Without any apology I reproduce here some verses which appeared in 1894, about the time when the Royal Opium Commission came to India:
They began by mourning over my degraded moral state,
Then my physical decadence they would anxiously debate.
Then they raised a pious eye,
And they heaved a pitying sigh,
And they shuddered as they pondered on my melancholy fate.
Now, I never had reflected on the matter thus, at all,
For my luxuries were few, and my expenditure was small.
I was happy as the day,
In my own abandoned way,
Till they said they must release me from the bonds that held me thrall.
I’d been cheered up at my Chandoo 4 shop, for years at least two score,
To perform my daily labour, and was never sick or sore;
But they said this must not be;
So they passed a stern decree,
And they made my Chandoo seller shut his hospitable door.
Now they’re sending out Commissions with the philanthropic view
Of inducing us to part with sev’ral crores of revenue;
For all opium traffic’s sin,
And, although it brings in tin,
Our nefarious trade papaverous, they say we must eschew.
Who’d have thought that my redemption would have cost so many lakhs
(For they saddle their expenses on my fellow-subjects’ backs).
What with deficits to square,
And Commissions everywhere,
On the “hoarded wealth of India” I shall prove a heavy tax.
If I’d only cultivated, now, a taste for beer or gin,
Or had learnt at Pool or Baccarat my neighbour’s coin to win,
I could roam abroad o’ nights,
And indulge in these delights,
And my soul would not be stigmatized as being steeped in sin!
But as mine’s a heathen weakness for a creature-comfort, far
Less pernicious than their alcohol, more clean than their cigar,
They have sent their howlings forth,
From their platform in the North,
And ’twixt me and my poor pleasures have imposed a righteous bar!
Drug Smuggling and Taking in India and Burma by Roy K. Anderson
4:Chandoo, the Indian name for prepared or clarified opium used in smoking. The Burmese name for it is Beinsi.
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