As I keep reading more of Amitav Ghosh, the more I am in awe of his intelligence and ability to weave a story so intricately, yet with such gargantuan coverage of the chosen subject. Yes, ghosh always selects a particular subject, mostly in (colonial) history, and his novel ends up with half the history ever known about it. The kind of research that he puts into his books is flabbergasting. The Calcutta Chromosome is one of his older books, and probably one that isn't so popular, in the sense that he wasn't as famous as he was when the "Sea Of Poppies" was released. So the chances that you will see this book at Crossword or some other bookstore is comparatively less.
I was on my usual book-stroll (in the Lamour book store.I usually book-stroll with the intention of finding a steal of a deal in second hand book shops.) one evening, when my eyes caught the words "The Calcutta Chromosome", well camouflaged in a messy pile of vibrant faded paperbacks. I latched upon it, yanked it out of the pile with glee, and found a Hardcover version of the book staring back at me with a blank expression. My fingers, without awaiting pulse signals from my mind, flipped open the cover and my eyes working in tandem, searched for the price marked with graphite on the Title page. (Second hand books usually have their prices written on the title page in pencil.) Rs.180! A steal of a deal!! In moments I was away, with the book tucked safely into a polythene bag, my heart bobbing and my lips singing, as I biked my way home.
You would wonder why I chose to rave about how I purchased this book. But for a chronic bibliophile (like me), everything from the sperm to the germ in the life cycle of the relationship one has with the book is of utter importance. If you are one, you would infer my reasoning.
Getting to the review, the book starts somewhere in the unmentioned future (probably 2020), from where the core of the story is (1995). Antar, an aging programmer, put on a no-consequence job, to get him through to his retirement seems like a drab protagonist to have for a book with an intriguing name like this. No, he isnt a false protagonist either. He is just one of the many who would bear a lot of importance to the tale. Antars deals with a futuristic computer called 'Ava', who flashes him with images of objects, which Antar has to identify, and teach Ava how to identify in the future. It is when he comes across an I-card of an old acquaintance (Murugan a.k.a. Morgan), who has been missing for the past couple of decades, that he is tempted into digging more into the matter and finding out what happened to him. And then the fun begins.
The story starts unfolding in parallel threads, in different time zones, with a range of over a century. The history of malarial research, life of Ronald Ross, strange Laveran rods (in context of the time), supposedly false conjectures on malaria, path-breaking discoveries, dodgy indian bearer-boys, undercover secret groups, haunting cerebral syphilis, parallel intelligence, its all in there. The research that Ghosh has put into the book is exquisite and extensive, like always. He has dissolved the borders that exist between real history and the fiction of his tale, at least in my mind. Sometimes there are pages of unconventional history woven into the tale, and rather than making the book boring, for me it made it wildly interesting. I did a bit of my own research on Ronald Ross (after I completed the book), searching for similar views as that Ghosh has expressed on Ross, but was unable to find any (on the net). The negative hoick that he has given to the otherwise untarnished image of Ronnie Ross, had my mind in knots and to some extent still does.
The title cover says "A novel of Fevers, delirium & Discovery". And the book surely lives upto the title. Indeed, the fevers and the delirium will really give you the spooks. Some places it almost runs through like a horror story. This book had me scared. It has something ancient, something of the past, something like a ghost, totally unknown, strong, without form moving behind the curtains of the story line and making a strange and haunting signals at the reader. Even as I write this blog entry late in the night, thinking about certain parts of the book gives me the shivers.
To talk about some dicey areas in the book, the book may not qualify as pure science fiction. The science explained is somewhat stretched and fictional in parts. But entertaining enough. Also the story is like a rubik cube. Almost everybody is connected to everybody. Its like a small world with people bumping into the same people everywhere. This may appear somewhat filmy, but then thats what the whole book is about. If you read through the whole thing, you will know just why everybody knows almost everybody.
All in all, I am a die-hard AG fan now, and that will surely bias the way I rate this book. I would love to rate this book higher than I have, but I guess ill have to settle with a 8/10. So if you haven't read it, go get a copy now.
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