The Calcutta Chromosome

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So back in my second year when I read The Calcutta Chromosome,I felt extremely intrigued by the plot and had to read it a second time to understand the text completely.Now when I read it again,I stop to ask myself everytime,how can a writer write so well and come up with such a story.Mind you,Amitav Ghosh,the author, took a gap of eight years to pen this story down and he has got everything right in this novel.The language is easy to understand but a careful reading is required.He brings Kolkata alive to those readers who know the place well and also to those who don't.Murugan is probably THE loved character by all in this book, and the way Ghosh presents Murugan here,clearly throws light on how far Ghosh himself had gone,to make a detailed research for his creation.It is not surprising that he has been honoured with the Arthur C.Clarke Award for this.People claim this to be a Science Fiction story,and they are right about it because it is extremely fascinating to see the new generation system,AVA,a system that is extremely advanced, but what appals and surprises me more is the 'Other Mind ' element in this novel,to know that there can be a secret society of spiritualists who can aim for a mission,greater than any earthly mission.To them,winning a Noble Prize is worth nothing.To aim for immortality in a quite unpredictable way,is what they live for.They do depend on Science for this,but strictly go by what the theories of Cosmology stands for.Mangala and Lakhan's secret appearance and disappearance keeps the reader turning the pages of this novel,and truly there comes a point when a reader is bound to feel that 'Okay,I am lost,let me read again...'.The lives of Urmila and Shonali also help us have a realistic view about the position of women in our society.The more we try to discover Murugan,the more we discover of how things are so perplexing and we live in a stranger world than we think we do.Some days back,that is during the Pujas, I had a conversation with a literate who admires Amitav Ghosh as much as I do,and she wanted to say so much about him and his works but then ended up stammering,thinking and saying almost nothing.Then she smiled and said that Ghosh is a subject,that makes you love him and gets you puzzled once you try to discover his motives behind his writings.I don't disagree with her.I have read The Glass Palace,The Hungry Tide,Sea of Poppies and yet I need to think before I say something on and about his works.I don't know if the story I am going to share now has got any relevance here,but somehow I feel the need of narrating it right now.When I was in class Eleven,some students from our school were taken to Kolkata for a conference and debate.I was one of those students and I was pretty confident,if you ask me but then when I was on stage with hundreds of eyes staring at me,I hardly had any clue of what I was suppose to say infront of such a huge audience.I was cold and I was trying hard not to sound worse than I was already.I could hear people giggling and laughing at me and there was definitely enough reason for them to do that,but those few moments made up for one of the embarrassing situations that Life had in store for me.I am not sure if it was Stage fear,because it was not my first time on stage but definitely a first bad stand on it.

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