The Circle of Reason

by Amitav Ghosh

  Abruptly Balaram turned and walked away. Shombhu Debnath’s voice followed him: What is it, Balaram-babu? When are you going to tell us?

  He was not to know till a few more months had passed.

  The school was nearing the end of its first year then. Some of the more promising students in the Weaving Section had graduated beyond coarse weaving, and had started producing fairly intricately worked saris. The Tailoring Section had more orders than it could handle and the list never seemed to stop growing. All but two of the students passed the small examination Balaram set them. When Balaram did his accounts, after Rakhal had handed him the money the traders had paid him in Naboganj for that month’s consignment of cloth, it was apparent that the school had made a handsome sum of money.

  Balaram called another meeting. Classes were cancelled that evening, and everyone in the school crowded into the courtyard, cheerfully expecting a repeat of the earlier meeting. To begin with, it was. Balaram read out the accounts and explained how much money had been spent on salaries and how much exactly had been put away in the students’ fund. But when he read out the total figures at the end of it there were still three thousand rupees left unaccounted for.

  There was a curious hush. Balaram was suddenly solemn. Today, he said, I have to say something very difficult; I have to tell you about a dream. The school as you see it today has only two departments. But when I first dreamt of it, when the idea was first born in my mind, there was a third department as well. The time has come to tell you about that third department, because at last we have enough money to realize that dream. Let me put it like this: Practical Reason and Pure Reason are fine and wonderful things, and what we have already achieved in this school, even though I should not be the one to say it, is in its own way fine and wonderful. Practical and Pure Reason are like two halves of a wheel: without one, the other is incomplete and useless. But a wheel, by itself, is useless, too – it cannot roll forward on its own. Left to itself, it only falls on its side. In the same way, our school, too, is in danger now of falling on its side, into a bed of smugness and complacency, like a wheel which has nothing behind it. It is doing well, true; but a school is not a shop or a factory. A school, like Reason itself, must have a purpose. Without a purpose Reason decays into a mere trick, forever reflecting itself like mirrors at a fair. It is that sense of purpose which the third department will restore to our school. It will help us to remember that we cannot limit the benefits of our education and learning to ourselves – that it is our duty to use it for the benefit of everybody around us. That is why I have decided to name the new department the Department of the March of Reason. It will remind us that our school has another aspect: Reason Militant.

  Most of the students had drifted into apathetic boredom during Balaram’s speech. A hum of subdued talk ebbed around the courtyard. Balaram raised his voice. The first task before the Department of the March of Reason, he explained, was to disinfect the village – disinfect it so thoroughly that no trace of a corrupting germ would surface in it again. And to that end the remaining three thousand rupees would be spent on purchasing carbolic acid.

  There were a few murmurs of protest: most of the students would much rather have had the money they had helped to earn for themselves. But there were others who were curious, and some of the younger students remembered seeing Balaram busy with buckets of carbolic acid during the war and after; it had looked like fun – licence to douse one’s neighbours’ houses with pungent liquid. So Balaram had no shortage of volunteers; fourteen students offered to go with him to Naboganj to help bring back the carbolic acid.

  Next morning Balaram gathered his volunteers together early and rushed off to Naboganj without eating his breakfast. Toru-debi protested: What’s the hurry? Your what’s-its-name, marching reason, won’t miss the bus if you go an hour late.

  There is a hurry, Balaram said shortly, and almost ran from the house. He came back in the afternoon, with his volunteers, in a hired truck piled high with sacks of carbolic powder and a small arsenal of squirt-guns, water-pistols and plastic buckets. He set the volunteers to work at once. They rolled a few clean oil-drums into the patch of garden in front of the house next to the shed which housed the Weaving Section. Balaram directed them while they mixed the carbolic powder into a dilute solution. When they had finished, he gave them precise instructions. They were to assemble in the school at four o’clock the next day. That was usually the time he took his classes in reading and writing, but they were to be excused class for once.

  Balaram was up early the next day, bright-eyed and feverish with excitement. He spent the day pacing his study in nervous agitation, jerking his thick lock of white hair from his eyes, his fine, slim face drawn with tension. Long before four he was out of the house, peering down the path, waiting impatiently for the volunteers. Alu, who had decided to go with him, went out to join him a little later. At four-thirty only six of the fourteen volunteers had arrived. Balaram was furious. Where are they? he shouted at one of the students, a fifteen-year-old boy with no front teeth.

  The boy was taken aback, for Balaram had never shouted at anyone in the school before. Maybe they’re at the banyan tree, he said apologetically, sucking his canines. Don’t you know, Balaram-babu, Bhudeb-Roy-shaheb is holding a meeting, a proper microphone-and-loudspeaker meeting, under the banyan tree today? He’s going to lay the first stone for a road, an absolutely straight so-big-and-black macadam road from the banyan tree to his house. His men are going all over the village taking people to the meeting. We had to hide and come round through the ricefields.

  Was it coincidence? Was it part of Balaram’s plans? Had he known?

  He must have, Alu said to Gopal in Calcutta several months later. He must have wanted it to happen, otherwise why was he in so much of a hurry?

  At the time, Balaram gave nothing away. With quiet determination he said: This is only one of the obstacles which will litter the path of Reason. Then he handed out water-pistols, squirt-guns, mugs and buckets of carbolic solution and led them down the path.

  Where are we going, sir? one of the students asked.

  To the banyan tree, said Balaram. There’s no part of the village more littered with filth.

  But when they were only a few hundred yards away from the banyan tree and could hear the hum of the crowd and Bhudeb Roy’s voice booming through loudspeakers – This road will be an example; an example in straightness and hard work, which are the needs of the hour – Balaram faltered. Alu saw him hesitate and tugged at his elbow. Let’s go back, he said. There’s still time. There’s no need for this.

  Balaram stopped and put his bucket down. The volunteers stopped behind him. Balaram’s face was drenched in sweat. Alu saw his courage draining away with the blood in his face. Come on, Alu said. Let’s turn back …

  But before he could finish Shombhu Debnath was at Balaram’s elbow. Alu stopped in surprise; Shombhu Debnath had not been with them when they left the school.

  Turning back already, Balaram-babu? Shombhu Debnath sang out. He laughed and his red eyes shone into Balaram’s: You mean to say the march of reason is being turned back by a single germ? Come on.

  With a wink at Balaram, Shombhu Debnath unrolled his ashen hair and knotted it tightly into place. He unwound his strip of red cotton, and tied it on again, like a loincloth. Then he turned to one of the volunteers, snatched a bucket and a squirt-gun out of his hands and led the way to the banyan tree. Shamefacedly Balaram followed, with Alu behind him. But the volunteers lagged behind.

  The crowd under the banyan tree was large by Lalpukur’s standards, but not huge. There were perhaps eighty people crowded into the open space around the tree. Some were squatting on the ground and picking their teeth; some stood leaning on each other and against the tree’s massive, twisted aerial roots. Bhudeb Roy’s sons and the twenty young men stood around the crowd, blocking all the paths out of the clearing. A small wooden platform had been erected near the banyan’s huge trunk, between Bolai-da’s sho
p and the tea-shop. A portrait of Bhudeb Roy, inexpertly painted on a sheet of cardboard almost as large as Bhudeb Roy himself, was suspended from the tree, directly above the platform. The painter had obviously tried to reach a compromise between Bhudeb Roy and a famous filmi face. As a result Bhudeb Roy’s jaws and tiny eyes, immensely distorted, leered grotesquely at the crowd in an attitude of screen tenderness. Bhudeb Roy, heavily garlanded, stood under the portrait, thundering into a microphone. He was dressed as usual in a spotless white dhoti and kurta, but a white political cap covered his baldness. There were dozens of other pictures of him accompanied by slogans (Straight to Progress) stuck up on the trunk of the ancient banyan and on the shops.

  Bhudeb Roy checked for a moment when he saw Balaram entering the clearing with a bucket. Then he recovered and roared into the microphone again, but with a trace of uneasiness in his voice: This is a new beginning, a straight beginning …

  Balaram stopped and looked around him in indecision. Now that he was actually there he was not sure what to do. Shombhu Debnath had vanished with his squirt-gun and bucket. Alu was beside him, but there was so sign of the volunteers. Two of Bhudeb Roy’s men turned and saw him. Bhudeb Roy roared from his platform: Nothing shall turn us from our straight advance … The young men advanced towards them stroking their wooden clubs. The loudspeakers screamed: The road will be straight, the straight road of progress, straight to my house … The men were barely an arm’s length away, and Alu thrust himself in front of Balaram. One of the men raised his club.

  And then suddenly with a gurgling whoosh a stream of disinfectant poured out of the tree, right over Bhudeb Roy. The microphone drowned in a cacophony of squeaks and screeches. Bhudeb Roy collapsed on to the platform, spluttering and coughing. A jet of carbolic shot out of the boughs of the tree and slammed into the suspended portrait. The cardboard sagged and swung backwards on its rope. For a moment it hung by a thread and then the rope gave, and it plummeted down in a soggy mass. Bhudeb Roy was floundering wetly on the platform, directly in its path. His head took the cardboard, square in the middle. He was flung backwards. When he struggled up again, the cardboard was hanging damply over his garlands and his head was staring out of a ragged hole in the painted jaw.

  Bhudeb Roy’s sons and the twenty young men were motionless, their eyes riveted on Bhudeb Roy in dismay, as he struggled blindly, with the portrait hanging around his neck like a soggy octopus. Alu saw his chance and jogged Balaram’s elbow. They picked up their buckets and emptied them on the two men in front of them. They were gone before the men could open their eyes again.

  When Bhudeb Roy sat up again his sons and his hired men were all around him, spewing apologies; trying to help him up; fastidiously picking bits of cardboard off his garlanded neck. The clearing was empty. There was no sign of Balaram or Alu. The boughs of the banyan were tranquil and uninhabited. But he could hear laughter rippling through the ricefields.

  Bhudeb Roy insisted on being driven straight to hospital.

  The next day, while Shombhu Debnath and Maya were at the school and Rakhal was away in Naboganj, their huts caught fire. They burnt down to a heap of smouldering ashes and rubble before Maya and Shombhu even knew of it. Later, sifting through the rubble they found two charred kerosene-tins that were not their own.

  They lost everything: the grain they had stored away, hanks of yarn, their pots and pans, Rakhal’s carefully accumulated shirts and trousers. The ear-rings and the two brass pots which were Maya’s only mementoes of her mother had vanished, too.

  Balaram took it for granted that Shombhu Debnath, Maya and Rakhal would come to live in his house. Where else could they go? So Alu carried the few odds and ends Maya had recovered from the ashes back to their house. Maya stumbled after him, blinded by her tears.

  Later, they went back to fetch Shombhu Debnath and found him squatting beside the rubble staring into the sky. Maya, he said softly, remember – this is what happens when a man ties himself down and builds a house. It burns down. Nobody has to do it: it’s only Sri Krishna reminding you what the world’s like.

  He would not leave the rubble, though Maya did her best to persuade him. Maya’s own grief was swept away by another worry: what would Rakhal do when he came back from Naboganj and heard about the fire? She knew he might do anything at all when he heard about the kerosene-tins they had found, and she knew she would be powerless to stop him.

  But to her surprise Rakhal did nothing when he was told. He asked Alu innumerable questions about the kerosene-tins, and later he spent a long time scratching about in the ashes, looking for scraps of his clothes. When he found none he went back quietly with Alu and Maya and fell peacefully asleep on a mat in the shed he had helped to build.

  Maya trembled with relief. But a few days later Alu saw Rakhal hiding sacks of old soda-bottles, tin cans and rusty nails in the rubble of their huts.

  Rakhal was making bombs again.

  Chapter Six

  Taking Sides

  At last we meet Assistant Superintendent of Police Jyoti Das properly. He is a slight man, of medium height, dark, with straight black hair. He has a long, even face with a rounded chin and a short, straight nose. His only irregular features are his eyebrows, which are slightly out of alignment, one being a fraction higher than the other and slightly more sharply curved, and that tends to make him appear a little surprised even when he is not. His eyes, which he has trained over the years to record the minutest details of plumage and colouring, are sharp and meticulously observant. He is clean-shaven and prides himself on it, for it distinguishes him from his colleagues, who tend generally to be aggressively moustached. He is pleasant- if not good-looking, and he looks younger than his twenty-five years. He is often mistaken for a college student.

  He is waiting in a small police station a few miles from Lalpukur. The police station is on the main road that runs from Naboganj, past the outer fringes of Lalpukur towards Calcutta. It is a tumbledown old police station, with cracked tiles and gaping holes in the plaster of its yellow walls. Jyoti Das is sitting beside (but not behind) the Head Constable’s desk in a damp gloomy room lined with tattered duty-charts and bunches of keys. The room is acrid with the smell of burnt spices wafting in from the constables’ quarters, and he can hear a drunk or a lunatic talking to himself somewhere in the cells inside.

  It is eleven in the morning and Jyoti Das is waiting to meet Bhudeb Roy for the first time. Bhudeb Roy is already half an hour late, though it was he who specified ten-thirty in his telegram to Calcutta, and Jyoti Das is more than a little irritated and impatient. But he is not surprised, for, though he has never met Bhudeb Roy before, in a way he knows him well. After being handed the case he has had to read all the reports Bhudeb Roy has ever filed, and he has not had the impression that Bhudeb Roy is a man who is likely to be unduly flustered about keeping someone waiting. Jyoti Das smiles, remembering the arguments he has often had with his colleagues about their pungent views on filthy little district and mofussil politicians who have suddenly come into so much power that they think nothing of pushing around gazetted officers of the Government of India.

  The Head Constable, a big, burly man with an oily face and handlebar moustaches, who has been standing stiffly at the far end of the room looking out of the window, sees Jyoti Das’s impatience and begins to worry. ASP-shaheb, he says, will you have some tea? Jyoti Das smiles and nods.

  Assistant Superintendent of Police, the constable calls Jyoti Das. He is not wrong, for that is Jyoti Das’s rank technically. But actually Jyoti Das has a different designation now. About a year ago he was seconded out of the police to an organization which likes to make itself inconspicuous under the name of Union Secretariat (though it has an arsenal of other names stocked away for various contingencies). Like most of his colleagues in the intelligence services Jyoti Das still holds a rank in the police, his parent organization, but officially he is now called a Deputy Central Research Officer. Still, whatever his official designation, one cannot really cal
l someone Deputy Central Research Officer, or even DCRO. On the other hand, ASP is a name, a rank, a class, a standard of living, a life-insurance premium, a metaphysic, while DCRO means nothing, not even what it says.

  Besides, few, even in the Union Secretariat, know precisely what their ranks and designations mean in terms of salaries, benefits and seniority. Its sister organizations have their own rankings, blessed by tradition, and only the oldest of the secretarial staff are able to reckon the fine shades of parity between ranks in the different organizations. More than once have the highest levels of the Ministry resounded with the noisy strife of organizations at war with each other over a misunderstanding between officers on ranking or precedence or Additional Dearness Allowance. Inevitably, in their dealings with other organizations and services, the officers of the Union Secretariat tend to fall back on the common factor in their rankings – the police. Correspondence and liaison would be impossible otherwise: officers would end up being dragged before protocol committees for writing semi-official letters to seniors or some such thing.

  Four years have passed since Jyoti Das sat for the Civil Service examinations and, somewhat to his surprise, was awarded a good enough result to qualify for the police. He was only twenty-one then; one of the youngest people to qualify. But his father, who had carefully supervised his preparations for the examinations, was not at all pleased. He had intended Jyoti’s first attempt at the examinations to be a kind of trial run, as it were, a preparation for a really serious attempt the year after. It upset all his plans when Jyoti got a place in the police. He had wanted Jyoti to enter one of the coveted, prestigious services, perhaps the Administrative Service like his mother’s uncle, the Secretary, or the Foreign Service, or even at a pinch the Audits and Accounts Service. It appalled him to think of Jyoti spending his life shouting ‘Quick march’ at constables in funny shorts, and dealing with petty criminals and all kinds of other nastiness. And, anyway, he sneered, what are the police going to do with him? Do you think they have time for people who sit around painting birds? You mark my words; he’ll end up being suspended for immoral behaviour and spend the rest of his life hanging around our necks.