Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

It looked very simple. The car arrived. The boy got out, his mother got out, and there were little cries of joy in the house for they couldn’t have wished for nicer people. Then they saw his grandmother, and suddenly everyone was nervous, for despite her burqa they could see that she was as thin as a whip, with fangs and a moustache.

All went well for an hour or so: though the grandmother’s voice shrilled through the house, the boy and the girl talked prettily to each other through her mother. When it was evening the men said their prayers and afterwards they asked for dinner.

All this while the grandmother had been peering suspiciously at all the signs of wealth around her. When the talk of dinner came up, she said: So you have someone to cook for you?

The girl’s mother, wanting to impress her, said: Oh, yes. An Indian woman.

At that the grandmother rose and said to the boy: Come on, let’s go. (Later they found out that she’d been against the marriage from the start — didn’t want another woman in the house.)

His mother was furious. Why? she said. Why now? Before dinner and everything? Think of your indigestion.

No, we’re going, said the grandmother. I’m not going to eat food cooked by an Indian. Don’t you remember how your uncle told us that these Indian women spit into the food because they like the flavour?

Commotion. The girl’s mother pleaded with her, told her it wasn’t true, Kulfi was a good clean girl who never spat into the food or anything like that, but the grandmother wouldn’t budge. Not a bit.

Almost in tears now, the girl’s mother pleaded with them and said: Come into the kitchen and right in front of you I’ll ask Kulfi whether she spits into the food.

The boy frowned at his grandmother (he was very eager to get his capital), so she had to agree. They all went to the kitchen — the grandmother, the boy, the girl, almost everyone in the house — and crowded around to watch.

At that time Kulfi knew very little Arabic. She knew simple things like ‘too hot’ and ‘more salt’, but little else. The girl’s mother remembered this with foreboding once she was in the kitchen but it was already too late.

She gestured to Kulfi to watch and leant over a pot and made little spitting noises. Then she screwed up her face and gestured as though to say: Do you do this?

Kulfi was already very nervous. She saw the woman bending over the pot, spitting and gesturing, so she thought to herself, Why, here’s something new — and as helpfully as she could she made a sign to the woman to wait. For a moment she blew and puffed, and when at last she had worked up a good mouthful of spit she bent over the pot and spat right into it. Then she looked up and smiled at the woman. There, she thought, you can’t do better than that and I’m not going to eat it anyway.

Pandemonium. Kulfi was out on the street in a minute. It was a pity, for the family was a nice one. But in the end the girl’s mother had to promise that she would never again have an Indian in the house, before the marriage could go ahead.

But Kulfi was without a job, and what with hearing the story over and over again nobody noticed Mast Ram. Then one day Abu Fahl remembered him and took him out with the others to teach him how to paint houses. It was the simplest job in the world, even for someone who was just a boy like Mast Ram. But he wouldn’t work. He’d sit by himself, smoke cigarettes and do nothing, nothing at all. Far from doing any painting, he wouldn’t even scrape the floor afterwards to take off the stains.

One day Abu Fahl said: Enough. If he won’t work, he’ll have to leave. So they tied his things together and threw them out of the house. But Mast Ram wouldn’t go. He sat in a corner and held on to the bars in the window, while his eyes ran around the room like spiders. He made Abu Fahl mad with anger. He got his crowbar, stood with his legs apart, towering over Mast Ram, and raised it above his head to break his skull again, where the crack still showed.

When Mast Ram saw Abu Fahl, with his bull’s shoulders, standing over him, holding the crowbar with both hands and glaring with his one, red eye, fear began to steam off his skin. For once his eyes were still. He cowered against the wall and began to weep.

It was Frowning Abusa who stopped Abu Fahl. Wait, he said. Maybe he’ll be able to do some other kind of job.

At that time Abusa was working in a rich sheikh’s house as a gardener. The sheikh was one of the brave ones who had bought land on the outskirts of the town. He had built himself a palace there but he could do nothing about the land, which stayed desert, despite all his efforts.

Now, Abusa had one great gift: all living things grew under his fingers as though to please him alone. In his village ever since he started working on his father’s land, their cotton grew longer and heavier than anybody else’s. In years when the whole village’s fields lay devastated by worms their crops threw off insects at will as though they found strength in Abusa’s very presence. Within a month of taking the job with the sheikh he made grass push through the sand. The sheikh, in his gratitude, doubled Abusa’s wage within the year and soon Abusa was earning a lot of money. Abusa knew the sheikh would listen to whatever he said, so no one doubted he would find Mast Ram a job there.

Abusa never talked about his work (or much else), so no one knew how Mast Ram was faring in his new job. No one gave it much thought, either, then suddenly some odd things began to happen. First, four men from one of the construction gangs in the Ras died, when a high-tension cable fell right on them. They died in agony, thrashing about on the ground. That was the first time such a thing had happened. Then one of Hajj Fahmy’s sons drove his truck right off the embankment at a hundred kilometres an hour. It was impossible to explain, for he had driven along that road for years. By the time they found him they couldn’t pick his body out of the wreckage. Soon after, fever hit the first few shacks on the outskirts of the Ras.

In the middle of all that stories about Mast Ram began to reach the Ras: how a live flowering bush had withered and died moments after Mast Ram touched it; how Abusa’s famous pumpkins, each one the size of a fattened sheep, were opened and found to be as hollow as footballs after Mast Ram had watered them.

None of it was Mast Ram’s fault. He was as bewildered as everyone else by the death which surrounded him. In the end Abusa, fearing for his job, had to put him to laying paving stones so that the garden would be safe from his hands.

Then people began to notice a change in Mast Ram. He saw how every living thing flourished and grew under Abusa’s hands and he was filled with admiration, even love. He took to following Abusa wherever he went, inside the house and outside, staring up at him with dog’s eyes. Abusa for his part was always kind to him, like a stern brother.

Mast Ram began to do everything he could to earn Abusa’s respect. Abusa had a few rabbits which he kept in a cage in the courtyard. He looked after them well and they bred faster than they could be eaten. One day Mast Ram decided to feed the rabbits. Next morning there was a dead rabbit in the cage. Everybody in the house saw it, but nobody said a word, not even Abusa. The next day Mast Ram fed the rabbits again. Again, the morning after, they found a dead rabbit. That evening, when Mast Ram went to feed the rabbits yet again, Abusa stopped him and quietly, in their own language, half signs, half words, he told him not to feed the rabbits again.

Mast Ram said nothing, but there were tears in his eyes.

After that Mast Ram’s behaviour became even stranger. At that time Abusa had taken a great liking to Kulfi. He spent a lot of time looking at her and sometimes he even bought her presents. Kulfi used to toss her head and pretend not to care, but of course she was pleased, for like everyone else she liked Abusa.