Thou hast lost it. Review on Calcutta Chromosome, The - Amitav Ghosh

The Author:

Ghosh is known to be one of the most prolific writers of our time, with books like ‘The Glass Palace’, ‘The Shadow Lines’ and ‘ The circle of reason’ bearing a testimony to this fact. His command over narration and a unique style of story-telling have endeared him to many a reader internationally. Still, there’s always a chink to be found in the sturdiest of armours.

The story:

Spread across three time lines, Calcutta Chromosome starts in the near future set in New York, when ‘Antar’ an Egyptian espies the Id-card of his lost co-worker ‘L.Murugan’, while monitoring his futuristic, rubble sifting, number crunching, globe trotting, language spouting, 3-D hologram generating and emotional computer ‘Ava’, whew! Yeah, you read that right, computer.

The book then takes you back to 1995 when ‘Murugan’ disappeared while researching on the life and work of ‘Ronald Ross’, whose toil in late 19th century Calcutta identifying the female Anopheles as carrier of malaria won him the Nobel prize for medicine. Murugan is a self-confessed authority on Ross and would tell anyone who could care to listen that it was impossible for Ross to make the fateful discovery on his own and was helped by some external agency.

In uncovering this conspiracy, we are led more behind in time to 1895 when Ross is in the process of his work assisted by a mysterious servant ‘Laakhan’. ‘Laakhan’ and his equally mysterious mentor ‘Mangala’ who transfer their souls in a chromosome from one generation to another using pigeon’s as carriers. As the story lurches back and forth through the three times, we see both of them reincarnate as different people surprising and affecting severely the humanity around them with their ‘Order of Silence’.

The book:

In this uninhibited sifting through time, Ghosh sometimes loosens his hold of the narrative and one cannot make out whether we are reading about past, present or future. As different characters are introduced in each story line, one becomes impatient to somehow find a common holding strain between them and it’s only in the end when, the book culminates with an intuitive ending bringing together the threads of time and people.

Not to say that the pages have nothing to offer. Ghosh develops an interesting repertoire of characters for his ’95 Calcutta; a Calcutta magazine reporter ‘Urmila’, a popular but private actress ‘Sonali Das’, her boyfriend ‘Romen Haldar’, acclaimed poet ‘Phulboni’ and a grumpy landlord ‘Mrs. Aratounian’. His sparse but beautiful description of the city brings it to life, in its streets, its landmarks and its people. But again his half baked and unfinished caricatures of the street boy who kept following ‘Murugan’, the mystical Egyptian archaeologist, ‘Mme Salminen’ a guru-groupie and other loose ends take away points from the book. Neither does he succeed in the attempt to address certain issues of our colonial past which no expatriate writer worth his own salt can deny the temptation of.

Lacking emotional depth and bordering on rigidity, you find it hard to relate to any character, so, only the sustained pace and tight turns keep you holding it in your hand, the only saving grace.

Inference:

'The Calcutta Chromosome’ is a different book. Different is its device, Different are the characters and definitely different is its plot. When I finished reading this book, the first thought in my mind was to slot it into a genre but this book transcended the boundaries of anyone that I chose. As science fiction it fails miserably as Ghosh lacks imagination and foresight, a young boy of 10 could do better in imagining our distant future, though the effeminate description of ‘Ava’ offers some respite. (A point to note is that this book won Ghosh the ‘Arthur C. Clarke Science fiction award’ in 1997). Call it a medical thriller and you’ll be forgiven, for the way Ghosh describes transmittance of chromosome and other malarial intricacies, reveals his effort in research. But be it may a meta-physical superstitious yarn in ‘Mme Salminen’s’ visions and her ‘ectoplasmic glow’??? Or a Horror tale in ‘Laakhan’s’ missing digit, his forbidden signal lamp and the deserted railway station? ‘The Calcutta Chromosome’ simply defies categorisation. Eventually the book survives in the form of simply a very commercial thriller because of Ghosh’s skills in prose, notwithstanding which, you will have a dud in your hands.

P.S : I would really like some comments, considering the difficult proposition it afforded me in reviewing such a difficult book.