The Circle of Reason

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For their help and encouragement, I would like to thank, among many, many others, Mukul Kesavan, Hari Sen, Radhika Chopra, Supriya Guha, K. Jayaram, Felix Padel, Veena Das and my sister Chaitali (who helped more than she knew).

The boy had no sooner arrived, people said afterwards, than Balaram had run into the house to look for the Claws.

There were plenty of people gathered outside the big house to vouch for it — boys in buttonless shorts, toothless, shrouded widows, a few men who had not found work for the day, squatting and scratching. Toru-debi threatened and scolded, but not one of them budged. It was not every day that someone new arrived in Lalpukur. Especially in such unusual circumstances (everyone knew them, of course).

Years later — thirteen to be exact — when people talked about all that had happened, sitting under the great banyan tree in the centre of the village (where Bhudeb Roy’s life-size portrait had once fallen with such a crash), it was generally reckoned that the boy’s arrival was the real beginning. Some said they knew the moment they set eyes on that head. That was a little difficult to believe. But, still, it was an extraordinary head — huge, several times too large for an eight-year-old, and curiously uneven, bulging all over with knots and bumps.

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