The Calcutta Chromosome- Amitav Ghosh
I remember the first time I read The Calcutta Chromosome. I was new in the world of English Literature, contemporary literature to be specific. I started with Da Vinci Code. Thereafter I was introduced to the world of Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, Robin Cook, Michael Chricton. It was a fast-paced, action-packed world.
Somebody recommended Amitav Ghosh. I was a bit apprehensive. Mind you, these were the days when the Internet was not in abandon. Children magazines like Anandamela were bringing out issues devoted to discussing what is a browser. What the hell... leave alone Gmail, even googling was not a recognized word. So, I didn't know who Amitav Ghosh is. I read his name, I knew it was fashionable for Coffee-House intellectuals to discuss his writings and comparing him with Sir V.S. Naipaul or more popularly with Ghosh's contemporary, Vikram Seth's writing. All of these ramblings are just to put in context the timeframe when I first read Amitav Ghosh and The Calcutta Chromosome to be specific.
My first reaction was, "Wow!!! That is one heady mix." I was not exactly sure, which genre I was to classify this book. So, when I approached the book more than after a decade- closure to two decades actually- I was apprehensive. You know, that familiar feeling you get in your gut when you approach something you loved as a kid and fear that love is going to burst like a soap bubble.
It was the same. It was a rush. The rush that you feel after the first drag of smoke after a long hiatus from the cigarettes. That heady mixture of nausea, freedom and confusion. There are countless numbers of lines on the web on the sub-altern identities and how Ghosh masterfully tackles the concept. How he brings the idea of Indian Occult head to head with Western Scientific Logic. How mysticism holds so deep a root in our Indian sub-conscious.
The scene where Sonali witnesses the ritual from the upper gallery of the Robinson Steet mansion, it so vividly invokes the symbol of human sacrifice, yet another image where Occident and Orient shall never meet.
To the West, there is nothing more barbaric than the sacrifice of human life. The ultimate desacralization of humanity. Yet, the same West never even stopped once before the wanton killing of human beings. Remember Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden"? The same West, who holds Human life to such a high value, hangs a 9-year boy in Belgian Congo because his father failed to produce enough crops for the colonialists.
Whereas, in Ghosh's novel, human sacrifice, when placed in the agency of subaltern becomes an allegory for the transcendence to a higher plane of existence. It was a purposeful act with a deliberate goal. Not some wanton violence. A gateway to the journey to yet another world of collective well being. The Occident could never understand the reality of magic in the Oriental life.
The reality of Magic- Isn't it a beautiful turn of phrase? What is a reality? What is magic? Where exactly do the realm of reality and magic meet? Which part of the narrative is fiction and which part is science fiction and which part is historical fiction?
Not surprisingly enough, Amitav Ghosh reminds me of another very very favourite author of mine in his heydays. Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. I have never ever come across another writer, whose words echo so hauntingly through the corridors of my mind. Who has played so articulately with the delicate world of magic realism?
It was not meant to be a review of the book. It is probably a journal after re-reading the book. A journal of a troubled mind. I am not qualified by far. I do not understand the concept of sub-altern, however, I do know something about Counter-Science. I do understand something about the difference between Orient and Occident minds and this is from this understanding, I bow down before the author. I bow down to the creator of this controlled mayhem. No, mayhem is chaotic. The followers of the Silence is anything but chaotic. Their approach is that of a dispassionate clinical observer, a genius and methodical scientist. But isn't the idea of mayhem is when exact opposites collide? What happens then? On one hand, we have Murugan asking Antar-
"Tell me: do you think it is natural to want to turn the page to be curious about what happened next?
...
- Let me put it like this then, 'said Murugan. "Do you think that everything that can be known should be known?"
Wow!!! Back up here a minute. It is a loaded gun. Right here.
On one hand, we have a protagonist who is seeking knowledge. On the other hand, we have Mangala and Lakhaan who believe "that to know something is to change it, therefore in knowing something, you've already changed what you think you know, so you don't really know it at all; you only know it's history. Maybe they thought that knowledge couldn't begin without acknowledging the impossibility of knowledge." If this is not the literary representation of Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg, I do not know what is.
Here we have two ideas- two drastically different ideas, two belief systems, two schools of thought so drastically different like Darwinism and Creationism, matter and antimatter- heading towards each other with such an inevitability, like Neo and Smith heading for that inevitable collision. Like Harry and Voldemort. Nope. Sorry. Wrong analogy.
Murugan had as much choice in the matter as a puppet dancing on the strings of a marionette. Whereas if he had not sought out the knowledge would he have been singled out by the fringe group who were the masters of the knowledge? Why was Urmila chosen by Mangala? A thriller by definition of the genre needs to answer the questions it raises. So, this is not a thriller. Ghosh uses the thriller form, only to subvert it. He raises questions after questions after questions only to leave the readers hanging.
Post-Colonialism is an aspect of any worthwhile English writing by an Indian author. Here Ghosh gives another twist to the aspect. Actually, two twists. Let us look back to Mangala. The fact, Mangala is a member of colonialized India, she is a female member of colonialized India and one from the downtrodden backward class of sweepers. Basically, she is thrice colonialized. And in the end, she is given the authoritative tone. Maybe here we can look back and start to have an inkling of the idea, "why Urmila?"
Maybe the charm of The Calcutta Chromosome lies in the power Ghosh bestows upon the subaltern, irrespective of the caste, by giving them the secret knowledge which had been the preserve of the colonizer.
In the end, the mastery Ghosh shows over the juggling between the techniques, his narrative style and the ability to keep you hooked, everything is shadowed by a difficult task he accomplishes with so much ease. When you are giving voice to a sub-altern agency, a class of oppressed, downtrodden colonialized people, the risk you run is to gentrify them. How do you register the agency of the dhooley-bearers, the safaiwalas and still account for them in a language that is never ever employed by them, at least by choice? How can the downtrodden be constituted in such a language, which expresses her/ his socio-economic background, without depriving them of their voice/ agency? Ghosh tackles this issue with such artistry, such finesse, which at once puts him in the seat of a master story-teller. Chiaroscuro. He takes a leaf out of Rembrandt's book and gives the subalterns a language of silence. Silence is all pervasive in this work. It has a language of its own. Phulboni pays homage to silence:
"Mistaken are those who imagine that silence is without life; that it is inanimate, without spirit or voice. It is not: indeed the word is to silence what shadow is to the fore-shadow, what veil is to eyes, what the mind is to the truth, what language is to life."
Only medium that I can compare this gem to is Cinematic media. Only the multi-hued audiovisual richness can be compared to this sheer gem of a literary technique. The Nolanesque cinematic technique of jump cuts and flashbacks were not just whims of a literary genius, but the need of the narrative. (Did Nolan read The Calcutta Chromosome by any chance before making Dunkirk?)
It seems Ghosh was speaking for himself when Phulboni wrote, "I have never known... whether life lies in words or in images, in speech or sight. Does a story come to be in words that I conjure out of my mind or does it live already, somewhere, enshrined in mud and clay- in an image, that is, in the crafted mimicry of life?"
Somebody recommended Amitav Ghosh. I was a bit apprehensive. Mind you, these were the days when the Internet was not in abandon. Children magazines like Anandamela were bringing out issues devoted to discussing what is a browser. What the hell... leave alone Gmail, even googling was not a recognized word. So, I didn't know who Amitav Ghosh is. I read his name, I knew it was fashionable for Coffee-House intellectuals to discuss his writings and comparing him with Sir V.S. Naipaul or more popularly with Ghosh's contemporary, Vikram Seth's writing. All of these ramblings are just to put in context the timeframe when I first read Amitav Ghosh and The Calcutta Chromosome to be specific.
My first reaction was, "Wow!!! That is one heady mix." I was not exactly sure, which genre I was to classify this book. So, when I approached the book more than after a decade- closure to two decades actually- I was apprehensive. You know, that familiar feeling you get in your gut when you approach something you loved as a kid and fear that love is going to burst like a soap bubble.
It was the same. It was a rush. The rush that you feel after the first drag of smoke after a long hiatus from the cigarettes. That heady mixture of nausea, freedom and confusion. There are countless numbers of lines on the web on the sub-altern identities and how Ghosh masterfully tackles the concept. How he brings the idea of Indian Occult head to head with Western Scientific Logic. How mysticism holds so deep a root in our Indian sub-conscious.
The scene where Sonali witnesses the ritual from the upper gallery of the Robinson Steet mansion, it so vividly invokes the symbol of human sacrifice, yet another image where Occident and Orient shall never meet.
To the West, there is nothing more barbaric than the sacrifice of human life. The ultimate desacralization of humanity. Yet, the same West never even stopped once before the wanton killing of human beings. Remember Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden"? The same West, who holds Human life to such a high value, hangs a 9-year boy in Belgian Congo because his father failed to produce enough crops for the colonialists.
Whereas, in Ghosh's novel, human sacrifice, when placed in the agency of subaltern becomes an allegory for the transcendence to a higher plane of existence. It was a purposeful act with a deliberate goal. Not some wanton violence. A gateway to the journey to yet another world of collective well being. The Occident could never understand the reality of magic in the Oriental life.
The reality of Magic- Isn't it a beautiful turn of phrase? What is a reality? What is magic? Where exactly do the realm of reality and magic meet? Which part of the narrative is fiction and which part is science fiction and which part is historical fiction?
Not surprisingly enough, Amitav Ghosh reminds me of another very very favourite author of mine in his heydays. Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. I have never ever come across another writer, whose words echo so hauntingly through the corridors of my mind. Who has played so articulately with the delicate world of magic realism?
It was not meant to be a review of the book. It is probably a journal after re-reading the book. A journal of a troubled mind. I am not qualified by far. I do not understand the concept of sub-altern, however, I do know something about Counter-Science. I do understand something about the difference between Orient and Occident minds and this is from this understanding, I bow down before the author. I bow down to the creator of this controlled mayhem. No, mayhem is chaotic. The followers of the Silence is anything but chaotic. Their approach is that of a dispassionate clinical observer, a genius and methodical scientist. But isn't the idea of mayhem is when exact opposites collide? What happens then? On one hand, we have Murugan asking Antar-
"Tell me: do you think it is natural to want to turn the page to be curious about what happened next?
...
- Let me put it like this then, 'said Murugan. "Do you think that everything that can be known should be known?"
Wow!!! Back up here a minute. It is a loaded gun. Right here.
On one hand, we have a protagonist who is seeking knowledge. On the other hand, we have Mangala and Lakhaan who believe "that to know something is to change it, therefore in knowing something, you've already changed what you think you know, so you don't really know it at all; you only know it's history. Maybe they thought that knowledge couldn't begin without acknowledging the impossibility of knowledge." If this is not the literary representation of Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg, I do not know what is.
Here we have two ideas- two drastically different ideas, two belief systems, two schools of thought so drastically different like Darwinism and Creationism, matter and antimatter- heading towards each other with such an inevitability, like Neo and Smith heading for that inevitable collision. Like Harry and Voldemort. Nope. Sorry. Wrong analogy.
Murugan had as much choice in the matter as a puppet dancing on the strings of a marionette. Whereas if he had not sought out the knowledge would he have been singled out by the fringe group who were the masters of the knowledge? Why was Urmila chosen by Mangala? A thriller by definition of the genre needs to answer the questions it raises. So, this is not a thriller. Ghosh uses the thriller form, only to subvert it. He raises questions after questions after questions only to leave the readers hanging.
Post-Colonialism is an aspect of any worthwhile English writing by an Indian author. Here Ghosh gives another twist to the aspect. Actually, two twists. Let us look back to Mangala. The fact, Mangala is a member of colonialized India, she is a female member of colonialized India and one from the downtrodden backward class of sweepers. Basically, she is thrice colonialized. And in the end, she is given the authoritative tone. Maybe here we can look back and start to have an inkling of the idea, "why Urmila?"
Maybe the charm of The Calcutta Chromosome lies in the power Ghosh bestows upon the subaltern, irrespective of the caste, by giving them the secret knowledge which had been the preserve of the colonizer.
In the end, the mastery Ghosh shows over the juggling between the techniques, his narrative style and the ability to keep you hooked, everything is shadowed by a difficult task he accomplishes with so much ease. When you are giving voice to a sub-altern agency, a class of oppressed, downtrodden colonialized people, the risk you run is to gentrify them. How do you register the agency of the dhooley-bearers, the safaiwalas and still account for them in a language that is never ever employed by them, at least by choice? How can the downtrodden be constituted in such a language, which expresses her/ his socio-economic background, without depriving them of their voice/ agency? Ghosh tackles this issue with such artistry, such finesse, which at once puts him in the seat of a master story-teller. Chiaroscuro. He takes a leaf out of Rembrandt's book and gives the subalterns a language of silence. Silence is all pervasive in this work. It has a language of its own. Phulboni pays homage to silence:
"Mistaken are those who imagine that silence is without life; that it is inanimate, without spirit or voice. It is not: indeed the word is to silence what shadow is to the fore-shadow, what veil is to eyes, what the mind is to the truth, what language is to life."
Only medium that I can compare this gem to is Cinematic media. Only the multi-hued audiovisual richness can be compared to this sheer gem of a literary technique. The Nolanesque cinematic technique of jump cuts and flashbacks were not just whims of a literary genius, but the need of the narrative. (Did Nolan read The Calcutta Chromosome by any chance before making Dunkirk?)
It seems Ghosh was speaking for himself when Phulboni wrote, "I have never known... whether life lies in words or in images, in speech or sight. Does a story come to be in words that I conjure out of my mind or does it live already, somewhere, enshrined in mud and clay- in an image, that is, in the crafted mimicry of life?"
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