THE CALCUTTA CHROMOSE
Calcutta chromosome ! lets say the first thoughtthat comes to ones mind is ‘ is it about the loud bengalis ?”
Perhaps it must have got to do something with the people living there and lets say most of us would actually not have a second thought about reading it if it was by some other not so popular writer well I too felt the same, but believing amitav ghosh and best of literature that he produced I gave it a try .
And this is exactly what I take back from it `~fever~ delirium~ discovery .. the book rightfully speaks of what it shows .
It begins in Antars dingy room in hiz house in Egypt from hiz office machine AVA which blinks a burnt photo id of a man which later is reveled as Murugan , it clearly flashed below hiz monitor under the photo ‘subject missing since august 21,1995 ‘.
Malaria , very few people would actually want to read a book completely based on a subject so scientific and educational.. people like books which have an irony to hold on too and at the same time which has some intensity added with some cold intelligence … In this book amitav has kept ‘malaria’ as the bottom line and has beautifully weaved a complete story over it .
He has navigated through time and has intercepted genres to present a unique tale from present to future how each one of the characters have affected each others life .
From Ronald “s labrotory (the person to WRITE A complete theroty on the cure of malaria ) in 1898 to Antars house after many years a great deal happened which has not only to do with science,but history , superstition, and lastly the religious cults with their beliefs. It surely will bring a chill down your spine .
He mentions how a completely revolutionary discovery of the cure of malaria on one hand and how reincarnation on the other hand have benefitted from eachother . people like magala , an uneducated but witty women picked by a British scientist from the most irrelevant places of all .. sealdeh station ,to help him with the lab work she acknowledges her own self to discover ways of reincarnation into another body . the other character Murugun who probably acts as the narattor throughout the story   and is  insearch of something quite unusual ‘the calcutta chromosome ‘ ..will he succeed in his quest … the answer which is revelaed at the end makes u wonder does logic really rule our lives or has life got a deepr meaning maybe which cannot be justified by logic and reasons .
DECEPTIVE IT SOUNDS AT FIRST BUT when the story ends it actually haunts you to believe that maybe mangala was not just an ordinary women and maybe superstition aren’t so trivial after all .


GHosh deliberately frolics with the readers curiosity to what later it revels to be an absolutely chilly ending .The book surely haunted me long after it ended and I think it was just absolutely worth reading it.