Book Excerpt: Ananda- An Exploration of Cannabis in India by Karan Madhok

An exclusive excerpt from Ananda- An Exploration of Cannabis in India by Karan Madhok (Aleph Book Company, 2024).

The Seed

‘…a numbing of pain sensation, an alteration of memory, a change in appetite…and of course, that phantasmagorial feeling of bliss. Bindaas. Ananda….’

I remember the first time the bhang hit.

I was eighteen, almost exactly twenty years ago as I type these words today, on a train to New Delhi. It had been less than a week since I had graduated from high school, and I was visiting a close friend in Patiala, Punjab. We decided to celebrate our farewell not with famed Patiala peg, but with a bhang lassi: a cool beverage infused with the paste obtained by grinding the leaves and stems of the cannabis plant. Standing outside the train station, we clinked our tall glasses together, gulped down the bitter beverages, and waved goodbye.

In the train, I sat on a metal bench of the airy general compartment, allowing the late-afternoon summer breeze to soothe me through the open windows. I’d picked up a copy of Archie Comics from the platform—Jughead’s Double Digest—to keep me occupied for the approximately five-hour journey. I leaned back on my seat, relaxed, alone among a crowd of other travellers.

And then, the universe dilated. I found myself stuck on a single panel of the comic book, barely able to read the speech bubble. It may have taken years before I finally turned the page. It may have been a couple of minutes. Through the hubbub of conversations in the packed compartment, I could single out the train’s steady chug, as it hurtled forward on the track, as if each thump matched my heartbeat, or as if my heartbeat willingly amended itself to synchronize with this new rhythm of the world. I would later learn that this reaction is hardly uncommon: scientists have discovered that, within the first few minutes of inhaling marijuana smoke (or the half hour it took for me to digest it), a normal person’s heart rate (70 to 80 beats per minute) may increase by 20 to 50 bpm. It may even double in some cases. It’s as if the body’s circulatory system had hired its own personal DJ, remixing a classic, evergreen Bollywood track into a club item number.

I took a sip of water. Someone excused themselves as they brushed past my knee. ‘Bhaisaab,’ they said, and the word echoed in my head, haunting every other sound I heard with its sampled remix. Bhaisaab…bhaisaab….

Soon, it felt like my heart was beating faster than ever, as if it was rushing away, eager to leave the rest of me behind. Another sip of water. Bourbon biscuits. A cup of hot chai from the vendor that walked past. Blurry faces and distorted voices. The smell of the Indian countryside. Smoke and dung and fertilizers. Finally, I put the comic book down. I allowed myself to be taken. I don’t know how much time passed before my heartbeat slowed down again. Outside, the afternoon shut down its shutters, transforming into the twilight of the evening.

I was on the cusp of a transformation, too, in the twilight of time before adulthood. At eighteen, there was nothing more exciting than the blank slate of the future, one that allowed me the freedom to colour it in, however I wished. I felt then that my world-view had been left incomplete, that there were ways of seeing and experiencing the world which I had ignored. There were thoughts inside me that I hadn’t heard out loud; there were filters of my own gaze that I hadn’t yet experimented with.

It felt terrifying at first; but I imagine that it would be terrifying for any winged creature to take their first flight. It felt like freedom. I arrived in New Delhi safe and sound that evening, met another friend at the station, and went over to his house. I spent most of the night in a goofy, joyful daze, playing FIFA 2003 on his desktop computer. The ‘high’ tapered away just as exhaustion kicked in, and I gradually collapsed into a comforting cloud of sleep.

The main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis is tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. THC’s successful coup of our system is based on its chemical structure, a structure fundamentally similar to anandamide (ANA), which is a fatty acid neurotransmitter found in our brains. It was the Israeli organic chemist Raphael Mechoulam (1930–2023) who first described anandamide in 1992, and if the name sounds slightly familiar, then it should be: anandamide takes its moniker from the Sanskrit-root word ananda, which means joy or bliss. It is an endogenous ligand (a binding substance created within our body). ANA participates in our endocannabinoid system to bind our cannabinoid receptors— called exogenous ligands—receptors that already exist in our body, and are responsible for physiological processes such as appetite, pain sensation, mood, and memory.

THC, then, in its similarity to ANA, works as an undercover agent, essentially disguising itself in those binds of our endocannabinoid system. It takes over our neurotransmitters, activating—or boosting—the mental functions for those particular physiological feelings. Users of cannabis may feel a numbing of pain sensation, an alteration of memory, a change in their appetite^*…and of course, that phantasmagorial feeling of bliss. Bindaas. Ananda.

Looking back at that trip from Patiala, I remember the giddy sense of excitement I’d felt downing that glass of bhang lassi. The drink had an earthy taste to it, as small morsels of undissolved bhang paste still swirled in the liquid. It was unpleasant, but tolerable. But then again, this wasn’t exactly a wine tasting ceremony. We drank in a hurry to consume as much as we could without tasting it. More importantly, we rushed out of a teenage paranoia that we were breaking a taboo—or worse, breaking the law.

I should’ve known better. Marijuana, in its common recreational form, is seriously illegal in India. However, it is permissible to consume bhang, which has been a cultural staple in much of the country for thousands of years. Cannabis, or ganja, grows with feverish freedom across India, unshackled by the rules of law or social guidelines. In its easy accessibility, the plant is about as Indian as a cup of masala chai or filter kaapi. Former Narcotics Commissioner Romesh Bhattacharjee has claimed that the plant is cultivated in nearly 60 per cent of all districts in the country.

In my mid-twenties, I had put my wanderlust to its biggest test: I quit my correspondent’s job with the Times of India in Varanasi, and left home with only a hiking backpack as my companion for a modern-day Bharat darshan. What followed next were eighty-six days on the road, during which I travelled in trains, buses, and automobiles, spending most of my nights sleeping in overnight trains to save on boarding. I found cheap guest houses and ashrams around the country to lay my head, and relied on the kindness of old friends to lodge me. In these three months, I ended up setting foot in eleven different states, dozens of cities, eating a variety of food, hearing a symphony of different languages, and testing the waters of true, unstructured freedom.

India is massive, but more than its size, it is its complexity that truly harkens a feeling of awe. I discovered the people and places in the country impacted by the gravitational force of the cannabis plant: from large-scale cultivations and illegal trafficking, to bhang-laced beverages, hemp textiles, and cannabis used as spiritual sacrament.

Ganja, charas, marijuana, weed, vijaya, bhang, pot, grass, hemp, maal, sab kuch milta hai.

Now, over a dozen years later, I hit the road again, this time with a specified purpose to explore some of our country’s rich history and cultural relationship with this ancient plant.

*Many more Bourbon biscuits followed.

Excerpted with permission from the author and the publisher of Ananda- An Exploration of Cannabis in India by Karan Madhok (Aleph Book Company, 2024)

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About the Book

Cannabis, or ganja, is practically as old as recorded Indian civilization, with references to the plant being found in some of India’s earliest written texts and myths. Native strains of the plant are as common as rice or millet in many Indian states, and can often be found growing wild in the countryside. In scriptures and in the opinion of enthusiasts, ganja is said to provide ananda (bliss) or vijaya (victory) over the cares and ills of the world. Cannabis is best known as a recreational drug but it has a myriad other uses as well.

In this lively, well-researched, humorous, and occasionally trippy account of ganja, Karan Madhok looks at every aspect of the cannabis plant: botanical, spiritual, medical, and recreational. Madhok hits the road in search of cannabis strains around the country, including a visit to the Himalayan hamlet that is home to the world-renowned Malana Cream (which has inspired various counterculture movements); looks for the mythical Idukki Gold in Kerala; seeks the Sheelavathi variety in the Andhra/ Orissa region; portrays the travails of addicts, and details the shadowy world of gangsters and suppliers; hangs out with devotees who openly consume bhang and other derivatives of ganja; and visits hospitals and clinics which use the drug for a wide range of therapeutics.

Besides the factual and eye-opening research into every aspect of the narcotic, the author contemplates the concepts of freedom, creativity, spirituality, and paranoia associated with the drug, and examines the upside and problems of decriminalizing ganja in India. Ananda, the first major study of cannabis in India, is entertaining, and enlightening—it is the perfect introduction to an integral aspect of the country that has often got a bad rap and is imperfectly understood.

About the Author

Karan Madhok’s debut novel, A Beautiful Decay, was published in 2022. His creative work and journalism have appeared in Epiphany, Sycamore Review, Bombay Review, SLAM Magazine, Fifty Two, The Caravan, Scroll, among others.

Karan is the editor and co-founder of the Indian arts and culture website The Chakkar. He is a graduate of the MFA programme from the American University in Washington D.C.