The Calcutta Chromosome

Calcutta: August 1995. Murugan is just arriving at the guest house, where Mrs. Aratounian is watching TV. She offers Murugan a drink, and he accepts; she then asks him how his day was. Before he can reply, a loud burst of music blares out from the TV, and a voice announces that the vice president has just presented the National Award to the writer Saiyad Murad Husain, better known as Phulboni. The camera then sweeps over the packed auditorium, where two women are seen the walking down the aisle. Mrs. Aratounian cries out, “There’s Urmila!” (123).

Mrs. Aratounian tells Murugan that Urmila was a scholarship student, a mousy woman who went off and got herself a job at Calcutta magazine. As the camera pans the audience once more, Mrs. Aratounian cries out again, as she recognizes Sonali Das, who Aratounian says was a customer of hers.

The camera turns back to the stage just as Phulboni is about start his speech. Though Mrs. Aratounian wishes she had cable, so she could watch the BBC instead, she doesn’t change the channel. Phulboni’s voice now fills the room:

[F]or more years than I can count I have walked the innermost streets of this most secret of cities, looking always to find her who has so long eluded me: Silence herself. I see signs of her presence everywhere I go, and images, words, glances, but only signs, nothing more […] (123-24). 

Phulboni continues:

I have tried, as hard as ever a man has, to find my way to her, to throw myself before her, to join the secret circle that attends her, to take the dust of her heels to my head. By every means available, I have sought her, the ineluctable, ever-exclusive mistress of the unspoken, wooed her, courted her, begged to join the circle of her initiates (124).

Mrs. Aratounian is not impressed, telling Murugan that Phulboni is making an exhibition of himself and that somebody should do something about it.

Phulboni continues, making a final, desperate plea not to be forgotten. The news reader’s face suddenly appears, offering an apology to his viewers. Mrs. Aratounian gets up to turn the television off, questioning why she has to listen to such nonsense.

New York: sometime in the future. Antar, having stopped the answering machine, is regretting having deleted the document that Murugan sent to his mailbox. Perhaps, however, Ava can find a way to trace and reconstitute the document, Antar tells himself. But before he has a chance to ask Ava, he hears a muffled sound coming from Tara’s living room. Antar knocks on the wall and shouts to see if Tara is home, but gets no answer. He then runs into the kitchen and peers through the window, and sees that the lights are still off. Chalking it up to creaky floorboards, he goes back to his living room and keys in a request for Ava to rummage through his old hard disks, to see if she can find a binary “ghost” (127) of Murugan’s lost email.

Ava gives Antar a positive hand signal that she might be able to retrieve a copy, and that it will probably take about fifteen minutes. Antar then keys in the names of Cunningham and Farley and let Ava do her thing.

As he waits, Antar notices a mild tremor in his hand. He’s feeling tired, and his forehead and cheek are both hot and clammy. It’s the start of one of his bouts of malarial fever, and he knows that he won’t be able to go to Penn Station. Wrapping himself up in his dressing gown, he makes his way back to his living room, where he can lie down and wait for Ava to notify him. When he gets there, however, he sees there’s a message waiting for him; Ava has found traces of Murugan’s email.

Ava can’t vouch for the authenticity of the restored text, but is able to reconstruct a semblance of the narrative. Antar then asks Ava if she can generate an image of the text using her visualization program, which allows him to view the image. Ava responds in the negative, indicating the text is too corrupted to convert to an image. The best she can do is provide a verbal rendition, leading Antar to reach for his headphones

Calcutta: August 1995. It is past 11 p.m., and Urmila is just getting home. She tiptoes in, not wanting to wake her younger brother, Dinu, who is asleep on the sofa, dressed in only sweatpants. Urmila finds a plate of food waiting for her in the kitchen, and turns the light on to retrieve the plate, only to wake up her older brother. He works as a salesman during the day and does tuitions for schoolchildren in the evening. He is always exhausted, and is not pleased when Urmila turns the light on.

Urmila quickly turns the light off, stumbles to her bedroom, sits down, and begins picking at her cold supper. She then hears someone stirring, followed by footsteps. Urmila looks up and sees her mother standing beside her bed. Her mother has good news, and doesn’t want to wait until the morning to tell her. It turns out her mother got a call from the member-secretary of the Wicket Club, telling her that the club’s executive committee would be dropping by tomorrow to discuss Dinu’s prospects of signing a First Division contract.

Urmila’s mother feels that this is the opportunity they were hoping for, adding that if all went well, Urmila could give up her job and hopefully get married. Urmila, however, remains skeptical. This upsets Urmila’s mother, who complains that all Urmila thinks about is her job and money. She doesn’t understand why Urmila can’t just be happy for her brother, who after hearing the news thought only of Urmila and the specially-cooked fish she will cook to entice the club’s representative to stay for dinner.

Urmila immediately pleads with her mother, telling her that she has no time to cook fish tomorrow morning, as she has to be at a press conference by 9 a.m. to meet the Communications Minister, who is flying in from Delhi. Urmila’s mother begins to sob, crying out that Urmila thinks her job is more important than her brother’s life, and that the Minister is more important than her family.

When Urmila finds out that no one has purchased fish, she tells her mother that she certainly wouldn’t be able to go out and purchase fish and then come back and prepare it before work. But as quickly as the words came out, she gives up, knowing it will make no difference with her mother. If she’s lucky, Urmila thinks she might be able to purchase a fish from one of the fish sellers who often came around in the morning—this would save her quite a bit of time. After telling her mother she will cook the fish, Urmila’s mother expresses to her how happy her brother will be, given how excited he was when he heard that Romen Haldar is coming to their house. This news surprises Urmila, who thinks it a coincidence.

New York: sometime in the future. Ava begins spitting out the details of Elijah Munro Farley’s departure to India in October of 1893, two years after he left the research laboratories of John Hopkins University. By the summer of 1894, the Rev. Farley was working in a small charitable clinic on the eastern foothills of the Himalayas. He had been at the clinic for five months when he received a letter from Eugene Opie. The letter mentioned in passing that he and MacCallum were doing research that built on the findings of the Frenchman, Alphonse Laveran, who had argued that malaria was caused by a parasite.

Farley was shocked, as he understood that Leveran’s theory had been debunked. He began to regret his decision to abandon doing research, when by chance he discovered “the card of an English doctor, one Surgeon-Colonel Lawrie, of the Indian Medical Service” (138). Farley wrote to Lawrie, who wrote back, informing him of Ross’s investigation into malaria in reference to Leveran’s theory. Lawrie also told Farley that if he wanted to investigate the matter further, he could make use of D. D. Cunningham’s laboratory in Calcutta. Farley accepted the offer, and disembarked from Calcutta’s Sealdah station not long after.

Cunningham, “a large man of florid complexion” (140), greeted Farley at the doctor’s boarding house. It was clear from the beginning that Cunningham was no longer interested in doing research and that he would likely retire in about three years. However, Cunningham told Farley he would be free to examine whatever slides he wanted. The next day, Farley went to the lab, where Cunningham showed him around. Farley had felt uneasy when he arrived at the lab, and that his presence had not gone unnoticed. When Farley entered the lab with Cunningham, he immediately noticed a sari-clad, thirty-something woman looking at him with a “piercing inquiry” (142). He was also being observed by “a young man dressed in pajamas and a laboratory tunic” (142).

Seeing Farley’s discomfort, Cunningham told him not to pay any attention to her, that Mangala was just a sweeper-woman, though Farley could not help but notice the nod of dismissal that was exchanged between Mangala and the young man. Cunningham then introduced the young man as his bearer and someone who would help Farley get whatever slides he needed. Farley began examining a series of slides brought to him by the young man. After an hour or so, he found no evidence of Leveran’s parasite. However, Farley did notice something odd. Reflected like a mirror on the convex surface of a glass tumbler, he saw that it was Mangala who was selecting the slides and handing them to the young man, and that she clearly knew what she is doing. Farley wondered how an illiterate person could acquire such expertise. Mangala also clearly exercised authority over the young man, and Farley had become convinced that she was keeping something from him. Farley decided he would therefore return tomorrow.

The young man looked to the woman and then tried to vehemently dissuade Farley from coming back, telling him that he was wasting his time. Undeterred, Farley once more told him he would be returning the next day. Farley then went to talk to Cunningham about Mangala, inquiring as to where he had found her. Cunningham told him that he found her at the Sealdah railway station, and that it was he who had trained her. It was Mangala who had brought the young man here; he was from her own part of the country: Renupur.

The next day, Farley returned to the lab. On his way, he encountered a man in a dhoti and a sari-clad woman bearing “an almost inert, human figure” (148). The man they were bearing was in the last stages of syphilitic dementia. When they saw Farley, they fled. Farley then heard the sounds of a low chant coming from between the trees and bamboo thickets, where a number of people were gathered around a fire. They were chanting to the sound of hand-held brass cymbals, as if preparing for a ritual. Farley was on his way to get a closer look when the young man came running out of the laboratory and directed Farley back to the lab. 

On his way into the lab, Farley passed an anteroom, where to his astonishment he saw Mangala alone and seated on a divan. She displayed an attitude of command, “as though enthroned” (150). To her side were a number of bamboo cages containing pigeons that appeared near death. There was also a half-dozen people prostrating at her feet, while two or three others were huddled in blankets against a nearby wall—they appeared to be in the final stages of the same terrible disease the man in the bamboo thicket suffered from.

Once inside the lab, the young man went about procuring slides as if nothing was amiss. Farley himself mechanically examined the slides, but his mind was on what he had just witnessed. He felt empathy for the sick, and felt they were being exploited by Mangala for her own profit. Farley, however, did not intervene, and instead continued to work, telling the assistant that he would stay until he finally found evidence of the transformations that Leveran described.

Farley saw the young man leave for the anteroom, and decided to follow. Creeping towards the door, he saw Mangala kill one of the pigeons, then take a clean slide and smear it with the pigeon’s blood, before handing it back to the young man. Farley quickly retreated to his microscope. The young man came in shortly thereafter and handed Farley the slide that Mangala had smeared.

A first, Farley saw nothing; then, all of a sudden, he saw things squirming, and then Laveran's rods, and finally, tiny cylindrical things, with their “penetrating heads piercing the bloody miasma” (153). Mangala and the others were now watching Farley. Mangala told the young man to tell Farley “that what he sees is the creature’s member entering the body of its mate, doing what men and women must do” (153). This is where the narrative ends. 

The next morning, included in the letter describing his discovery, Farley scribbled a few lines in the margin indicating that the young man would reveal everything once Farley accompanied him to his birthplace. However, Farley disappeared, having been last seen disembarking at the rarely-used rail station at Renupur. The rest of the narrative is indecipherable, and Ava indicates that she is unable to continue.