Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

I know what you are, said Balaram after the interests of science and the discovery of Alu’s mechanical organ had lent him the courage to force himself on Shombhu Debnath and his looms.

What? said Shombhu suspiciously.

You’re a teacher, said Balaram. That’s why you must take our Alu to be your apprentice.

Shombhu laughed: I haven’t taught anyone except my Rakhal, and in Naboganj they display his cloth when they want a laugh. I haven’t woven in years.

That’s why you haven’t woven, Balaram said, serenely sure. You’re not a weaver; you haven’t the right organs. Everything about you goes to prove that you’re a teacher.

To prove that he was serious he pulled five ten-rupee notes out of his trouser pocket and slapped them into Shombhu’s hand. There, he said, the price for your head — your first fees. Shombhu shook his hand, aghast, but the money clung to it. Static electricity, said Balaram. Sri Krishna’s leela, said Shombhu. Divine play, but not for a mortal man to question.

That was how Alu had his wish and arrived in Shombhu Debnath’s courtyard one morning, no more as a visitor, but an aspiring apprentice, spick-span, oiled and eager. But it was not to be as he had imagined: no welcoming embrace from the Master, no words of craftsmanly wisdom. Shombhu Debnath smiled to see him, a grimace of a smile, baring his hookah-blackened teeth, and said: No more peace here. Then he picked up his hookah and wandered gurgling into the bamboo forest.

Imagine Alu: fifteen now, stocky and broad-shouldered, in blue shorts, his head still huge but the bumps a little smoother, standing forlorn in a courtyard, listening to the fading gurgles of a hookah. The courtyard is not large as courtyards go, but tranquil, shaded by an overhanging jackfruit tree. It is a simple square uthon of beaten earth set between three huts. The huts are large, cool rooms, four walls of clay, covered by a thatch of bamboo and straw, arched over like upturned boats. One is Maya’s, one shared by Rakhal and his father, and the smallest serves as a kitchen. At the far end of the courtyard is an open shed, a sloping thatch roof, held up by bamboo poles, under which Shombhu Debnath’s two fly-shuttle looms are set in waist-deep pits. Rakhal is sitting at one of those looms. He sees Alu’s disappointment and calls out sourly: Do you think he’ll ever teach you? Do you think he knows how to teach? Look how he taught me. Go back while there’s time. Don’t waste your life here. Rakhal is thinking of his own youth and strength, wasted at the loom, when he could be at a kung fu class in Naboganj instead.

The forest did not yield up Shombhu Debnath that day or the next or the day after. Eventually it was Maya who became Alu’s first teacher.

First, she taught him to starch yarn: tedious foul-smelling work, days spent hanging yarn up to dry after dipping it in pots of congealed rice starch. Then she taught him to wind the starched yarn on bobbins, with a spinning wheel: children’s work — spin the wheel with one hand, hold the yarn taut with the other, making sure that it winds evenly. Dreary, dreary work. Even the speed with which Alu turned out perfect oval bobbins — more than a hundred a day, many more than Rakhal could use — was no consolation.

Where was Shombhu Debnath? Where was the Shombhu who had once sat on the stoop of his hut and talked into the night about the cloth he had heard of in the master-weaver’s shed in Tangail? Of abrawan muslins as fine as mountain springs, invisible under the surface of the clearest water; shabnam muslins, which when spread on grass melted into the morning dew; cloth which was thin air, fifteen yards of it no heavier than two handfuls of rice, and yet denser than the thickest wool, with four hundred warp threads to the inch. Shameless, shameless insubstantial cloth, nature’s mirror, carrying on its conscience the curses of the exiled princess who, swathed in thirty yards of it, had stepped into her father’s court, for all the world to see, mother naked and beautiful. Where was that Shombhu Debnath?

When, when would Shombhu Debnath begin to teach him?

Never, said Maya, rocking back on her heels as she squatted beside Alu, watching him at the wheel. Rakhal’s right; he’ll never teach you.

Alu’s hand slipped, and next moment his fingers and the wheel were wrapped in a tangled cat’s-cradle of yarn. Mortified, Alu began disentangling the yarn. Maya watched him, sucking her lip. Then she hissed: What’s the use of your learning this? This is real work; you’ll never be able to do it. Go back to your school and your books.

Alu had most of the yarn wrapped around his open palm. He bit through a knot and spat out the metallic sharpness of dye and starch. Do you hear me? Maya said. Go back home; this is real work. You’ll never learn to do it.

Alu had the yarn disentangled and wound tightly around his palm. He began to lay it out in loops so he could start again. You’re proud you can wind a bobbin, aren’t you? Maya said, dark eyes flashing. Do you know what this is? This is children’s work; children do it when they’re eight. That’s what you’re doing — children’s work — even though you’ve got hair bursting out of your clothes.

Unsteadily Alu ran a sweating palm over the rim of the wheel and gave it a trial spin. Little boy, hissed Maya, playing with toys. Why don’t you get out of your shorts and back into your cradle?

Alu, suddenly a child again, knocked the wheel aside. He lunged forward and pushed her over. Trembling, he watched her pick herself up and brush the dust off her worn red sari. That’s right, she cried. Hit me. You’ll never be good for any real work.

She spat into the dust. Alu saw her brush the end of her sari across her eyes. She turned and ran into her hut.

Rakhal had left his loom. He was leaning against the shed, watching him. It’s true, he said. You’re really in trouble. You’re caught between two madmen, and who can tell what a madman will do or a goat will eat? Maya’s right; you should get out of this while you still can.

But at the end of that month, when Balaram punctually handed Maya her father’s fees yet again, she took the notes to her father, and held them up in both hands: I’m tearing these.

But why? Shombhu said. His fees had fuelled a new fondness for arrack. He was in no mood to have his money torn up.

Because it’s stolen money, Maya said. He’s paying you to teach him weaving, and you’ve taught him nothing.

Shombhu snatched the money from her and stormed out of the courtyard. That night they heard him giving vent to an impassioned, night-jarring Raga Kelenga on some distant branch.

Next morning he was in the courtyard, waiting for Alu, sucking on his hookah.

Warping first: no weft without a warp.

Other weavers with only a loom or two usually had their warps sized and wound by contractors. Not Shombhu Debnath. Somehow he had acquired a drum and frames for his own warp beams.

So Alu learnt how to arrange bobbins of yarn on the hundreds of spindles on the warping frames, so that they ran true to the warp drum; he learnt to conjure up patterns by arranging bobbins of different colours on different parts of the frames; he learnt to thread the ends of the yarn through a wooden board, like a racket, with hundreds of metal eyes, so that the yarn would not tangle on its journey to the drum; he learnt to wind the drum, so that it drew the yarn into it, like a lake swallowing a waterfall. And so on, often mere tedium, changing bobbins when they ran out, rethreading them through the board, twisting together the ends of broken threads.

Days of work, painstaking, eye-crossing work, to wind one warp beam properly. But sometimes there was a kind of music to it, when the drum was turning well, clattering on its hinges, and the yarn was whirling through the eyes of the board, like a stream shooting through rapids.