Bhang Journeys

‘Bhang Journeys illuminates a subculture of drug consumers and cultivators in India. Sincere and gripping, this [is a] genre-bending book … of lesser-known stories that are all powered by cannabis.’—Asian Review of Books.For ten years, from 1998 to 2008, Akshaya Bahibala was in the grip of cannabis—smoking ganja, drinking bhang; living the highs and lows of an addict on Puri’s beaches with hippies, backpackers and drop-outs from West and East. Then he drew back from the edge and tried to make a life, working as a waiter, a salesman, a bookseller.He starts this unusual book with startling, fragmented memories of his lost decade. From these, he moves to stories about people across Odisha whose lives revolve around bhang, ganja and opium. There is the owner of a government-approved bhang shop who takes pride in selling the purest bhang available and insists it can make people as forgiving as Jesus. The opium-cutter who learned as a young 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 ganja farmer who came to the forests of Odisha from Punjab in a helicopter. 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, this entertaining, often trippy book about India’s most popular intoxicant is both a celebration and a warning.