The Circle of Reason

by Amitav Ghosh

  Alu had the yarn disentangled and wound tightly around his palm. He began to lay it out in loops so he could start again. You’re proud you can wind a bobbin, aren’t you? Maya said, dark eyes flashing. Do you know what this is? This is children’s work; children do it when they’re eight. That’s what you’re doing – children’s work – even though you’ve got hair bursting out of your clothes.

  Unsteadily Alu ran a sweating palm over the rim of the wheel and gave it a trial spin. Little boy, hissed Maya, playing with toys. Why don’t you get out of your shorts and back into your cradle?

  Alu, suddenly a child again, knocked the wheel aside. He lunged forward and pushed her over. Trembling, he watched her pick herself up and brush the dust off her worn red sari. That’s right, she cried. Hit me. You’ll never be good for any real work.

  She spat into the dust. Alu saw her brush the end of her sari across her eyes. She turned and ran into her hut.

  Rakhal had left his loom. He was leaning against the shed, watching him. It’s true, he said. You’re really in trouble. You’re caught between two madmen, and who can tell what a madman will do or a goat will eat? Maya’s right; you should get out of this while you still can.

  But at the end of that month, when Balaram punctually handed Maya her father’s fees yet again, she took the notes to her father, and held them up in both hands: I’m tearing these.

  But why? Shombhu said. His fees had fuelled a new fondness for arrack. He was in no mood to have his money torn up.

  Because it’s stolen money, Maya said. He’s paying you to teach him weaving, and you’ve taught him nothing.

  Shombhu snatched the money from her and stormed out of the courtyard. That night they heard him giving vent to an impassioned, night-jarring Raga Kelenga on some distant branch.

  Next morning he was in the courtyard, waiting for Alu, sucking on his hookah.

  Warping first: no weft without a warp.

  Other weavers with only a loom or two usually had their warps sized and wound by contractors. Not Shombhu Debnath. Somehow he had acquired a drum and frames for his own warp beams.

  So Alu learnt how to arrange bobbins of yarn on the hundreds of spindles on the warping frames, so that they ran true to the warp drum; he learnt to conjure up patterns by arranging bobbins of different colours on different parts of the frames; he learnt to thread the ends of the yarn through a wooden board, like a racket, with hundreds of metal eyes, so that the yarn would not tangle on its journey to the drum; he learnt to wind the drum, so that it drew the yarn into it, like a lake swallowing a waterfall. And so on, often mere tedium, changing bobbins when they ran out, rethreading them through the board, twisting together the ends of broken threads.

  Days of work, painstaking, eye-crossing work, to wind one warp beam properly. But sometimes there was a kind of music to it, when the drum was turning well, clattering on its hinges, and the yarn was whirling through the eyes of the board, like a stream shooting through rapids.

  And then, one day, Shombhu at last led Alu to a loom. Alu, in his eagerness, would have jumped straight down to the bench, but Shombhu’s hand was on his shoulder. He smiled his cracked, discoloured smile: You have to know what it is first.

  The machine, like man, is captive to language.

  So that was another month gone, a labour of a different kind.

  Shombhu Debnath squats by the loom with Alu beside him. He points with his cane at a heavy beam. He opens his mouth, he would speak, but lo! the loom has knotted his tongue. So many names, so many words, words beaten together in the churning which created the world: Tangail words, stewed with Noakhali words, salted with Naboganj words, boiled up with English (picked up who knows where in his years of wandering). Words, words, this village teems with words, yet too few to speak of the world and the machine. Such wealth and such oppression: to survive a man must try twice as hard, pour out words, whatever comes his way, and hope …

  Kol-norod, Shombhu shouts, pointing with his cane. Kol-norod in Noakhali, nata-norod in Tangail, cloth beam in English.

  Then his cane switches to the other end of the loom: bhim-norod in Noakhali, pancha-norod in Tangail, warp beam in English. Understood? All right now – his cane points back at the cloth beam – in Tangail?

  Alu hesitates, and a fraction of a second later a weal is reddening on his back. Shombhu Debnath smiles: You have to study hard, you know. We sucked it all in through our mother’s tits.

  So many words, so many things. On a loom a beam’s name changes after every inch. Why? Every nail has a name, every twist of rope, every little eyelet, every twig of bamboo on the heddle. A loom is a dictionaryglossarythesaurus. Why? Words serve no purpose; nothing mechanical. No, it is because the weaver, in making cloth, makes words, too, and trespassing on the territory of the poets gives names to things the eye can’t see. That is why the loom has given language more words, more metaphor, more idiom than all the world’s armies of pen-wielders.

  And so it went on.

  It was hard, but at the end of a month Alu, his back matted with scars, could name every nail and every join on the fly-shuttle loom. And so at last Shombhu Debnath could stop him no longer from climbing into the loom’s pit.

  Actually weaving is simple. All it is is a technique for laying a cross-thread, called the weft or woof, between parallel long threads, called the warp, at right angles. To do this, it is enough to part the warp threads so that the weft can be passed through, and then close them again so that they lock the weft in place. That is all it is and it rules all cloth (except bashed, beaten things like felt, which, despite dictionaries, is not cloth), in all times and in all the realms of the world. The machines change as dizzily as all appearances; there are dummy-shuttle looms and rapier looms and water-jet looms and circular looms. But the changes are merely mechanical, they have to do with speed and bulk and quality. The essence of cloth – locking yarns together by crossing them – has not changed since prehistory.

  It’s so simple, Alu said with a conqueror’s elation. It took no more than a day to learn, just a matter of coordination: tug on the shuttle-cord once and the shuttle flies across with the weft, press the right pedal and the warp closes on the weft, push the reed once towards you and the cloth grows by another minute fraction of an inch, then tug the shuttle-cord again … like a dance, one way, then another, hands and feet together.

  Yes, said Shombhu Debnath. Plain white cloth, like you’re weaving, is simple. You’ll find out how simple it is if you ever get past that.

  Alu paid him no attention. He had his reward at last: a five-yard length of cloth. Maya cut it from the cloth beam for him. You’ll never learn, she said, folding it. Go back to your books. But she smiled.

  Alu walked sedately out of the courtyard, the cloth folded under his arm. When he reached the bamboos he began to run. He bounded into Balaram’s study and shouted: Look, the first bit of cloth I’ve woven. But Balaram was away, dousing the village in antiseptic.

  It didn’t matter, for Alu was already in a dream. It took him barely a week to master the weaving of ordinary white cloth. At the end of the week the loom, rattling faster than it ever had before, had thrown out a waterfall of cloth.

  But Shombhu Debnath curled his lip. He looked at the bale Alu had woven, and snorted: How old are you?

  Fifteen, Alu said, sixteen soon.

  Shame, said Shombhu. We used to do better than that when we were ten.

  But, again, Maya smiled.

  At the end of the week, Shombhu Debnath moved Alu on to coloured cloth. The simplest first, a weft of one shade and a warp of another – no different, really, from weaving plain cloth. Then real patterns: checks which needed two changes of shuttle for every inch; then bordered stripes and even bordered checks.

  Alu learnt quicker than Shombhu Debnath could teach. His loom poured out rainbows of cloth with magical ease.

  Fast, too fast, faster than Maya could wind bobbins. Maya had to appeal to Rakhal for help. But Rakhal, proudly, had no time. H
e was busy at last. He had saved enough money to join the Bruce Lee kung fu class (daily 7 a.m.; fees weekly) near the ancient banyan of Poramatola in Naboganj. He was working furiously himself, after his classes, to earn money for his bus fares and for fees for months and months ahead. So Maya, disappointed, had to hire bobbins out to families with lots of little children, so that Alu would have enough yarn for the maws of his loom.

  And Alu wove still faster. His hands flew like pistons; the shuttle became a wooden blur, its knocking, as it hit the sides of the batten, merged and rose into a whine. Maya marvelled at last; she had never seen such speed, and that night Alu somersaulted all the way back through the bamboo forest.

  Alu was peacock-proud. He longed to preen, to spread the feathers of his skill. But Lalpukur was churning like cement in a grinder, and Balaram was busy chasing its shooting boundaries with buckets of carbolic acid, his hair wafting behind him, in the germ-free air; Toru-debi was fouled in the tangles of her buttonless blouse; and, as for Shombhu Debnath, he had taken to disappearing again, all through the day, and in the chaos of that churning no one knew where he went.

  Alu had to be content with quantity. In two weeks he wove seventy-five violently coloured lungis. It was something tangible. After he cut the seventy-fifth from the cloth beam he and Maya laid them out in the courtyard and waited late into the evening for Shombhu Debnath.

  But Shombhu Debnath was unimpressed when he arrived at last, panting and damp with evening dew. He dismissed the carpet of cloth with a wave: Simple patterns; a boy could do it.

  Then, teach me better ones, Alu retorted.

  Too fast, said Shombhu Debnath, you’re going too fast.

  But, still, between disappearances he taught Alu to tie the heddle of his loom for grainy tabby weaves: two adjacent strings of the warp, instead of the usual alternate, in a regular series across the beam, crossed with two picks of the weft instead of one. He taught him dizzying spectroscopic patterns, spiralling combinations of eight, ten, twelve colours. He banished the coarse yarn Alu had started with and warped his loom with fine, delicate cotton instead – 80, 100, 120 warp threads to the inch. Be careful, he said, this yarn tears if the shuttle so much as touches it.

  Alu’s loom swallowed it faster than Maya and all her hired bobbin-winders could feed it. In another two weeks Alu had woven 120 lungis.

  They stared at the pile aghast, as they might at the sulky rage of a jackfruit tree bombarding the earth with heedless profusion, pouring down more fruit in a day than a district could eat in a week. Who would buy so much cloth? There was enough to crowd several shopkeepers out of their counters.

  It was Rakhal who came up with the solution.

  Listen, he said to Alu. I’ll sell your cloth in Naboganj. I have to go there for my classes anyway, and I know Naboganj. I’ll get a better price for you than you’d ever be able to get yourself. No one argues with me. But you’ll have to give me a tenth part of the money I earn you, and you’ll have to pay for my kung fu classes. You’ll be able to afford it.

  That’s fine, said Maya. That’s settled, then.

  Rakhal leapt into the air. He bent his right leg back under him, while the other shot out, parallel to the ground, pointing forward. His palm opened stiffly, swung out sideways and crashed into one of the bamboo pillars of the loom-shed. A corner of the shed buckled and slumped over. The scar on Rakhal’s cheek suddenly blazed crimson. A scream tore out of his bowels, sending a cloud of birds into the air, twittering with alarm.

  He’s pleased, Maya explained.

  Yes, Rakhal grinned, I’m pleased. He struck another bamboo pole with his palm. Half the shed collapsed, covering his loom with straw. And I’ll tell you a secret, he said. Soon I won’t ever have to touch a loom again. I’m getting a job – of a different kind. I’m going to be rich.

  Tell us, Alu and Maya chorused, tell us, Rakhal-da, tellustellustellus.

  No, said Rakhal, narrow-eyed, mysterious. It’s a secret.

  They saw very little of him in the next fortnight. He left early every morning with a few lungis wrapped up in a bundle and came back late without them. But one evening he returned with a bigger, heavier bundle than he had taken with him that morning. No bundle of cloth, that was for sure. He carried it through the courtyard carefully, on his shoulders, and darted straight into his hut and hid it away under the thatch, ignoring Alu and Maya’s stares.

  The next day he did not go to Naboganj. At midday Alu and Maya saw him going into the bamboo forest with the bundle perched on his shoulders. Going into the forest so late, Rakhal-da? Alu shouted. Constipation?

  Rakhal didn’t deign to answer. So naturally Alu and Maya stole into the forest behind him.

  They found him all but invisible in a copse, a small fortress of bamboo. He was sitting, legs folded, on a patch of grass. There were piles all around him: piles of old bottles and tin cans, of oriole-yellow powder, rusty nails and metal scraps, broken razor blades, torn rags, and other steel-grey and nondescript powders. He was working busily, filling bottles with powders and scraps, stuffing their necks with rags.

  Rakhal heard a rustle in the bamboo and looked up. He saw them, four large, curious, wondering eyes in the bamboo. Get away from here, he growled. This is secret.

  What are those things, Rakhal-da? Alu asked.

  Get out, Rakhal shouted. But they were far beyond his reach and he had a half-full bottle on his lap.

  What are they, Rakhal-da? Alu asked again.

  Rakhal hesitated, drawing a finger over his lips. He could not help stiffening with pride.

  They’re bombs, he said. Bombs.

  Bombs! they chorused.

  Yes, he smiled, bombs. He looked anxiously at them. Of course, he added quickly, they’re simple. Don’t think I don’t know that. This is just to begin with. They’ll teach me the difficult ones later.

  Alu and Maya looked at him in silence. You have to start somewhere, he said apologetically. I’ll be doing better soon.

  But, Rakhal-da, Alu said, what will you do with them?

  Make money, he answered. There’s a good market for them. Because of the war, you know.

  What war? said Alu.

  Not that one. Rakhal waved a dismissive hand at the eastern horizon beyond the bamboos. There’s a war in the towns, too. They need bombs. You watch; I’ll be rich.

  They did not answer. Maya raised the end of her sari to cover her open mouth. Alu stared at the piles in front of Rakhal, biting his lip. All of a sudden Rakhal whipped around, picked up a bottle and threw it high into the air.

  Alu and Maya, sprinting through the bamboo, heard it smash harmlessly somewhere behind them. They heard Rakhal call out, laughing: There’s nothing in it … But they did not stop running till they reached the safety of the courtyard.

  Alu leapt panting on to his bench at his loom. He had no time for bombs. At last, after days and days of persuasion, argument and reluctance, Shombhu Debnath had promised to teach him jamdani weaving.

  The first lesson was a disappointment. Shombhu Debnath handed him a six-inch steel needle with a hook at one end. Get to know it like you know your own tool, he said. Better; you’ll use it more. That’ll be your god now. Kamthakur. The god of work. The god of jamdani.

  Not much of a god, said Alu, fingering the hook.

  You’ll find out, Shombhu Debnath smiled. You’ll find out if you ever learn.

  For a long time it seemed as though he never would. His hands, too long accustomed to brute speed, fumbled when Shombhu Debnath tried to teach him to use the kamthakur to insert bits of coloured yarn parallel to the weft, between the warp strings of a ground-cloth. Every slip meant a tangle of torn warp yarn and an hour spent twisting the frayed ends of the delicate yarn together again. So every tangle meant a swish of Shombhu Debnath’s cane, and a stinging cut across the shoulder and a jubilant smile: I told you so. You’ll never learn. It’s not in your blood.

  Then, when he ought to have thrown the shuttle lightly across to fix the inlaid yarn into
the ground-cloth with the weft, instead, out of habit, he would slam the shuttle across and the reed after it, like a stonemason wielding a jack-hammer, and the painfully inserted strip of yarn would become a thin smudge, when it ought to have stood out proudly, like a bas-relief, on the cloth. More swishes, more weals, more triumphant You’ll-never-learns.

  Alu ignored his smarting back and struggled to steady his hands. It was a bitter fight: to have to be a child again after once having conquered the loom. The trick was patience. He warred on himself, with Maya urging him on, until his thirst for speed ebbed away. Slowly, with joint-numbing pain, his fingers grew in deftness and skill. Through the whir of Shombhu Debnath’s cane he learnt to build patterns – small geometrical ones first – with the tiny lengths of coloured yarn. Bleary-eyed, squinting, he learnt to cover a whole six-yard sari with figured patterns after a fortnight’s back-breaking work.

  And Shombhu Debnath drove him still harder, leaning over his shoulder as he sat at the loom, the cane poised over his knuckles. He started him on the classic patterns, the butis of jamdani: the simple star, the tara-buti, and the heart-shaped pan-buti. He made him draw the patterns on paper first, and taught him to hold the pencilled outlines beneath the warp so that his kamthakur, sifting between thousands of fine warp threads, would never vary in its precision by so much as a frayed strand of cotton.

  Alu’s butis spun out of his loom: perfect, precise, without blemish.

  Shombhu Debnath stopped watching him and began to disappear into the forests again. But every week he would leave a carelessly drawn pattern on Alu’s loom. From those tattered messages Alu put together the lotus, poddo-buti, and the intricate ghor-buti, row after row of figured houses, abstractions of shelter and peace. For his labours he earned tooth-rattling thumps on his back from Rakhal: the traders of Naboganj were willing to pay half as much again over the usual price for his cloth. Money at last; plenty of it.