusual book with a lavish and if you could say this – a comical backdrop, and an unexpected ending. It also makes you wonder about ourselves and the world we live in – could we be idiots too?