THE CIRCLE OP REASON 6^
of Pasteur. His obsessive idealism leads him to treat people as objects either of observation or of change ; a trait which makes him self-destructive as he gets entangled with his alter ego, Bhudev, a Congressman, who though motivated by cynical considerations looks at people in the same way as Balaiam. The second part revolves around Zindi, the earthy, practical, zestful trader whose presence brings together a community of Indians in the Middle East. The second part moves forward through Alu, the nephew and only survivor of Balaram's family. He brings this community to death and destruction by his attempts to create a co-operative community which tries to dispense with money and trade. Finally, the third part structures itself around Mrs. Verma who in defiance of all rational scepticism, creates in the desert an oasis of Indian community life. The novel, however, moves on as Alu, Zindi and Jyoti Das (a police officer who follows Alu from the first part, having taken him for an extremist) finally leave Mrs. Verma and the desert, bound for destinations which are to be discovered through hope. The main source of continuity is the story of Alu and Das, which is structured on the thriller format, and talks of a relationship which, being based on officialdom and power, cannot acknowledge its human connections.
A large part of the pleasure in reading this novel is the immense fertility and zest with which it tells stories. While the bare outlines sketched above move over continents, an infinite number of stories ranging back and forth in time are clustered around it. The Circle is specifically a contemporary work. One of the main sources of the freshness of writers like Marquez and Losa is their genius for story-telling, a facility that has created new possibilities for the novel, while making serious reading a pleasurable, accessible and popular experience again.
The way Ghosh tells stories, makes story-telling itself a way of looking at the world. By letting his stories interplay with time for instance, Ghosh achieves a fairly original synthesis of two different cencepts of time. Generally novelists tend to stick either to a chronological narrative or dissolve time into a kind of duration where past and present are indistinguishable. Ghosh chooses to engage in a different, more subtle adventure. The novel starts in the past with Balaram's excitement at exploring the shape of Alu's skull, moves further back in time to Balaram with his friends, all in their mid-thirties, returns to Balaram's relationship with Alu, moves forward to the present with Inspector Das interviewing Gopal, a friend of Balaram's, and then slips back to the beginnings of Balaram's life and career in Presidency College. Each story unfolds in linear time. Much like the phases in a raga each maintains its distinctiveness. And like a raga, the theme and concerns of the novelist weave them together in a single flowing texture Each story, whether it moves backwards or forwards in time, continues and explicates the previous one. The final experience is an extraordinary achievement in which past and present co-exist while constantly asserting their difference.