Bhang Journeys

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.