Parsis and the Opium Trade

Yesterday at a condolence visit, the conversation with my top mentors, inadvertently veered into the subject of collectibles and we spoke of many random subjects such as his encounter with 16th century ganjifa cards, how the slave trade came to be in the Kutch, the navigators of Columbus, the power of gujaratis in Oman, the changes in the gold trading landscape in India and finally the trade that made parsis wealthy i.e. opium.

[It is easy to see why this man has my reverence – he knows so much, can quote every book he has ever read and his humility is inversely proportional to his stature]

And so on that last point of opium and the history of Parsis, I came back and tried to find material to read. As one of my good friends in Mumbai is a Parsi lady who tries hard to instill some knowledge into my little brain, I though I should read up a bit to impress her 🙂

And so here is an interesting article from the Economic Times, that also mentions two books – that I shall now get.

Happy reading!

jm

July 2016