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Bhang Journeys: Stories, Histories, Trips and Travels
Paperback
Biographies GeneralIndia & South Asia
ISBN13: 9789354479304
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Published: Mar 20 2024
Pages: 184
Weight: 0.45
Height: 0.42 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
For ten years, from 1998 to 2008, Akshaya Bahibala was in the grip of bhang,
of ganja-drinking it, smoking it, experiencing the highs and lows of an
addict on Puri's beaches with hippies, backpackers and drop-outs from
France and Japan, Italy and Norway. Then he drew back from the edge and
tried to make a life, working as a waiter, a salesman, a bookseller. He starts
this journal-cum-travel book with startling, fragmented memories of his lost
decade. From these, he moves to stories about people across Odisha whose
lives revolve around ganja-bhang-opium. There is the owner of a governmentapproved
bhang shop who takes pride in selling the purest bhang available and
insists it can make people as forgiving and non-violent as Jesus. The opium
cutter who learned as a boy how to massage a lump of opium with mustard
oil and carve it into little tablets. The girl who survived cholera by licking
opium and became a lifelong addict. The goldsmith whose opium de-addiction
card entitles him to 20 grams a month, but who wishes it were 25. The ganja
farmer who came from Punjab in a helicopter. A young man, a victim of ganjaand-
bhang-fuelled paranoia, who believes Indian and American spies are out
to get him. Excise department men who go to destroy ganja plantations and
are beaten up by angry villagers. Interspersed with these stories are official
data on opium produced, seized and destroyed; UN reports on the medicinal
properties of cannabis; and a veteran's recipes for bhang laddoos and sharbat.
Full of surprises, utterly distinctive, this entertaining, often trippy book of
memories, journeys, facts and figures about the popular intoxicant is both a
celebration and a warning.
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