Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Next morning Balaram gathered his volunteers together early and rushed off to Naboganj without eating his breakfast. Toru-debi protested: What’s the hurry? Your what’s-its-name, marching reason, won’t miss the bus if you go an hour late.

There is a hurry, Balaram said shortly, and almost ran from the house. He came back in the afternoon, with his volunteers, in a hired truck piled high with sacks of carbolic powder and a small arsenal of squirt-guns, water-pistols and plastic buckets. He set the volunteers to work at once. They rolled a few clean oil-drums into the patch of garden in front of the house next to the shed which housed the Weaving Section. Balaram directed them while they mixed the carbolic powder into a dilute solution. When they had finished, he gave them precise instructions. They were to assemble in the school at four o’clock the next day. That was usually the time he took his classes in reading and writing, but they were to be excused class for once.

Balaram was up early the next day, bright-eyed and feverish with excitement. He spent the day pacing his study in nervous agitation, jerking his thick lock of white hair from his eyes, his fine, slim face drawn with tension. Long before four he was out of the house, peering down the path, waiting impatiently for the volunteers. Alu, who had decided to go with him, went out to join him a little later. At four-thirty only six of the fourteen volunteers had arrived. Balaram was furious. Where are they? he shouted at one of the students, a fifteen-year-old boy with no front teeth.

The boy was taken aback, for Balaram had never shouted at anyone in the school before. Maybe they’re at the banyan tree, he said apologetically, sucking his canines. Don’t you know, Balaram-babu, Bhudeb-Roy-shaheb is holding a meeting, a proper microphone-and-loudspeaker meeting, under the banyan tree today? He’s going to lay the first stone for a road, an absolutely straight so-big-and-black macadam road from the banyan tree to his house. His men are going all over the village taking people to the meeting. We had to hide and come round through the ricefields.

Was it coincidence? Was it part of Balaram’s plans? Had he known?

He must have, Alu said to Gopal in Calcutta several months later. He must have wanted it to happen, otherwise why was he in so much of a hurry?

At the time, Balaram gave nothing away. With quiet determination he said: This is only one of the obstacles which will litter the path of Reason. Then he handed out water-pistols, squirt-guns, mugs and buckets of carbolic solution and led them down the path.

Where are we going, sir? one of the students asked.

To the banyan tree, said Balaram. There’s no part of the village more littered with filth.

But when they were only a few hundred yards away from the banyan tree and could hear the hum of the crowd and Bhudeb Roy’s voice booming through loudspeakers — This road will be an example; an example in straightness and hard work, which are the needs of the hour — Balaram faltered. Alu saw him hesitate and tugged at his elbow. Let’s go back, he said. There’s still time. There’s no need for this.

Balaram stopped and put his bucket down. The volunteers stopped behind him. Balaram’s face was drenched in sweat. Alu saw his courage draining away with the blood in his face. Come on, Alu said. Let’s turn back …

But before he could finish Shombhu Debnath was at Balaram’s elbow. Alu stopped in surprise; Shombhu Debnath had not been with them when they left the school.

Turning back already, Balaram-babu? Shombhu Debnath sang out. He laughed and his red eyes shone into Balaram’s: You mean to say the march of reason is being turned back by a single germ? Come on.

With a wink at Balaram, Shombhu Debnath unrolled his ashen hair and knotted it tightly into place. He unwound his strip of red cotton, and tied it on again, like a loincloth. Then he turned to one of the volunteers, snatched a bucket and a squirt-gun out of his hands and led the way to the banyan tree. Shamefacedly Balaram followed, with Alu behind him. But the volunteers lagged behind.

The crowd under the banyan tree was large by Lalpukur’s standards, but not huge. There were perhaps eighty people crowded into the open space around the tree. Some were squatting on the ground and picking their teeth; some stood leaning on each other and against the tree’s massive, twisted aerial roots. Bhudeb Roy’s sons and the twenty young men stood around the crowd, blocking all the paths out of the clearing. A small wooden platform had been erected near the banyan’s huge trunk, between Bolai-da’s shop and the tea-shop. A portrait of Bhudeb Roy, inexpertly painted on a sheet of cardboard almost as large as Bhudeb Roy himself, was suspended from the tree, directly above the platform. The painter had obviously tried to reach a compromise between Bhudeb Roy and a famous filmi face. As a result Bhudeb Roy’s jaws and tiny eyes, immensely distorted, leered grotesquely at the crowd in an attitude of screen tenderness. Bhudeb Roy, heavily garlanded, stood under the portrait, thundering into a microphone. He was dressed as usual in a spotless white dhoti and kurta, but a white political cap covered his baldness. There were dozens of other pictures of him accompanied by slogans (Straight to Progress) stuck up on the trunk of the ancient banyan and on the shops.

Bhudeb Roy checked for a moment when he saw Balaram entering the clearing with a bucket. Then he recovered and roared into the microphone again, but with a trace of uneasiness in his voice: This is a new beginning, a straight beginning …

Balaram stopped and looked around him in indecision. Now that he was actually there he was not sure what to do. Shombhu Debnath had vanished with his squirt-gun and bucket. Alu was beside him, but there was so sign of the volunteers. Two of Bhudeb Roy’s men turned and saw him. Bhudeb Roy roared from his platform: Nothing shall turn us from our straight advance … The young men advanced towards them stroking their wooden clubs. The loudspeakers screamed: The road will be straight, the straight road of progress, straight to my house … The men were barely an arm’s length away, and Alu thrust himself in front of Balaram. One of the men raised his club.

And then suddenly with a gurgling whoosh a stream of disinfectant poured out of the tree, right over Bhudeb Roy. The microphone drowned in a cacophony of squeaks and screeches. Bhudeb Roy collapsed on to the platform, spluttering and coughing. A jet of carbolic shot out of the boughs of the tree and slammed into the suspended portrait. The cardboard sagged and swung backwards on its rope. For a moment it hung by a thread and then the rope gave, and it plummeted down in a soggy mass. Bhudeb Roy was floundering wetly on the platform, directly in its path. His head took the cardboard, square in the middle. He was flung backwards. When he struggled up again, the cardboard was hanging damply over his garlands and his head was staring out of a ragged hole in the painted jaw.

Bhudeb Roy’s sons and the twenty young men were motionless, their eyes riveted on Bhudeb Roy in dismay, as he struggled blindly, with the portrait hanging around his neck like a soggy octopus. Alu saw his chance and jogged Balaram’s elbow. They picked up their buckets and emptied them on the two men in front of them. They were gone before the men could open their eyes again.

When Bhudeb Roy sat up again his sons and his hired men were all around him, spewing apologies; trying to help him up; fastidiously picking bits of cardboard off his garlanded neck. The clearing was empty. There was no sign of Balaram or Alu. The boughs of the banyan were tranquil and uninhabited. But he could hear laughter rippling through the ricefields.

Bhudeb Roy insisted on being driven straight to hospital.