Amitav Ghosh's Flood of Fire: When opium filled India Inc's coffers

In case you did not know this, there was a time when many of India's pedigreed business houses made their money from opium. This revelation came to light during the launch of Amitav Ghosh's Flood of Fire, the third in the Ibis trilogy, at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA).

Ghosh said that Mumbai owed its prosperity to the opium trade — the backdrop for the trilogy — and that most of the prominent business families in India made their money from it. In fact, he said, the business families from Western India settled in Kolkata because of the flourishing opium trade. Even Rabindranath Tagore's grandfather was involved in opium trade. However, Ghosh declined to name the business houses.

On a lighter note, author and columnist Shobhaa De, who anchored the conversation with the Man Booker Prize nominee, asked him whether he had tried opium, given his writing on the subject. A surprised Ghosh laughed and said, "No. (In any case) It's difficult to get good opium now. And it requires a lot of equipment that's difficult to get." The event attracted personalities from not only the literary world but across fields. Pheroza Godrej, Aamir Khan, Chetan Bhagat, Shanta Gokhale and Director General of Police (DGP), home guards, Javed Ahmed, were among the attendees.