Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Alu stopped and turned towards the house. The bamboo thickets where the house lay were silhouetted against a curtain of metallic light. He forgot all about the loom, all about Rakhal’s instructions, and began to run towards the house. The microphone boomed again: This is a warning, this is the last warning to you. Then, with a high whistle, a brilliant sunburst of light arced into the sky and the whole forest shimmered in the eerie silver glow. He saw it reach its zenith and curve downwards, and fall out of his sight, behind the bamboo. There was a moment of absolute stillness when it struck him that the light must have fallen very near the house. And then the earth shook and the air seemed to come alive and hit him with walls of force, and when he opened his eyes again exactly where the house ought to have been there were orange flames shooting into the sky.

Alu began to run again. His whole mind went blank, except for the rhythm of his pounding feet. He saw a figure standing on the path ahead of him, but the familiar bandy legs meant no more than an obstacle blocking his way, and instinctively he turned his shoulder and threw himself at it. But Bolai-da sidestepped deftly and next moment he had Alu pinned to his chest in a wrestler’s lock. What d’you want to go back to the house for? he said as Alu struggled against his arms. There’s nobody there any more but the police buggers. There’s nothing for you to do there. God’s cremated them all.

Alu twisted and clawed at his arm, trying to break the lock. Exasperated, Bolai-da pulled one of his hands loose and hit him hard across the cheek, and Alu slumped over. Bolai-da put a shoulder under one of his arms and half-carried, half-dragged him into the forest. God, he mumbled, you should have seen that flare … right over, straight into the courtyard, and the whole place — up like a bomb. They’ll be all around it now, looking for you. But they’re not going to get you. I named you and I’ll see you safe somewhere …

Alu, stumbling along beside him, inert and uncomprehending, could only see the flames of the known world licking the skies.

Until very recently it used to take three days to travel to Mahé from Calcutta by train (it takes a little less now because of the New Bongaigaon Express). It takes so long because Mahé is at the other end of the subcontinent — on the west coast, only a few hundred miles north of the southernmost tip of the Peninsula.

The older part of Mahé town is on a knoll, overlooking the sluggish green Mahé river which flows down from the thickly forested Idikki hills to the east. The town and its tiny hinterland are surrounded by Kerala, and at first sight it looks like any other coastal Malabar town. But actually Mahé is not a part of Kerala. It owes this, like the church with its slate-topped steeple which juts above the town, to the fact that it was once a French colony — a tiny island of Gallic domination in a sea of British-occupied territory.

The sea which breaks on Mahé’s beaches is the Arabian Sea and it washes in wealth. Mahé has the air of a boom town, but on a modest, muted scale, for it is actually a very small and inconspicuous place. Those who have heard the name usually remember it only indistinctly or for an examination, and very few know where to find it on a map.

On the morning of the third day of his journey, when he was only a few hours away from Mahé, Jyoti Das was very bored and very restless. He knew he ought not to be, for the landscape he had woken up to that morning was strikingly beautiful, especially after — to give things their proper names — the desert he had shut his eyes on in Tamil Nadu the night before. It was like waking up in an extravagant garden. Everything was green; there were greens of so many shades whirling past his window — the new-leaf green of banana trees, the deep emerald of rice, the feathery darkness of coconut palms. There seemed to be no exposed surface, no bit of rock, no sand, nothing that was not draped in green. The soil seemed to be writhing in labour, in its effort to push greenery out at every angle. Even the air smelt rich — of loam, cardamom and cloves, salted with a tang of the sea. The coconut palms jostled with each other on both sides of the tracks, crowding out the horizon and shrinking the sky to a little blue patch, directly above. Sometimes, through the mass of slender trunks, he could catch the scimitar flash of a lagoon in the distance. And in the east, hanging in the air, above the palms, he could see pale, silvery mountains.

But three days of sitting still, even if in a first-class compartment, would bore anyone. All that Jyoti Das could feel now was the stiffness in his joints and the grime on his skin. He could see veins of dirt in the creases of his shirt and trousers, but there was nothing he could do about it, for he had used up all the changes of clothing he had brought with him on the train. That worried him, for it meant that he would have to meet Dubey, the ASP in Mahé, in grimy clothes. Dubey was a real ASP, posted in a district, and ASPs in districts live like minor potentates, with platoons of orderlies to wash and iron their uniforms. Jyoti Das knew Dubey a little; they had been contemporaries at the Academy, though not friends, for Dubey had been known there chiefly by his reputation for stupidity (which, thought Jyoti, was saying quite a lot in that crowd). Dubey, very likely, never wore the same uniform twice in a month. He had lived well, even at the Academy. Especially after his marriage, when he was given, or so people said, a television set, a refrigerator, a car and several lakhs of rupees along with a wife. But, then, those were the going rates for a police officer in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh.

At least there was the possibility of seeing a paradise flycatcher. He had brought his watercolours with him, just in case. He had seen one the last time he was in Kerala, on a compulsory tour of India during his training, but his colleagues were with him then, and he would not have dreamt of pulling out his sketchpad with them watching. This time, perhaps. As for the case, it was almost certainly going to be a waste of time, despite Dubey’s urgent telex. Five months had passed since the raid, and the case was more or less closed as far as he was concerned. But he shut his eyes, and turned away from the window, for even now he could not help shutting his eyes whenever he thought of the raid and saw that flare — fired only as a warning — sending up the whole house. God, there was no point in going on with the business. But Dubey’s telex had arrived, and the DIG had sent him on his way. What was the use? Dubey could have handled whatever there was to handle himself, instead of dragging him all the way from Calcutta.

Of course there was the paradise flycatcher, but hardly worth being dragged all the way from Calcutta for, especially in winter with the zoo full of birds. There was something else, too, but about that he didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry. His mother had wanted him to take a look at a girl. He had more or less ritually refused to go. But his mother had gone ahead and fixed a day, and in the end he had agreed to go with her. He didn’t particularly wish to be married, but he didn’t particularly wish not to be married. And if it brought peace at home — well, then. But now it would have to wait. Of course, there was the flycatcher.

As the train draws in at Mahé, Jyoti Das is irritated and thoroughly resentful — at being made to sit in a train for three days, at the unnecessary exertion, at the waste of time … A waste of time, he thinks. He is wrong, but he does not know it. He is about to be launched on the greatest adventure of his life.

Dubey was Jyoti’s first surprise: looking for the lean gangling figure he remembered, he saw instead a plump, sleek man spilling over with an unexpectedly warm welcome. Dubey disposed of his luggage by snapping his fingers at a constable, and led him out of the little station to a jeep.