Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Jyoti found himself squeezed between Dubey and the driver, trying to think of something to say. Surreptitiously he glanced at Dubey’s uniform. It was perfectly creased and ironed, the material much finer than any a mere uniforms allowance can buy. That’s the life, he thought. Be a small-town cop and prosper. Aloud he said: You’re looking healthy. How’s your asthma?

Oh, all right, Dubey answered. How’re your paintings?

Taken aback, Jyoti Das said: Not bad, not bad. And how’s Mrs Dubey?

Fine, fine. Went back to Delhi last year. Doesn’t like it here. And you? Still a happy bachelor?

Yes, Das said quickly. Now tell me what all this hurry was about. Have you got him?

No. Not yet. But we know he’s in this area, and we’ll definitely be able to trace some of his associates, so we’ll probably get him soon. That’s why I thought it would be best if you came personally. After all, it’s your case and I don’t want to take any undue credit for it (No, thought Das, I’m sure you don’t). It’s a good thing you’ve come actually, because just this morning some of my chaps in one of the villages around here brought in someone promising. If we get anything out of him, we should be able to pick up your bugger in a day or two, maybe even today. You’ve come just in time.

That’s very quick work, said Das. How’d you do it?

Well, we got the report you people sent — that the Suspect was believed to be somewhere in this area. There are a number of extremist groups around here, so I thought at once that he’d probably try to contact them. Then we got the sketch from your artists and I called in my station-house officers from the villages and showed it to them and told them about the case. After that, information began trickling in. It was easy. But this man we’ve picked up today is the real key.

Have you talked to him yet?

No, he’s still in a station outside the town, Dubey said. We’ll go and talk to him a little later.

The car stopped outside a yellow, tiled bungalow overlooking the sea. This is where you’ll stay, said Dubey, leading Das to a veranda. He gestured at a cane chair and ordered tea. Now, he said, what can you tell me about this business? In answer Das took a thick file from his briefcase and handed it to him. Dubey grimaced: Hell yar , can’t you just tell me? Why all this reading-sheading?

There’s not much to tell, Das said abruptly. You’ve seen the report we sent out already. I suppose you know there was an encounter with an extremist group in a village about five months ago? There was an accident, sort of, and most of them died. But one got away — there was a corpse missing. We managed to trace him to Calcutta. He was hiding with one of his uncle’s associates. I put some chaps on the job, and that was a mistake, for the bird had flown by the time they got there. Anyway the old man told them that the Suspect had ganged up with some Keralites in a textile factory in Calcutta. We got hold of one of the gang but we couldn’t get much out of him. Only that the Suspect was heading south, probably towards Kerala. I talked to the old man myself later. He had nothing much to say, that is, nothing important to say — he had a lot to say otherwise. After that we just followed the routine and sent you people a circular and a sketch. Frankly, we didn’t expect anything to come of it. Actually, to tell you the truth, I’d be quite happy to put an end to this business — I can’t see that it’s important in any way. But the DIG …

Das stopped to look at Dubey. The DIG, he continued, thinks it’s very important. He shrugged: Anyway, that’s more or less all that’s in the files.

Jyoti Das was right — that was all the files said. What else could they say? They knew nothing of the days Alu spent after Bolai-da smuggled him into a truck and sent him to Gopal’s flat in Calcutta. They knew nothing of the time he spent wandering blindly through the city, without stopping to eat, without even wondering how it came to be that he had lost the sensation of hunger. Or of the bench in the Maidan where his straying feet led him every night, to sit and wonder whether a match would still burn his skin, whether that at least was still left to him.

And when he returned to the flat on Hazra Road, Gopal, waiting for him, every night, would ask gently: Where did you go today? Every night the same question and every night Gopal would watch the same bewilderment play across the potato face, for really he did not know. For nights without end Gopal would sit in his easy chair and weep for Balaram, friend of his youth, his tears splashing heavily into the open book on his lap; and, weeping, he would watch Alu and wait for the first hint of an answering tear — for a sign at least — of grief, anything but that dumb, blank bewilderment. But there was nothing.

Only once did Alu have anything to tell him, and then for hours: he talked of a machine, a sewing machine in a display window. He talked of its sinuous curves, its bulging, powerful chest and tapering underbelly, of its shining blackness and dull gold lettering, of its poised needle and the inexhaustible miracle which can join together two separate pieces of cloth. He talked on until dawn, while Gopal wept unheeded, not only for Balaram this time, but for Alu, too, and his ebbing reason. Gopal did not know that that day Alu had won a battle for his spirit.

But soon Gopal stopped worrying for him, for one night Alu showed him two boils, the size of duck’s eggs, one on his leg and the other under his armpit — not ordinary boils, but suppurating craters of pus, as though his flesh had gathered itself together and tried to burst from his body. Gopal embraced Alu that night and laughed. Let them be, he said. They have nothing to do with you; it’s only Balaram trying to come back to the world.

But Alu covered his leg and glowered at him. Not just Balaram, he growled.

Gopal nodded wisely and turned away.

There were more and more, all over Alu’s body, and the pain drove him to walk farther and farther afield — to the crowds fighting their way out of Sealdah Station, to Howrah Bridge, across, and still farther, until sirens were shrieking all around him and he was swept away by crowds pouring out of factory gates. It was then that by some inexplicable turn of fortune Alu did something he had not done before — he stopped at a tea-stall and asked for a cup of tea.

It was there that he met Rajan.

That day, dark, brooding Rajan told him about the great factories all around them. He talked of Jacquard looms and streams of punched paper which could draw patterns with warp strings faster than the eye could see; of looms blessed with the sense of touch, automatic looms, which could send out feelers to sense whether their shuttles were empty or not; of looms without any real shuttles at all, in which hurtling projectiles flew through the empty space of the shed, between the two parted streams of the warp yarn, to bite into a waiting bobbin and carry it back; of looms in which curled iron rapiers served for shuttles, snapping through the shed to carry the weft in a pierced eye; of shuttles of which he had only read, which fly on jets, like aeroplanes … That night Gopal was awake again till dawn, listening to Alu talk of the factory and Rajan and, of course, machines.

After that Alu went back to the tea-shop every day, before Rajan’s shift. Sometimes he talked of his own loom and the cloth he had woven, and to his astonishment he found that his language was no mystery to Rajan. For Rajan was of Kerala’s great caste of Chalias who for centuries have woven and traded in simple white cloth. There was no loom anywhere that was a mystery to Rajan.

One day he smuggled Alu into the mill he worked in: a huge bustling vault, the machines new, awesome in their potency and their size; the men minuscule, compressed, struggling under the weight of the giants. It was a miracle which had no end — webs of yarn shooting into the maws of the automatic looms from whirling bobbins, cloth pouring out in waterfalls, folding itself into ordered bales …