Silas Ashby
Description
Dead these fifteen years. An English indigo trader in Bengal who worked outside the Company monopoly, married into a Hooghly boat family because that was how indigo moved, and lived with Sarala Dasi for eighteen years in a household that ran in two languages.
By the standards of his time and place he was fond and decent to that household, which is the whole of what can be said for him and is not nothing.
Background
Around 1799, Gerald Hewitt took a kickback and cut him out of the trade — professionally, deliberately, and without ever thinking about it again, because it was profitable and nobody would ask. The business collapsed inside a year. Silas came home bankrupt and drank himself to death.
He left no will that recognised his family, because English law did not recognise it either. His English relatives arrived, took the daughter who could pass for English, and left his bibi and his younger daughter in Calcutta.
Motivations
None remaining. He is the shape of the hole everyone else is standing around.
Connections
- Elizabeth Ashby and Malati — his daughters. Sarala Dasi — his partner. Nikhil Dasi — his shipper and brother-in-law, who blames him.
- Gerald Hewitt — the man who ruined him, dead at Wadi al Tih fifteen years later.
Appearances
Relationships
- Located at Calcutta 1814 — Resident in Calcutta
- Parent of Elizabeth Ashby
- Allied with Sarala Dasi — His bibi for eighteen years
- Parent of Elizabeth Ashby — Her father, the ruined indigo trader; dead of drink c. 1800