circle of reason

The title of The Circle of Reason has tempted many scholars to concentrate their critical efforts on the idea of reason. The temptation is quite natural and justifiable too. In the first part of the novel Balram is shown to stand for and propagate reason; in the second and the third parts there has been direct and indirect reference to reason. As the novel reaches the end and the most prominent symbols of reason, Life of Pasteur, is consigned to the funeral pyre, one can hardly escape the perception that the writer intended something broader and deeper when he talked of reason. The reason of Balram in the first part and that of Alu in the second are divisive and disintegrative leading to destruction while the reason that Mrs. Verma exhibits in the third part is integrative since it is inclusive in nature. The novel, if it is said to deal with reason, dwells on the type of reason that is mature and has capacity to be flexible and inclusive. No doubt, the novel deals with reason and its circle—an encompassing reason whose wholeness is represented in the symbol of circle. The genuine reason that emerges at the end of the novel espouses the worldview of Ghosh in the sense that it is supportive of totality and wholeness. This very wholeness finally unfolds the doors of true perception and meaning. “What one finds in The Circle of Reason is a sort of uncertainty of perception or meaning” (Bhatt 24) which is dispelled at the end when Alu reaches integrative reason “suggesting the completion of the circle” (Joshi 28). The integrative reason, the main thrust of the novel, incorporates objective temperament with humanitarian concern. As opposed to the reason of Balram and Alu which is lop-sided and lacks human emotion, the reason of Mrs. Verma represents wholeness and inclusiveness.   

The novel has been divided into three parts: Satwa, Rajas and Tamas. Ghosh has derived these three gunas from The Bhagwadgita. Each section of the novel is guided by the guna after which it has been named. For the understanding of the novel the division is highly pertinent though many critics claim that the said division is arbitrary and not at all relevant in the understanding of the novel. For instance, Shyamala Narayan while discussing the structure of the novel concludes: “The three guna are almost irrelevant to the understanding of the novel, which is ultimately concerned only with reason, and its symbols, the loom, the sewing machine, and the book” (53). In fact, these three parts form significant sequences that lead finally to the vision of the novelist.   

The first section is named Satwa. By majority of the scholars the satwa has been described as the light of consciousness. Ghosh deliberately attaches another term to it and calls it Reason. The concept of reason is based on the philosophy of the west and many interrelated traits are thought to be attached with it such as rational thinking, ability to discriminate between right and wrong, the state of mind that is progressive and free from the clutches of superstitions. In fact, there exists fundamental similarity between the oriental concept of satwa and the occidental notion of reason. The reason and the satwa connote identical notion: a coherent perception. Quite unobtrusively and without making any loud pronouncements, Ghosh has been able to integrate the Indian and the western thought which obliquely points towards his worldview that emphasizes the unity of thought rather than its fragmentation.

It is Balaram who is the center of the first section. He is a teacher in a school in Lalpukur. The school is run by Bhudeb Roy. Right from the college time his guiding principle has been the reason. The motto of the Rationalist Society during his college days was: “Reason rescues man from barbarity” (COR 46). Balaram seems to stand for reason and propagate the cause of reason. For him the book Life of Pasteur epitomizes reason in its truest form because it was Pasteur who has been able to combine rational temperament with “the mundane things that happen in real life which move people [. . .].” (COR 50). For the people who believe in reason, Balram thinks, the practical aspect of the life can hardly be separated from the abstract. That is the reason that when he starts his own school he makes it a point to have two faculties of reason in the school: pure reason and practical reason. It is for the sake of this practical reason that he roams about with his bucket of carbolic acid to disinfect the village of all germs that may spread diseases. His faith in reason is so staunch that for him “science doesn’t belong to countries. Reason doesn’t belong to any nation. They belong to history—to the world” (COR 54). The reasons to allow Alu to learn weaving with the weaver Shombhu Debnath reflects his love for the reason since for him the reason and the weaving share the common trait of transcending the divisions of the world. He discourses to his friend Gopal:

              What could it be but weaving? Man at the loom is the finest example of Mechanical man; a creature who makes his own world as no other can, with his mind. The machine is man’s curse and his salvation, and no machine has created man as much as the loom. It has created not separate worlds but one, for it has never permitted the division of the world. The loom recognizes no continents and no countries. It has tied the world together with its bloody ironies from the beginning of human time. (55)

One may get the impression that Ghosh intends to represent reason in the person of Balaram or that Balaram stands for reason in its truest and total sense. However, the novel seems to suggest just the opposite. Though Balaram constantly talks of reason all the time yet himself he seems to lose it. From what he professes one may look forward to meaningful and fruitful type of life for himself and the people to whom he relates. But it is just the opposite that happens. He is branded as a terrorist, a threat to the village and the country, and loses his life along with others in the police encounter. Certainly there is something wrong not with the reason that he professes but the way he practices it. There is ominous apprehension of impending destruction that Balaram has invited on himself and others due to his faulty and partial adherence to reason. “But there was no longer anything he [Gopal] could do to save Balaram from himself” (COR 51) and undoubtedly he was heading for disaster. 

The fact is that the reason Balaram practices in his practical life is far from being holistic in nature that he talks about. For him the science of phrenology seems to represent a total perception though, once again, his professed views and how he practices them strikes a discordant note. He tells Gopal how he thinks that the science of phrenology is significant and better than other sciences:

              Haven’t I told you? What’s wrong with all those scientists and their sciences is that there’s no connection between the outside and the inside, between what people think and how they are. Don’t you see? This is different. In this science the inside and the outside, the mind and the body, what people do and what they are, are one. Don’t you see how important it is? (COR 17)

It is ironic that Balaram who swears by reason and science has taken up phrenology, a nineteenth century pseudoscience, a subject whose scientific credentials are dubious and “which is close to the Indian superstition of popular religion and astrology that he opposes” (Joshi 27). Pradip Dutta says about Balaram and his interest in science:

               His search for a new western vision of reality, reflected in the chapter titled “a Pasteurized Universe”, brings to mind the Vedic legend of the creation of the world, in which the milk ocean of creation was churned by the gods and demons using a snake to separate poison from the “amrit” (ambrosia). (45)

He talks with zeal of the merits of phrenology as if this were the only subject with scientific basis. How does he stumble by the subject is another interesting story that throws light on not so rational temperament of Balaram. 

The incident goes back to the time when Balaram was thirty six and was working as a sub-editor on Amrit Bazar Patrika. The time was when Irene Joliot-Curie and her husband Fredric Joliot with whom she had shared the Nobel Prize were expected in Calcutta. It was natural that the whole Calcutta was agog with excitement on the arrival of such a celebrated couple. For Balaram with his interest in science, the couple was no less than heroes and he wanted to be present in the airport when they arrived. Having been permitted by the news editor that he might accompany others to the airport, he reached the venue waiting excitedly for Joliot-Curies. When they arrived one of the reporters remarked that Professor Joliot looked tired. Professor Joliot’s answer was matter of the fact remark: “We flew over high altitudes” (COR 16). At that moment, Balaram felt that he had to say something and he remarked: “Sir, are you not accustomed to keep high altitudes?” (16). What he meant to say was that high altitudes should not tire the Curies since they were used to live in “highest reaches of the imagination” (16). “It was only silly impulse; he knew that the moment he said it. It meant nothing. But it was too late. There was a moment’s awkward silence and then everyone, led by Professor Joliot, burst into laughter. Even Madame Joliot-Curie smiled” (16). The peals of laughter caused a deep sense of humiliation in Balaram. He left the crowd and ran away from the scene thinking that these scientists were indifferent to sentiments and humanity. He wandered aimlessly and his feet carried him to the College Street where he chanced upon the book, Practical Phrenology. Later he explained to Gopal that this was the only science that established a connection between inside and outside “between what people think and how they are” (17).

It is not the quest for scientific knowledge that drives Balaram towards phrenology. It is to escape the smarting pain of insult that he experiences amongst the noted scientists that he grabs the irrational science with presumable motive of studying that subject that is complete, total and contains inside and outside of the fact. There is clear-cut dichotomy between his pronouncements and his real intentions. The adoption of Phrenology, no more considered being science, by Balaram is a sort of retort to those scientists for whom “people, sentiments, humanity” (16) did not matter; who were so heartless that they could make fun of an innocent remark of anyone. The supposed objective that he declares to Gopal in taking up phrenology seems to be rational and guided by reason but in fact he has taken up the subject as a result of emotional injury he has suffered during the reception of the Joliot-Curies. There happens to be a lack of harmonization between his declared scientific pronouncements and the emotional state that speaks more of irrational reactions.

The want of synchronization between reason and the reality (whether inner or outer) results in making the reason fractional. The refrain runs throughout the first part of the novel and it is not surprising that such a partial reason turns destructive. It is only towards the end that the reason harmonizes with reality and presents an integrated form and we experience the positive current of wholeness for the first time.

There is something wrong with Balaram’s approach. Though he considers phrenology to be a complete science, the approach that he adopts in the study of heads and skulls is highly unscientific. Instead of basing his theories and hypothesis on the basis of facts, what he does is just the opposite-- imposing theories on the facts. This is also the observation of Gopal. Gopal observes: “But the trouble with people like Balaram was that theories came first and the truth afterwards” (13) and on consideration of facts it was always found that his theories did not coincide with the facts. For instance, one day when they (Gopal and Balaram) were wondering about the whereabouts of their common college friend, Dantu, who vanished one year after, he had left the college. “But then, one day, more than twenty years afterwards, with the help of his new-found theories Balaram declared that Dantu had become a sadhu [. . .]. Why? Simple. Because of his sharply domed head, of course, and his thin, hollow face[. . .]. (13). A year later it was known through the article in the newspaper that Dantu had been arrested somewhere in north Bihar for organizing the landless laborers of the area to agitate for fair wages. “That was just it, the reason why phrenology was rubbish—all theory and no fact” (14) observes Gopal.

In another incident, when the antagonism between Bhudeb Roy and Balaram has aggravated, the latter, one day, tells Gopal about the secret money that Bhudeb Roy is receiving from the police for keeping them informed about almost everyone in the area. Balaram tells Gopal, “It has to be said of them [the police] that they’ve proceeded on sound phrenological principles in choosing Bhudeb Roy to be their informer: his cranial capacity is enormous—there can’t be any doubt that he’s as clever as a fox—and he has exactly the right kind of squamous suture” (21). At this point it becomes too much for Gopal to bear the long tirade of theories of Balaram and he interjects: “You only noticed his squamous suture after you heard about his links with the police. What comes first, then, the act or the organ” (21).

It has been observed and commented by some critics that in the novel the object of Ghosh is to denigrate reason and the scientific temperament. “Throughout the novel Ghosh makes fun of the so-called scientific attitude, rationalism” (Bhatt 22). Nothing can be farther from the truth. It is not the rationalism per se that arouses the ire of the author. It is Balaram’s reason that has become fragmented and divisive on account of its separation from the realities of life. This severance between theory and fact makes rationalism partial and destructive. It is the dichotomy between ostensible declaration regarding the nature of the reason to be pursued and the mind that is inadequate on account of being operated by irrational impulses that creates the most reprehensible reason.

Carbolic acid is a recurring symbol in the novel. In the hands of Balaram it becomes a vehement tool to clean the village of all germs that might otherwise cause diseases. During the time of the war when the refugees are migrating across borders and settling around the villages in temporary settlements, the danger of the outbreak of epidemic cannot be ruled out. Ghosh writes: “He [Balaram] was appalled: he saw people eating surrounded by their children’s shit; the tin roofs were black with flies; in the lanes rats wouldn’t yield to human feet; there were no drains and no clean water, and the air was stagnant with germs, pregnant with every known disease. Balaram could think of only one answer: carbolic acid” (COR 61). The crusade to use carbolic acid for disinfection follows in the line of Louis Pasteur who also used science for the sake of good of the common people. The intention seems to be genuine and purely guided by reason. But the reality presents a different picture. The motive to use carbolic acid had an ulterior aspect too: to intimidate Bhudeb Roy who had a perpetual dread of carbolic acid. The day Balaram and his team set out in the village with drums of carbolic acid, the same day a meeting was being held by Bhudeb Roy “to lay the first stone for a road, an absolutely straight so-big-and-black macadam road from the banyan tree to his house” (118-119). Was it a mere coincidence that he started his campaign exactly on the same date that scheduled the meeting of Bhudeb Roy? It was probably the part of Balaram’s plan to let it happen on the very same day. “He must have, Alu said to Gopal in Calcutta several months later. He must have wanted it to happen, otherwise why he [Balaram] was in so much of a hurry?” (119). Shombhu Debnath could see clearly through the mind of Balaram. He prods Balaram: “But that’s not all, Balaram Babu, he said, is it? You have something else in your mind, don’t you?” (116). Surely, there was something else in the mind of Balaram other than only disinfection of the village. It is not purely the reason, the impartial and objective reason that is guiding the actions of Balaram. It is the fire of revenge against Bhudeb Roy that is provoking him in his activities. The tool is rational but the mind that applies it is obsessed with irrational impulses.

Even the choice of carbolic acid as means of disinfection is based less on rational principles than on prejudice. Ghosh observes the discrepancy in Balaram:

              Nothing else would be remotely as appropriate. There was a kind of historical legitimacy about carbolic acid. The only alternative Balaram could think of were mercury-based disinfectants, and somehow he could not bring himself to use those. Weren’t they created by the Great Adversary, Robert Koch, who had so tenaciously and falsely opposed Pasteur until he could no longer deny the truth? [. . .]. No it had to be carbolic acid, that masterly brainchild of Lister’s, Pasteur’s friend and Great Disciple.” (61)   

The problem is that “reason becomes an imposition” (Hemmadi 292) that loses relation with the reality. The choice of carbolic acid in place of the mercury-based disinfectant is not guided by any rational thinking but by a biased emulation of Pasteur. This partial reason of Balaram has negative potential and results in an unfavorable fallout-- Balaram along with his whole establishment is consumed by the conflagration, the onus of starting which lies solely on Balaram. It is a sheer chance that Alu escapes the destruction.

The second section of the novel begins with Alu’s arrival in al-Ghazira. This section is named Rajas: Passion. Deliberating on this guna, S. Radhakrishnan comments: “Rajas has an outward movement. [. . .] Rajas is impurity which leads to activity” (317). The section, no doubt, simmers with a lot of activity. The people of the Ras are seen indulging in talking, listening, telling stories, gossiping, quarrelling, and hatching conspiracies.

Activity upon activity is released the day the Star, the huge new building at the end of Corniche, collapses. “It was, after all, the Star, one of the largest buildings ever built in al-Ghazira; not as long as the concrete tents of the airport, nor half as high as the tallest bulb on the desalination towers, but larger than both of them put together” (COR 193). Many expatriates who were the inmates of the house of Zindi worked in the Star. The news spreads that Alu is buried in it because when it fell “Alu was almost exactly in its centre” (193). The news has set in the worry of Zindi because it portents for her disintegration of her house over which she rules like a czarina. She is thinking hard and anxiety of crumbling of her house engenders in her a desperate passion to have possession of the shop in Souq that belongs to Jeevanbhai Patel. When one after other the inmates of her house are being devoured by death and bad luck, an intense desire to own the “Durban Tailoring House” figures prominently in her mind. This is the only means of perpetuating her control and saving the house which inhabits people from various walks of life. She broods: “Frowning Abusa was the first. Then Mast Ram. Then the others, and now this. Are they accidents?” (200). Zindi narrates how misfortunes fell in succession on her house. It all started with the arrival of Mast Ram who came to live in the house. He was an extremely ugly man. “But with Mast Ram it was something more than just ugliness: it was the way his eyes darted about, like a snake’s, always open, never missing the slightest movement” (203). The day he arrived he fell in love with Kulfi, a young girl and one of the inmates of the Zindi’s house. While his unrequited love filled him with bitterness and frustration, he could feel, not without a sense of jealousy, the silent love between Kulfi and Abusa. Zindi remembers the fateful day when, possessed by a fit of jealousy, Mast Ram betrayed Abusa to the police for Abusa like most of the immigrants had no legal papers. That very day he tried to set the house on fire.

In the battleground of jealousy, intrigues and conspiracies where passion and desperation reign supreme, the jobs are being lost for unimaginably bizarre reasons. Kulfi is fired as the cook in a rich Ghaziri’s house because she spits in a pot of food because this is what she thinks her mistress asks her to do. Professor Samuel has to leave his job in the departmental store because he is blamed for outraging the modesty of a Ghaziri woman while as a matter of fact he is trying to help the woman in her shopping. Abusa is caught, Mast Ram dies, Kulfi and Professor lose their jobs and Zindi is planning madly to acquire the shop in the Souq. Amongst this constant activity, the residents of the Ras are now possessed with desire to risk entry into the caved in Star because the rumor is in the air about the Alu being seen among the rubbles and debris of the building (217).

There are rumors and hectic preparations and sure enough Alu is found in the Star buried under the two sewing machines. He is found thinking happily about life and death. While the life in the Ras is mad with chaotic activity, passion, desire and ambition are making the people insane. It is in such a disordered state that Alu emerges out of the wreckages of the Star with ordering principle of reason. Like Balaram, the reason that he retrieves from his cogitations is an irrational imposition on the reality. Like the consequences of Balaram’s reason, this partial reason has the same fatal potential of destruction. Indira Bhatt’s comment reflects the partiality of Alu thinking. She observes:

              Unlike Nachiketa of the Mahabharat who had returned from Yama, the Lord of death, after acquiring knowledge about life and death, Alu thinks of only purity and dirt. Nachiketa had gained the philosophy of life. This Nachiketa i.e. Alu returns from death’s door but his knowledge only brings destruction. He talks about Louis Pasteur and his failure as Balaram had done earlier. But Alu believes that he has acquired real/true knowledge. (21)      

With the “knowledge” of Alu once again returns on the scene carbolic acid, talk of germs and Life of Pasteur. Once again fractional ideas are thrust upon the reality with fervor of a zealot. Bhatt observes: “The knowledge that Balaram and Alu acquire is not the life-giving, life-sustaining knowledge but an abstract knowledge that is far removed from the realities of life” (23). While buried in the Star, Alu contemplates on the thinking of Pasteur and presumes falsely that he has stumbled on a piece of knowledge that even evaded Pasteur himself. Ghosh writes:

              There in, the ruins, he had discovered what it was that Pasteur had really wanted all his life—an intangible thing, something he had not understood himself, yet a thing the whole world had conspired to deny him. Purity was what he had wanted, purity and cleanliness—not just his home, or in a laboratory or a university, but in the whole world of living men. It was that which spurred him on his greatest hunt, the chase in which he drove the enemy of purity, the quintessence of dirt, the demon which keeps the world from cleanliness [. . .] the Infinitely Small, the Germ. (280)

And he tells the spellbound and bewildered crowd that this Germ is Money. Thinking of Pasteur and his rationalism he embraces and supports the most unreasonable idea. He declares: “We will wage war on money”; “No money, no dirt will ever again flow freely in the Ras”; “We will drive money from the Ras, and without it we shall be happier, richer, more prosperous than ever before” (281). As in the case of Balaram, there occurs a dichotomy once again between the idea and the reality. Once again carbolic acid acquires the dubious role of not being an agent of disinfection but a mean of intimidation and revenge. Romy who is not willing to follow the people of the Ras in doing away with money has to face the ire. The fanaticism of Alu’s reason and irrational use of carbolic acid is depicted when Alu’s friends impose their will on Romy who refuses to accept their reasoning. Ghosh writes: “The day after that they went to the shop and washed every inch of it with carbolic acid. They washed the shelves, the floor, the walls, the counter, even the lane outside. They took away Romy’s old iron cash-box, and in its place they put their files and account books” (301). It is with the same intention that the people of the Ras give Adil and his cousin an antiseptic bath of carbolic acid. Adil and his cousin were the muggaddams, the labor contractors and that day they came, as was their practice, to the Ras to ask the people to go for the work. But that day no one turned up. Abu Fahl explains to them:

              Here in the Ras we’ve all been thinking a lot about dirt and germs and money. We’ve managed to do away with almost all the money in the Ras. The big problem is you muggaddams. With you it’s money, money, money all the time: take money, hand out money, take back money. It’s a dirty system: it spreads germs like a squid spreads ink. (310)

A fight ensues between Abu Fahl and Adil and his cousin. Adil and his cousin are caught and as a punishment they are asked to take bath in open with carbolic acid. “A good proper bath, with lots of antiseptic to kill all the dirt that’s clinging to them. They’ll bathe themselves—we won’t do anything but watch quietly—and then they can go” (313).

 The reason of both Balaram and Alu is indifferent to the concerns of mankind at large. Whatever feeling for man they have in their minds, it is swamped by their obsessive preoccupation with the ideas that they impose. The larger scheme of mankind and the so-called rational ideas of Balaram and Alu are hardly in tune with each other. The whole and the parts are in a state of disagreement. It is in the third section that the part and the whole are integrated and consequently the circle of reason is complete.

The third section is called Tamas: Death. Tamas has been described by S. Radhakrisnan as “darkness and inertia” (317). Tamas also indicates a tendency to decay and to die. Zindi, Alu and Kulfi are in the small town of El Oued in the mid of the Sahara desert. They have escaped the attack by the police of al-Ghazira on the people of the Ras. They are being chased by Jyoti Das, the Bird man, the man from the Indian police, entrusted with the job of tracking down Alu who is dubbed as a terrorist in the records. There is death in the air. Zindi’s intuition can apprehend it. She describes Mrs. Verma’s house as a house of death: “I can smell death in this house: It’s there in writing—one of us isn’t going to leave this house alive” (COR 393). There is also suggestion of metaphoric death for Zindi and Alu. She is now merely a shadow of her earlier domineering and assertive self; Alu’s stiff thumb portents death of a weaver that Alu has always been. The part culminates in the death of Kulfi who collapses during the rehearsal of Chitragandha.

Death is not the end but the beginning as it gives way to birth. Death and birth is an eternal cycle of life. The third section, though titled Tamas, is more about the birth and new beginning than the end; it is more about the light than about the darkness. In this regard the author often drops hints. In the house if Mrs. Verma, Alu is engrossed in looking Life of Pasteur. The book falls from his hand and falls open significantly. “A paragraph underlined heavily in red pencil stared up at them from the open pages” (396). Alu looks at the paragraph. “It’s about death, Alu said. It says that without the germ ‘life would become impossible because death would be incomplete” (396). It is in the completion of death that there is possibility of birth and new life. This section is a beginning, a birth of the light of consciousness, satwa, in true sense. The reason is seen to have integrated with human reality and becomes whole; the circle becomes the symbol of wholeness and completeness. Take this incident from the novel. The corpse of Kulfi has to be kept in a clean place before the cremation. There is no holy water for the purpose. Mrs. Verma brings carbolic acid in a bucket and splashes it on the veranda where the corpse is to be kept. “He [Dr. Mishra] nodded weakly. The world has come full circle, he groaned. Carbolic acid has become holy water” (411). Though Dr. Mishra intends to be sarcastic, his comments are significant. Carbolic acid, leitmotif in the novel, loses divisive aggressiveness of Balaram and Alu and integrates with total human reality. It functions as a means to purify a body spiritually. Life of Pasteur that represents the belligerent reason of Balaram and Alu is thrown in the funeral pyre of Kulfi. It is Alu himself who realizes the redundancy of the book. The stiff thumb of Alu, metaphorically the loss of wholeness due to cessation of relatedness of a part to the whole, regains its life and movement when Alu realizes the uselessness of fierce and imposing reason. Joshi has rightly observed while commenting on the birth of total perception:

               Now reason does not imply the vehemence of Balaram or is no more associated with Life of Pasteur. But in a true sense, it is a balanced, progressive and civilized attitude towards life. A human touch is added to reason, and it has space for passion and even for dullness, thus really creating trigunatit entity. (Joshi 28)   

The reason signifies a perfect circle of wholeness when it is attached with concern for human beings. The reason estranged from the human reality is merely a rule that has a violence of imposition not the openness of embracing diversity of human life. Mrs. Verma voices the views and worldview of the author: “Rules, rules, she said softly. All you ever talk about is rules. That’s how you and your kind have destroyed everything—science, religion, socialism—with your rules and your orthodoxies. That’s the difference between us: you worry about rules and I worry about being human” (409).

As in The Shadow Lines the essence of the novel emerges towards the end,      likewise in the The Circle of Reason as we reach the end, the crux of the novel starts crystallizing. The reason of Balaram and Alu is placed in contrast with that of the Mrs. Verma which is more integrative and unifying since it is flexible and responsive to the world of reality and the requirements of circumstances. In this sense, the reason attains wholeness. The thematic structure of the novel is, in fact, a metaphorical extension of the worldview of the novelist. There is no direct reference to nations and their restrictive and artificial borders. Nevertheless, the integrated vision of the novel is an implicit allusion to the worldview of Ghosh that envisages non-fragmented status of the world.