Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Who? What was his name? Alu was already thumbing through the stiff, crackling leaves, fumbling for the title-page. Somehow it kept slipping past his fingers. He broke into a sweat, stopped, closed the book between his palms and opened it again, gently.

He saw Balaram’s handwriting on the first page, in red ink, sprawled across the corner: To Hem Narain Mathur, Rationalist and friend, from Balaram Bose; Medical College Hospital, Calcutta, 1932. Another hand had inscribed beneath: To remember Reason.

He could not bear to look at it. He shut the book and hugged it to his chest.

Why, Mr Bose, Mrs Verma said in surprise, you seem to be very fond of that book?

Mrs Verma, Alu said, this book is the only real brother I ever had. I’d lost him and now I’ve found him again — here in the desert, of all places, and in your house.

Mrs Verma listened gravely, picking at the frayed threads on the fall of her sari. Then she said: That’s very sad.

Sad! cried Alu. How can you call it sad?

I can see that you love that book, Mr Bose, and that’s very sad, because you can love a book but a book can’t love you. That’s what I used to tell my father, but he could never understand. He would look at the world whirling around him and he would look at his books, and when they told him different stories, like a man caught between quarrelling friends, he wouldn’t know which side to take. But in the end, even though it meant shutting himself away, the books won. They ruled over him: for him that bookcase had all the order the world lacked. I used to think it was love, but I know better now. He was afraid; afraid of the power of science and those books of his; afraid that if he disowned them they would destroy him.

That can’t be true, Alu cried. What could a book like this one have done to him? You’re wrong; you must be.

She smiled: You may be right — I’m often wrong. She took the book from him and flipped through it gingerly, holding it at a distance. Do you know, she said, looking at it in wonder; it’s because of this book that I’m a microbiologist today? My father told me that microbiology was Pasteur’s heritage, and that I was to keep it alive.

She took a deep breath and held the book out to him. Take it, she said. I’ve always wanted to get rid of it. Only I’ve never dared; I’m too much my father’s daughter.

Alu hesitated: How could I take it? It was your father’s …

Take it, she insisted, almost angrily. Now that I’ve found the courage to give it away I won’t take it back. Keep it with you. Take it outside to the dunes if you like, and read it in peace there.

Yes, he said eagerly, holding out his hand. I’ll do just that. I can always bring it back.

She dropped the book into his hands. He fumbled and it slipped and fell open on the floor. A paragraph underlined heavily in red pencil stared up at them from the open pages.

Read that bit out, she said quickly. What does it say? It always means something when a book falls open like that.

It’s about death, Alu said. It says that without the germ ‘life would become impossible because death would be incomplete’.

Smiling nervously, Mrs Verma looked around the room. I wonder who it was pointing at, she said.

By the time Dr Mishra and Jyoti Das returned, just before sunset, Mrs Verma had already cleared a space for the rehearsal in the drawing-room, and she and Kulfi were busy making a garland — of bougainvillaea, for lack of jasmine — to go with Arjuna’s costume. It was dull work, and Mrs Verma would have been glad of another pair of hands, but Zindi was busy watching over Boss’s drugged sleep behind a locked door, Alu was still away at the dunes and, as for her husband, she knew from experience that flowers always fell apart in his hands.

Mrs Verma was alarmed the moment Jyoti Das stepped in. His eyes were feverishly bright, his face tense, strained with suppressed excitement. With deep misgiving she saw how his eyes scanned the room, how they came to rest hungrily on Kulfi’s lowered head.

Come on, Mr Das, she broke in quickly. Come on, Mishra-sahb. Change into your costumes; we have to get started now. She waved them ahead of her, and when Jyoti Das hung back she herded him relentlessly on: Come on, come on now …

Jyoti Das came back first, dressed in a dhoti and kurta. He was stooping with his shoulders painfully hunched up, for the kurta was Mr Verma’s and therefore two sizes too small for him, and its starched seams were biting unpleasantly into his armpits. Pinched between his fingers, as though it were a dead rat, was a small bamboo bow.

No sooner had Mrs Verma stifled a laugh than she saw his eyes stray beseechingly towards Kulfi. She saw Kulfi rewarding him with a smile of approval, and at once, tapping the chair next to hers, she rapped out: Come and sit down, Mr Das; you ought to study your scenes now.

Then Dr Mishra appeared, scarlet below the waist, glittering with tinsel above, mouthing soundless curses. Isn’t this funny enough for you? he said to her. Do I have to put on Verma’s contraption as well?

Yes, she said, you look much better with a halo. And I have something else for you, too.

What? he said suspiciously.

She held up a cone of cardboard and gold paper. It’s a crown, she explained. It’s a kind of symbol of your reign over the realm of Love.

Don’t lie, he said, looking at it scornfully. It’s to cover my baldness.

Mrs Verma, undeterred, jammed it on his head. There, she said, and now you won’t catch a cold, either. But when her husband strapped on the halo and gave it a trial spin the crown hurtled off Dr Mishra’s slippery scalp and flattened itself on the floor. Mrs Verma pushed the tip up and tried to fit it on again, with a rubber band this time. Halfway through she happened to look up. Next moment the crown fell from her hands and Dr Mishra howled as the rubber band snapped back, catching him on the tip of his nose.

Kulfi was bending over Jyoti Das with the garland of bougainvillaea in her hands, smiling with coy bridal modesty. Mrs Verma started forward, but before she could reach them Kulfi had slipped the garland over his head and pirouetted away.

Jyoti Das rose to his feet, breathing hard, his eyes dilated, but before he could take a step Mrs Verma was in front of him.

No, no, Mr Das, she said sharply, pushing him back on to his chair. No more of that; sit down now.

After that she looked up every two seconds while strapping on Dr Mishra’s crown to make sure that they hadn’t moved. Dr Mishra was immensely amused. Love-game for Madana, he hummed. Three cheers for rural socialism.

Soon Mrs Verma was ready to begin. A quick look at Jyoti Das’s flushed face persuaded her to start with a scene which needed only Chitrangada and Madana.

The first part of the scene, in which Kulfi only had to kneel before Dr Mishra and suit her expression to the song of supplication that was playing on the gramophone, went off without a hitch. But when Dr Mishra pulled her to her feet as he had been told to a gust from his whirring halo caught Kulfi’s tiara and blew it off her head. Kulfi’s hands shot up. She patted her head with gathering dismay, and then she turned upon Dr Mishra with such unbridled rage blazing out of her eyes that he cowered back in fear.

Mrs Verma had to dart in between them. I think this scene’s done now, she said hurriedly. We’ll go on to another one.

She fetched a shawl and draped it around Kulfi’s shoulders. This shawl, she explained, represents the ordinariness of Chitrangada’s real appearance. You’ll have to wear it now, because we’re going to do the last scene, in which Chitrangada reveals her real self to Arjuna and he cries out in wonder: Dhanya! Dhanya! Dhanya!

She led Kulfi and Jyoti Das to the empty space at the far end of the room and explained their parts to them. While they took up their poses — Chitrangada with her hands dramatically outflung before a wonder-struck Arjuna — she stood beside them, watching narrowly, making sure that they stayed a respectable distance from each other. It was a long while before she was satisfied. But finally, apprehensively, she backed away and turned the gramophone on.