Thursday, March 4, 2010
The Continuum of Time in The Calcutta Chromosome
In The Calcutta Chromosome, time seems to become irrelevant or almost altered. From the beginning of the novel to the end, each chapter may either be in the past, present (in the context of the novel), or future. Also with the Calcutta chromosome being able to transfer the "personality traits" from body to body eliminates the limitations of time we as humans have. I am slightly puzzled by why Ghosh has set up the novel in such a way as to dismiss time as a factor. I can see some implications as to how science is a continual struggle with possibly no end in sight and how time is almost irrelevant in science since we continually change our knowledge or our understanding since "to know is to change." What do you guys think about this?
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I think he wanted his timeline to be on crack (yes, I just said that) in order to emphasize that all though humans do not last forever, sciece will/does. This is because there are so many seemingly different stories all tied in due to science. Maybe in way, and this may be a long shot, it shows that science actually unites people of different backgrounds and cultures. For instance, Ross, who is a foreigner, comes in contact with Laakhan, who has a low social ranking, through the Calcutta Chromosome. From what I had heard about the British colonization of India, the British tried to reduce their contact with the "natives" as much as possible, especially subalterns such as Laakhan.
ReplyDeleteIn many of the sci-fi works today, movies, books, cartoons, games, and etc, I see a trend of human desire to control time, and I believe Ghosh was one of the first people to start such a modern movement. Examples of such works have no end; movies such as “Click,” “Time traveler’s Wife,” and that one movie with the magical mail box that connected the future and past; books such as…I don’t read; cartoons such as “Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann,” “The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi,” “The Voice of Stars,” “Code Geass,” and much more, just to name a FEW; and games, as we are tech students, I see no need in listing games that have time travel in any way, because there are so many. However, I do not wish to say that science is a “struggle” because it would mean that the unknown is the enemy and that would make the territory of knowledge to be the conquered territory. As long as the rule “to know is to change” is in effect, there is no way we can say that, we can consider the knowledge we know to stay conquered, because what we know have changed and now is the unknown, the enemy, all over again. This makes me feel that science is useless as it is like a man who tries to grasp the wind in his hands, expecting it to stay in his fists when he opens it, that he may observe it. This is just my preference, but I like it where knowledge stays grounded to what we know and hopefully it will not change. I prefer it to be so, because civilization, measured by machines and sciences, would be on a stable foundation that is never-changing...and YES I AM half-asleep...again.. look at the time.. I gots to sleep. bye
ReplyDeleteThis is actually a really interesting topic. There are so many writers that do this. Time to them is like a really plain outfit.. it goes unnoticed and isn't really paid attention to. I'm not sure that Ghosh is really controlling the time in this book though. It is almost as if he wants time, just like malaria, to overtake people and mandate how people live and look at things. He seemingly uses time as a even further infestation of the character's confusion towards the disease and towards life itself. One could argue that all of the characters in this book are confused to some extent. Ghosh isn't controlling time but being controlled by time and allowing everybody else to be controlled by it too. I'm not sure i completely understand the whole "to know is to change" comment either. Human nature is always known. It is known from the time we are born and doesn't really change throughout life. We still experience the same instincts now then as we did when we were younger and it will continue when we are older. We are changing everyday but our knowledge isn't changing at all. Is this making any sense or am I just ranting about nothing??
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