Monday, March 1, 2010
The Calcutta Chromosome
I wanted to talk a little bit about the book. I know we were only supposed to read up til chapter 39 for today, but I really want to get y'all's input on the ending. So it is implied that Urmila, Somali, and Murugan are able to make it to the station and go with Mangala. I thought it was pretty interesting that Urmila was the one chosen to "host" Mangala, but I was wondering what you guys thought Murugan meant when he began begging Urmila to take her with him wherever she went? And also, why was Murugan so unkempt when he appears in Antar's room? What had happened between 1995 and Antar's time? What I'm basically trying to say is, how did you guys interpret the ending?
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Murugan knew that the "puppeteer" only kept people long enough to fulfill their purpose in her agenda. However, because he had dedicated so much of his life to the malaria case, he wanted to be involved long enough to see the outcome. He wanted to carry on to a new host as Urmila and Romen do. I guess you could say he gets his wish by transferring his knowledge onto Antar.
ReplyDeleteI not entirely sure why Murugan looked so disheveled when he appears as a holographic through Ava. There is probably some meaning to it, but I cannot think of anything clever at the moment. You could say he was going crazy over figuring out the malaria quest. If you look back to the conversation between Cunningham and Farley about Laakhan on pg146. Cunningham says the Sealdah railway station is where he found Mangala. "That's the place to go if you need a willing worker..." Murugan was found at this railway station years later. He might have been waiting therefor someone to appear to help him, or he could have gone there to offer his help to Mangala's plan. He was acting off of what he had learned from his research.
Murugan followed Ross. Antar followed Murugan. And we followed Antar by reading the book. This was an amazing book!
I think that Murugan ended up in an insane asylum and then Ava was able to transfer all of Murugan's knowledge and self in front of Antar. I'm not sure why Ghosh had Ava "decapitate" Murugan and make his head float and talk to Antar, which was really cool and freaky but I don't relevance of why it was so grotesque.
ReplyDeleteI agree a lot with Tyler, especially the part about this being a great book! Also, in the sense that Murugan wanted to keep knowing and discovering more so that is why he did not want to be left behind or in other words, killed by Mangala since he had already fulfilled his purpose of bring Sonali, Urmila, and Antar together for the transferring process.
I know that some people have a problem with the sigh at the ending, since it leaves the readers without a sense of fulfillment, but I don't think I would want a clear cut ending to this type of book. He wants the readers to expand their scope on technology, society, culture etc. Why would he give a definite ending? For me, I would have been disappointed if had made a clear cut ending to The Calcutta Chromosome.
Oh goodness, you guys... this book!
ReplyDeleteI liked it but I hate not having a defined ending. I hate leaving novels to interpretation because I don't want to bastardize the original thought line... Does that make sense?
I like to be able to know exactly why and how Murugan and Antar end up encountering each other and then why Mangala kills Murugan and on and on.
What Chelsea said is exactly right for me... I definitely didn't have a sense of fulfillment. I feel like I ran all around the world and through (several) time continua and failed to reach a conclusion, which is very frustrating for me!
On a different note, Ghosh is a very strange man, I gather... I'd definitely like to pick his brain.
I was completely and utterly confused by the entire book. Constantly jumping from character to character was not that bad, because he limited the jumps to chapters, and not sections. However, I think the reason I was so confused after this novel has more to do with the unusual topic than the organization of the novel.
ReplyDeleteWith all these considers my opinion on the end of the novel is that it fits with the rest of the book. If Ghosh had just came out and explained everything that happened in the rest of the characters lives then it would have totally went against the vague, almost menacing mood of the book. Instead he ended the book in a completely unfulfilling way, which in my opinion is probably the only way Ghosh could have ended the book without losing his own writing style.
the reason Antar "removed" Murugan's body is because he finds it too revolting (unless there is a deeper meaning).
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