His success, in part due to Mr Lee’s pipes and Dimple’s skill with them has made his den internationally known and made himself fat and complacent. Rashid, whose opium den it is, began as a skinny narcotic entrepreneur with big dreams, inspired by the glamorised image of drug use from cinema. Anything can happen to anyone at any time. It is a past that includes seeing his father succumb to opium addiction after being denounced and imprisoned by the Communist Party and his own experiences of torture, imprisonment and heartbreak at the hands of the same regime. Like Dimple, Lee, a Chinese refugee, has a past he would rather forget and pain that he takes opium to subside. But after years of addiction the drug is taking its toll and the brothel owner is complaining that she is little use to him anymore.ĭimple was introduced to opium by Mr Lee once she began suffering from body aches. Working in Rashid’s is Dimple, who prepares the opium pipes for Rashid’s customers when she isn’t working in the hijra’s brothel (‘hijras’ are eunuchs, intersex and transgender peoples). Here people say you should introduce only your worst enemy to opium, Like overlapping petals, together they give broad view of Bombay’s dark underbelly. Rashid’s is the centre of Narcopolis, its diverse characters are all connected to it in some way. Also on Shuklaji Street is Rashid’s, an opium den. More than a few end up on Shuklaji Street, working in one of the brothels, kept in cages, used and abused, their earnings kept by the brothel keepers. Women from all over India descend on Bombay, hoping to find work and send money to their families back home. A 2012 Booker Prize shortlister, set in an opium den in 1970’s Old Bombay, its exhales a contradictory promise of a story both exotic and nostalgic. Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil comes with weighty expectations.

Narcopolis novel