Summary

Deeti arrives at the Sudden Opium Factory, owned by the East India Company, to pick up her husband, but first she has to travel through different parts of the factory. The factory is surrounded by guards and monkeys who are high on the factory’s effluents. Inside the factory, Deeti travels through various chambers, which all unnerve her. First she enters the weighing shed, where there are many huge scales and men weighing earthenware gharas, which hold the drug. The men weighing the opium also check its quality and mark it in front of the farmers, leading to many disputes. “Alternatively tense and angry, cringing and resigned, they were waiting to find out if their harvests for the year had fulfilled their contracts--if not they would have to start the next year with a still greater load of debt” (92). When Deeti leaves the weighing...