The Calcutta Chromosome

Murugan interrupts Urmila and Sonali just before Urmila is about to ask Sonali a question. Murugan wants to know what’s going on in the auditorium. Urmila tells him it’s an award ceremony for the writer Phulboni. They exchange small talk about Phulboni and then hear Phulboni say, “mistaken are those who imagine that silence is without life” (29).

Urmila is hoping Murugan will just go away, but Sonali keeps talking to him, preventing Urmila from asking Sonali about something important. If this were anyone else, Urmila thinks, she might be more forceful in getting Sonali’s attention, but she’s still unsure of herself with Sonali. Three years out of college, and the only woman reporter for Calcutta magazine, Urmila is used to dealing with hard news. But Sonali Das is a different matter; she has a presence that touches everyone: “She was one of those people whom everyone talked about without quite knowing why” (30).

Sonali’s fame was partly due to her mother, a famous stage actress from the 40s and 50s, and also because she, too, acted in a couple of Bombay films as a teen. Later, she published a memoir about her childhood living in her mother’s world. The memoir was turned into an acclaimed play and “[f]rom then on, Sonali Das was permanently famous” (31). For years, she had done nothing else, until she agreed to join Calcutta magazine at the owner’s request.

Urmila never thought she would become friends with Sonali, but Sonali is the type of person who easily engages with people. She had done this with Urmila when they found themselves standing together in a lift years ago, and she is doing the same thing with Murugan. To get rid of Murugan, Urmila decides to impress upon Sonali the need for urgency or they will miss everything in the auditorium. With a parting smile to Murugan, Sonali tells him they have to go, and both her and Urmila walk into the auditorium together.

The auditorium is packed; Phulboni is speaking. He’s gripping the lectern and speaking in a low voice about how the silence of the city has kept him and his writing going and that he searches for this silence in the darkness of the streets, hoping to be taken in before death takes him and also hoping that this mistress of the silence will show herself to him.

It is during Phulboni's speech, when Urmila and Sonali are entering the auditorium, that Urmila notices Murugan following closely behind them, trying to slip into the auditorium, unnoticed. However, Murugan is unsuccessful, and to Urmila’s relief, is escorted out.

Back in New York, sometime in the future, Antar notifies the Council that he has found an “ID card of a Life-Watch employee missing since August 21, 1995” (34). He begins to review the file that Ava retrieved from the archives and discovers that the file contains notices and newspaper clippings from the time of Murugan’s disappearance. Most of the information was gossip from the time or about the police investigation.

However, an article from Life-Watch’s internal newsletter describing Murugan’s life and his interests catches Antar’s attention. Of significance was Murugan’s increasing focus on early malaria research, particularly “the research career of the British poet, novelist and scientist, Ronald Ross” (36).

The files states Ross was “[b]orn in India in 1857 […] [and] awarded the Nobel Prize in 1902 for his work on the lifecycle of the malaria parasite” (36). Murugan was especially interested in the work that Ronald Ross had done in Calcutta, in the summer of 1898. Calcutta was also the city that Murugan was born in. Murugan had noted discrepancies in Ronald Ross’s accounts of his research, suggesting there was a secret history underlying malaria research in the late 19th century. Though his theory had been rejected by scholars and friends, Murugan became increasingly obsessed and erratic in his behavior. He began talking openly about how Ross's research had been manipulated by an unknown mind.

The breakthroughs in malaria research in the 1990s, and the impending commemoration of Ronald Ross’s discoveries on August 20, 1995 convinced Murugan that he needed to go to Calcutta. Though Life-Watch was reluctant to allow Murugan to go to Calcutta, they relented when it became clear that he would go even if he lost his job. Shortly after his arrival in Calcutta, Murugan disappeared.

Back in Calcutta: 1995. A torrential downpour has thinned, and Murugan quickly leaves the Rabindra Sadan auditorium and dashes across the traffic-clogged Lower Circular Road. Just as Murugan reaches the other side of the road, a gap-toothed, emasculated boy wearing a t-shirt with a print of palm trees and a beach suddenly calls out to him, asking him where he is going. It’s the same boy who accosted him earlier outside his guest house.

Murugan tries to get away, but the boy follows. Murugan then confronts him and tells the boy to stop following him. When the boy persists, Murugan, in frustration, throws some coins at him in the hopes that he will take them and leave him alone. He then ducks into a crowd and watches as the boy wanders off in a different direction. Murugan then turns his attention to the hospital and the memorial arch honoring Ronald Ross.

Upon reaching the site, Murugan sees the inscription he cited earlier and also three verses of one of Ross’s poems, “The Exile.”Murugan begins to cite aloud from the poem, only to abruptly stop at the sound of clapping. It is the gap-toothed boy again, calling him from the far side of the road. When the boy loses sight of him because of a passing truck, Murugan tries once more to lose the him by jumping over the wall and onto the hospital grounds. To Murugan’s dismay, though, he has jumped into an overgrown stretch of wasteland, broken masonry, soft mud and feces that are now soaking through his new loafers. Despite the discomfort and smell, Murugan holds his nose and flattens himself against the wall. Footsteps approach and Murugan hears the boy mutter to himself before hurrying off.

Still leaning against the wall, a relieved Murugan begins to move sideways. As he moves, however, his left hand chances upon an opening in the brick surface. Reaching into the narrow crack, he discovers a small clay figurine. The arm of the figurine has a little metallic cylinder attached to it. Before he can determine what it is, Murugan is again interrupted by the boy, who, upon seeing the figurine, snatches it away. 

Murugan tries to grab the figurine back but winds up knocking it out of his hand. It breaks into pieces. This angers the boy, who begins throwing stones at Murugan as he runs away towards the hospital’s gates. Finding a waiting taxi, he jumps in and directs the taxi driver to take him to Robinson Street. Upon departing, he decides to drop his shoes out the window, only to find them being tossed back at the taxi by the boy as they pull away. The taxi then turns on to Lower Circular Road, where Murugan thinks he sees the two women he spoke to earlier leaving the Rabindra Sadan auditorium.