The Calcutta Chromosome

It’s 1933, shortly after Phulboni “got his first and only job” (256). He “was sent on a trip to the remote provincial town of Renupur” (256), on behalf of the British company Palmer Brothers. The company had developed an extensive distribution network throughout India. Phulboni had never heard of Renupur, but to his surprise it had a railway station, and a train that passed through every day. In fact, Phulboni was looking forward to going to Renupur, as he was told that the forests nearby offered good hunting, and he had just purchased a new rifle.

However, it’s monsoon season, and much of eastern India is flooded. Phulboni, having grown up “amidst the hills and forests of Orissa” (257), had never seen so much water. The journey had taken eight hours, and they are almost at Renupur, yet all Phulboni can see is flooded fields. There is no sign of people living by in sufficient numbers that would justify a railway station being built at Renupur. Phulboni expresses his concern to the guard, who tells him that there is no village within three miles of the station. The only reason there was a station was because single-track lines required sidings be built at regular intervals, so that oncoming trains could pass each other safely. The guard adds that they never really needed a station here, however, as this is the only train that ever uses this track.

They arrive at Renupur, and the guard quickly ushers Phulboni off the train, along with his bags and rifle. He is the only person to disembark at Renupur. Phulboni looks around and sees “a ramshackle tin-roofed brick structure” (260) serving as the station house. There’s nothing else in sight. To make matters worse, floodwater surrounds the station. It’s like he’s standing on an island.

Phulboni was told that someone would meet him at the station, so he picks up his bag and rifle and walks toward the signal-room, to see if he can find the stationmaster. Just then, he hears a voice calling out to him. Phulboni turns around and sees a small man climbing the embankment. The small man claims he is the stationmaster; Phulboni asks him how he can get to Renupur. The stationmaster tells him that he can’t get to Renupur today because of the flooding, and instead offers to let Phulboni stay with him and his wife. The stationmaster suggests that Phulboni should leave his bags in the signal-room. However, when they enter the signal-room, Phulboni spots a string bed and asks the stationmaster who it belongs to. The stationmaster replies by telling Phulboni that the bed has been here for a long time. He then tries to hurry Phulboni out the door because it will be dark soon.

Phulboni continues to look around the signal-room and sees a lantern standing inside an alcove. He notices the lantern has been recently cleaned and polished, and is about to put his hand on it when the stationmaster abruptly pushes his hand away, telling Phulboni, “it’s not to be touched” (263). When Phulboni asks the stationmaster who cleans the lantern, he mutters something about railway property, and that they need to get going, because it’s getting dark.

Phulboni, however, decides he’s going to stay the night. The stationmaster quickly becomes agitated, and “with a note of panic in his voice” (264) tries to dissuade Phulboni. Phulboni suggests that he would be quite comfortable in the signal-room. The stationmaster becomes more emphatic and bluntly tells Phulboni that he won’t be safe, because “all sorts of things happen in lonely places like this” (265). Phulboni just laughs and asks the stationmaster to bring him some food if he can.

The stationmaster relents, saying, “Do what you like; but just one thing: don’t blame Budhhu Dubey later” (265). After the stationmaster leaves, Phulboni decides to clean up the signal-room. He then decides to clean the mat as well, but as he shakes the dust out of it, he sees a strangely-shaped mark on it. Taking a closer look, he realizes that it’s an imprint of a left hand showing “four fingers and no thumb” (266). The image looks eerie and leaves a bad taste in his mouth, so Phulboni decides to go for a walk.

It’s late afternoon, and the sun is shining. Phulboni is walking along the rails until he spots some egrets and decides to sit down on a mound between the tracks and observe them. Almost an hour has passed by, Phulboni has become “filled with a sense of peace and well-being” (267), and is glad that he decided to stay at the signal-room. On his way back, he comes across the signal switch and notices that it’s well taken care of. Phulboni then here’s a shout and sees the stationmaster frantically signaling to him to step back from the switching lever. In his hands, the stationmaster is holding food and a pitcher of water. Hungry, Phulboni hurries back, and is surprised when the stationmaster berates him for meddling with government property. He then thrusts the food and pitcher in Phulboni’s hands and abruptly leaves, anxious to get away.

This disquiets Phulboni, who heads back to the signal-room. However, after placing the food and water on the desk, he notices that his razor, shaving soap, brush, and lump of alum are on the floor. Phulboni checks to see if the window had blown open, but sees it’s firmly shut. He decides they must have been blown off when he opened the door and quickly picks them up. As the sun sets, Phulboni grabs the food and pitcher and goes back outside to eat. He is part way through his meal when he hears something fall inside the room. Peering back through the open door, Phulboni sees his shaving things scattered across the floor. He feels a sudden unease, but continues to eat, and after a while begins to sense his well-being returning.

Back inside the room, Phulboni takes a match and lights the signal lantern, causing a bright red light to fill the room. He then rifles through his bag for his cigars, but as he’s doing so he hears a metallic snap and the light goes out. To his surprise, he sees that the wick has been lowered. He screws the wick back up, lights it, and places the lantern in the corner, away from any potential wind. Phulboni then sits cross-legged at the doorway and enjoys his cigar. All of a sudden, he hears the screw in the lantern turn, then the light go out. Phulboni leaves the lantern alone and begins preparing for bed. He secures the door, then places his gun on the floor beside his bed and lies down. Tired from a long day, he is asleep within minutes.

However, Phulboni abruptly awakens to rain touching his face; the door somehow has opened, and the lantern has vanished. Perhaps the stationmaster came by to pick it up, he thinks to himself. When he peers outside, he sees the red light bobbing in the distance. Phulboni decides to go after the stationmaster in the driving rain. Following the track, he sees the lantern light get closer, turn from the path, and then disappear. Phulboni continues to feel his way along the track until he accidentally stumbles across the curved part of the rails that lead to the siding. Up ahead, along the path of the siding, he spots the lantern once more; it appears to have stopped moving, near where Phulboni had been observing the egrets earlier.

Phulboni calls out to the stationmaster and begins running towards the lantern. But just as he’s almost on top of it, Phulboni trips over the tracks. He notices a slight tremor along the rail—a train is approaching. Phulboni is stunned. The train from Barich is not scheduled to return until the morning, so he wonders how a train can be coming. Placing his ear upon the rail, he can hear the train is close. Phulboni immediately flings himself down the embankment and into the water. He then hears a scream, piercing through the rain and wind, and a name—“Laakhan” (274)—and then the roar of the train.

Everything is silent now, as Phulboni makes his way back along the rails. The undergrowth running over the tracks has not been disturbed by the train. In fact, there’s no sign of a train having just passed by at all. This frightens Phulboni. Without warning, the red light begins approaching him. Phulboni calls out, but no one replies; the lantern gets closer and closer. Unable to see the face behind the lantern, Phulboni turns and runs, but the lantern closes the gap. Phulboni makes it back to the signal-room and grabs his gun. The lantern then appears at the door, then a face, shrouded in darkness, and a voice, echoing through the room, saying just one word: “Laakhan” (277). Phulboni fires his gun directly into the lantern, the recoil knocking him hard against the bed.

It’s dawn and Phulboni is waking up to the stationmaster’s grinning face. He’s outside, and lying in something soft, no longer in the signal room. The stationmaster had told his wife that Phulboni would be all right, and Phulboni is relieved to find himself unharmed. The stationmaster had found Phulboni lying on the floor with his gun across his body and pulled him outside, wanting to get him out of the room. As he is lying there, Phulboni asks the stationmaster if he had found any broken glass on the floor from the lantern. The stationmaster tells Phulboni that the lantern is back in its normal place, all polished and clean. The stationmaster then goes on to say how no one from any of the villages around will go near this station after dark, and that he had warned Phulboni. Phulboni indicates that he’s prepared to listen now, and asks the stationmaster to tell him what happened.

Phulboni is listening to the stationmaster with his eyes closed. He reaches his hand back and feels the vibrating steel of a rail. Opening his eyes, he gazes upon a panoramic view against a rosy dawn sky. The stationmaster is nowhere to be seen, so Phulboni looks around, only to discover that he is lying across the tracks on a mattress. Phulboni immediately throws himself off the tracks, mere moments before a train goes hurtling by. The train shrieks to a halt about a mile down the tracks. Phulboni catches up to it. Phulboni finds the train’s engineers trying to figure out how the tracks got switched. Phulboni suggests that maybe the stationmaster pulled the switch by mistake. The chief engineer, however, tells Phulboni that there has not been a stationmaster at Renupur for more than thirty years.

After Phulboni is settled into a first-class carriage, the guard who had seated him whispers to him that something similar had happened back in 1894, though that person was not as fortunate. He was rumored to be a foreigner. Phulboni then asks the guard to recount everything that he knows. As the guard tells it, the signal-room had become home to a young boy named Laakhan. The boy was an orphan, with a thin, wasted body and a deformed hand. He was taught how to operate the signal lamp and work the switches, so was allowed to stay. Later, when the boy had become a teen, a stationmaster was appointed to Renupur, and he tried to drive the boy away, but the boy had nowhere to go. The stationmaster then tried to kill the boy but Laakhan knew the station better than anyone and escaped. The stationmaster then tripped on a rail and was killed by a train. There has been no stationmaster since. 

Phulboni asks the guard about what happened to the boy. He tells Phulboni that it was rumored that the boy had gone to Calcutta and had been living at Sealdah station until he was found by woman who gave him a home. The guard cannot tell Phulboni anything more about the boy, but he does mention that his predecessor had spoken of a foreigner who had died back in ‘94, and that the foreigner had been traveling with a young man who was a native of Renupur.