The Calcutta Chromosome

“For years he’d been dreaming of leaving New York and going back to Egypt: of getting out of this musty apartment where all he could see when he looked down the street were boarded-up windows stretching across the fronts of buildings that were almost as empty as his own.” 

This quote depicts aspects of New York in the near future. The building that Antar lives in his mostly empty, suggesting that Antar is one of the few tenants. Desolation appears to mark the surrounding neighborhood, which Antar has grown weary of, and is the reason he longs to return to Egypt.

“It was a relief to escape from those voices in the evenings; to step out of that bleak, cold building, encaged in its scaffolding of rusty steel fire escapes; to get away from the metallic echo of it stairways and corridors. There was something enlivening, magical almost, about walking from that wind-blown street into the brilliantly lit passageways of Penn Station, about the surging crowds around the ticket counters, the rumble of trains under one’s feet, the deep, bass hum of a busker’s didgeridoo throbbing in the concrete like an amplified heartbeat.” 

Again we get a sense of the bleakness permeating Antar’s home. Yet there is more to Antar’s life a short walk from where he lives. Penn Station is thriving and upbeat, a place where things still happen, where people still congregate to listen to music and engage with one another. In contrast to the dreary surroundings Antar lives in, Penn Station overwhelms him with an ambience that somehow still flourishes in New York.

“The beginnings of a memory began to take shape in his mind—of someone glimpsed in elevators and corridors, a tubby little man with a pot belly, always immaculately dressed—pin-striped, razor-edged trousers, starched shirts, always buttoned at the wrist, even on the hottest of summer days. And a hat—he’d always had a hat.” 

Ava is just beginning to form an image of the photograph from the ID card, which elicits a memory for Antar from years ago of a man he remembers meeting, the way the man looked and dressed, and the way he carried himself. This man turns out to be Murugan.

“‘Every city has its secrets but Calcutta, whose vocation is excess, has so many that it is more secret than any other […] here in our city where all law, natural and human, is held in capricious suspension, that which is hidden has no need of words to give it life; like any creature that lives in a perverse element, it mutates to discover sustenance precisely where it appears to be most starkly withheld—in this case, in silence.’” 

The setting here is an awards ceremony for the famous author Phulboni; he is at the podium speaking about a secret presence he has sought after for most of his life. He is referring to what lies hidden beneath the everyday in Calcutta: the secrets that people don’t see, that words are unable to express; a truth that lurks in the darkest corners, that alters its form to keep itself secret, because its strength grows out of silence. 

“Mistaken are those who imagine that silence is without life; that it is inanimate, without either spirit or voice. It is not; indeed the Word is to this silence what the shadow is to the foreshadowed, what the veil is to the eyes, what the mind is to the truth, what language is to life.”

Phulboni is still speaking at the awards ceremony, still trying to explain the unexplainable. In this quote, Phulboni is reflecting upon the Hindu concept of silence, or Mauna, which has a voice of its own, and the Valentinian idea of silence underlying all reality. In this quote, he is defining silence as the deeper reality, and that everything else, whether it is language or thinking, pales in comparison. Silence doesn’t just surround the world, but wills the truth of each life, shaping its time.

“The silence of the city […] has sustained me through all my years of writing: kept me alive in the hope that it would claim me too before my ink ran dry. For more years than I can count I have wandered the darkness of these streets, searching for the unseen presence that reigns over this silence, striving to be taken in, begging to be taken across before my time runs out. The time of the crossing is at hand, I know, and that is why I am here now, standing in front of you: to beg—to appeal to the mistress of this silence, that most secret of deities, to give me what she has long denied: to show herself to me.” 

In this quote, Phulboni is referring to a female persona that manifests itself in the world, a godlike being through which Silence makes itself known and heard. She is a persona that abides in the shadows, that chooses who may crossover, and who may not, and she alone determines who may see her.

“[…] he began to speak openly about his notion of the so-called ‘Other Mind’: a theory that some person or persons had systematically interfered with Ronald Ross’s experiments to push malaria research in certain directions while leading it away from others.” 

This is a quote referring to Murugan’s notion that Ronald Ross’s experiments on malaria were manipulated by unknown persons who wanted to take his research in a certain direction for their own hidden purposes. In other words, Murugan is claiming that Ronald Ross was able to show that malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes, because that’s what this “Other Mind” needed him to do to further their own hidden agenda.

“The central part of the figurine was a simple, semicircular mound, rudely modeled and featureless except for two large stylized eyes, painted in stark blacks and whites, on the baked clay. […] To the right of the mound was a tiny bird, unmistakably a pigeon, clearly and carefully modeled—feathers, eyes and all. Growing out of the other side of the mound was a little protuberance, like the amputated stub of an arm. The arm had a small metal object attached […] a little metallic cylinder.” 

Murugan is referring here to a figurine found in an alcove along the wall of the hospital where Ronald Ross did his research. The significance of the figurine eluded Murugan at the time, and it was broken shortly thereafter by the boy in the t-shirt. What is significant about the figurine is the metallic cylinder, which is said to represent the image of a tiny microscope. The cylinder is a symbol that periodically reappears in the story.

“If someone was watching […] if someone was looking for a research scientist to do certain kinds of experiments […] this someone, who’s watching carefully, may be reading Ross’s lab notes and his letters to Doc Manson, this someone decides, OK, it’s time to get a new player in place.” 

Once more Murugan is referring to an unknown individual or individuals who have been monitoring Ronald Ross’s research and have determined that it’s time to intervene to ensure his research stays on the path they want it to. Murugan believes this is why Abdul Kadir suddenly volunteers as a guinea pig when nobody else would.

“She thought the stories were a message to someone; to remind them of something—some kind of shared secret. You know, like those strange little ads you sometimes see in the personal columns?” 

Urmila is talking to Sonali about Phulboni’s stories about Laakhan, a character who seems to take on different roles and who can become other people. The quote here refers to Urmila telling Sonali that she had mentioned these stories to Mrs. Aratounian, and that Mrs. Aratounian believed they are messaged to someone else, referring to a secret that they share.

“[…] to court an invisible source of light, so every word I have ever penned has been written for her. I have sought her in words, I have sought her in deeds, most of all I have sought her in the unspoken keeping of her faith. […] If I stand before you now, in this most public of places, it is because I am on the point of desperation and know of no other way to reach her. I know that time is running out—my time and her time. I know that the crossing is nigh; I know it to be at hand […] as the hour runs out, when perhaps no more than a few moments remain, knowing no other means I make this last appeal: Do not forget me: I have served you as best I could. Only once did I sin against the Silence, in a moment of weakness, seduced by the one I loved. Have I not been punished enough? What more remains? I beg you, I beg you, if you exist at all […] give me a sign of your presence, do not forget me, take me with you […].” 

Mrs. Aratounian and Murugan are at the guesthouse watching the speech by Phulboni during his awards ceremony. At this stage of the speech, Phulboni is appealing to the person he’s referred to as the mistress of Silence. He is telling her how he seeks her at every turn, through his writing, and in his deeds. He is desperate because his time is running out, so he makes this one last appeal, this public appeal, because he knows no other way of reaching her. He does not want to be forgotten and begs her that if she exists to make her presence known to him, to take him with her. Mrs. Aratounian is not impressed and tells Murugan that this is the type of nonsense one has to put up with if one doesn’t have cable, which functions as a red herring, as Aratounian is aware of more than she is letting on.

“It was she who selected the slides that were to be presented to him for examination. Watching carefully, Farley saw her picking them out with the speed that indicated she was not only thoroughly familiar with the slides but knew exactly what they contained.”

Before Ross had started his research, Farley had visited the lab run by Cunningham in Calcutta asking for slides to see if he could prove that it was parasites carried by mosquitoes that were the cause of malaria. Cunningham assigns a lab assistant to retrieve the slides, but Farley notices a young woman named Mangala who seems to be directing the assistant on what slides to bring Farley. More importantly, despite the fact she is from one of the lower classes, she seems to have considerable knowledge of which slides the assistant should show Farley. Farley became suspicious and mentioned this in a letter that Murugan would later read. Days later, Farley would disappear under mysterious circumstances.

“But then suddenly he saw movement, under his eyes amoeboid forms began to squirm and move, undulating slowly across the glassy surface. Then all at once there was a flurry of movement and they began to disintegrate: it was then that he saw Laveran’s rods appear, hundreds of them, tiny cylindrical things, with their pointed, penetrating heads piercing the bloody miasma.”

This quote shows how Farley was able to identify Laveran’s parasite, and how the parasite transmitted the malarial bug through reproduction. This discovery was made on a slide taken from the blood of an infected pigeon that Mangala had just killed.

“‘Here, look at this,’ she said, pointing at a line. ‘It says here that D.D. Cunningham was granted six days’ leave in the middle of January—from the 10th to 15th. That’s when it must have happened.’” 

Urmila is asking Murugan to look at a Xerox copy of a colonial newspaper from 1898 that had been wrapped around a fish she had purchased from a mysterious fish-seller. She is pointing to an announcement that indicates the time when Cunningham took a leave of absence and how it corresponds to the arrival of a C.C. Dunn in Madras the next day. The statement about something happening is in reference to the mental breakdown suffered by Dunn while attending a spiritualist séance in Madras. Murugan thinks Dunn is really Cunningham, and that it’s not coincidental that shortly after Cunningham retires, Ross is appointed to take over his lab.

“Then Mr. Dunn was hurled backward bodily from the table and flattened against the wall, his feet several inches off the ground. The next instant the single candle was extinguished and the room was suddenly plunged into an impenetrable velvety darkness. The heavy table was upended with a violent crash, and Mr. Dunn fell to the floor, screaming in what appeared to be Hindustani: ‘Save me…from her…pursuit…beg mercy…’”

This refers to the séance that C.C. Dunn (allegedly D.D. Cunningham) attended in 1898. The quote depicts what happened to Mr. Dunn. He was naked and fighting some unseen force, begging to be saved, begging for mercy, from she who is Silence, and she who Mme. Salminen said had come for him.

“Mme. Salminen […] had revealed the truth of the Valentinian cosmology, in which the ultimate deities are the Abyss and the Silence, the one being male and the other female, the one representing mind and the other truth […].”

The quote above is a reference to a Valentinian myth about the foundations of reality being defined through both the Silence and the Abyss. In the story, Silence is a goddess that intervenes in the affairs of humans for the purpose of ensuring her immortality.

“[…] just suppose you believed that to know something is to change it, it would follow […] that to make something known would be one way of effecting a change […] Or creating a mutation, if you like […] If you did believe this, it would follow that if you wanted to create a specific kind of change, or mutation, one of the ways in which you could get there is by allowing certain things to be known […] to push your guinea pig in the right direction and wait for them to get there on their own.” 

Murugan is making the argument that unknown persons have been suddenly intervening or effecting change over the course of the last hundred years or so without anyone being the wiser. Murugan sketches out this argument because of the strange events that led Urmila to purchase fish from a fish-seller she has never seen, who had wrapped a copy of a paper from 1898 around the fish for Urmila to find and eventually show to Murugan, who would understand the implications. For Murugan, it all seems planned, right down to the tiniest detail.

“I have never known […] whether life lies in words or in images, in speech or sight. Does a story come to be in the words that I conjure out of my mind or does it live already, somewhere, enshrined in mud and clay—in an image, that is, in the craft mimicry of life?” 

This quote from Urmila refers to an essay written years ago by Phulboni. As in his later speeches, Phulboni is referring to an underlying question that shapes the novel: are the stories we create and experience already crafted? Is a person’s life little more than an impression of what was born long ago? Phulboni would appear to be questioning whether a person every really owns their own story, in addition to positing whether life mimics art, or vice versa.

“Mangala began to notice that her treatment often produced weird side effects—what looked like strange personality disorders. Except that they weren’t really disorders but transpositions. She began to put two and two together and found that in fact what she had on her hands was a crossover of randomly assorted personality traits, from the malaria donor to the recipient—via the bird of course. And when she saw this she became more and more invested in isolating this aspect of the treatment, so that she could control the ways in which these crossovers work.”

Murugan is speculating on how Mangala (suggesting that she is the unknown person he has previously referred to) had discovered how malaria could transfer certain personality traits from a donor to a recipient. Realizing the implications, she began to focus more and more on how these crossovers work, and if they could be controlled, to ensure those personality traits that define a person could be transferred over into a new body.

“[…] if there really is such a thing as the Calcutta chromosome only a person like Mangala, someone who’s completely out of the loop, scientifically speaking, would be able to find it […] For what we have here is a biological expression of human traits that is neither inherited from the immediate gene pool nor transmitted into it. It’s exactly the kind of entity that would be hardest for a conventional scientist to accept.” 

Murugan is speculating on the possibility that there might be such a thing as a Calcutta chromosome. Not a conventional chromosome, by scientific standards, it’s instead a biological analogy that conventional science would not recognize, an analogy that Murugan, in fact, believes only a person like Mangala would understand, because her thinking is outside the box and not limited to science.

“Phulboni was still falling when the lights of the train flashed across the flooded fields. Clutching wildly at a bush, he managed to bring himself to a stop, his head inches from the water. At that very moment he heard a scream, and inhuman howl that tore through the stormy night. It hurled a single word into the wind—'Laakhan’—and then it was silenced by the thunder of the speeding train.” 

Sonali is recounting a story her mother told her just before she died about what happened to Phulboni when he was still a young man in 1933. Phulboni had chosen to sleep at the signal-station instead of the stationmaster’s house after arriving at the Renupur train station. While he slept, the signal lantern had vanished. Peering outside, he saw the lantern trailing away along the tracks and the night. Phulboni decided to follow, only to almost be hit by a train, while at the same time hearing an inhuman voice call out the name Laakhan. The significance of the name is mentioned throughout the story; apparently, Laakhan may be the real name of Ronald Ross’s mysterious assistant, Lutchman. Further, he may also be the young man who assisted Farley under Mangala’s direction, and who was last seen with him before he disappeared.

“Sonali began to tell them about the taxi to Robinson Street, climbing the stairs, the smoke, the people, finding the gallery, the boy, the woman in the sari, the fire, the body […] Just before [she] passed out [she] managed to see who it was […] It was Romen.” 

Sonali was looking for Romen, and went to his Robinson Street house to find him. Instead, she came across a secret ritual ceremony. She recognized three people: the young boy who worked for her, Mrs. Aratounian, and the body of Romen. Mrs. Aratounian was presiding over the ceremony, but when she placed her hands on Romen, Sonali heard her call him by the name of Laakhan, just before Sonali passed out.

“Sitting gnome like in the middle of the living room was a naked man. A blanket of matted, ropey hair hung halfway down a swollen, distended belly; his upper body was encrusted with dead leaves and straw, and his thighs were caked with mud and excrement. His hands were resting in his lap, bound together by a pair of steel handcuffs.”

Antar has been beeped by Ava in regard to an incoming communication. An ill Antar stumbles into his living room and sees a holographic projection of a fat, naked man sitting in the middle of his living room, covered in mud, leaves, and excrement. Antar recognizes Murugan, and asks what has happened to him. Murugan tells him to just put on his visualization visor and everything will be explained. The quote gives the appearance of a man who has fallen far from grace, but the image is intended as a misdirection for those not privy to Murugan’s role in making connections, as it was Murugan who got the ball rolling in the first place by planting the ID card that morning and then having himself committed so that Antar would eventually find him.