Thursday
I’m currently on an Amitav Ghosh kick, having completed the Ibis Trilogy (about the British opium trade in 19th century China) and The Calcutta Chromosome (about the discovery of malaria transmission). The Circle of Reason, his first novel, features a villain who reminds me a lot of Donald Trump, especially in the way our president is using a private police force to impose his will on Portland, Oregon.
To be sure, one doesn’t have to leave India to encounter Trump figures since the country currently has its own wannabe autocrat as prime minister. But Trump is who I know and is therefore my focus here.
Bhudeb-Roy is a cagy businessman who sets up a school and hires Balaram, one of the novel’s protagonists, as a teacher. Bhudeb-Roy cares less about education than about the money and fame that running a school provides him. For instance, he has portraits of himself scattered throughout the classrooms, gives all the school’s academic prize money to his five sons, and skims off profits for himself while underpaying Balaram. That, however, is just a start.
When a plane from the India-Pakistan war crashes into the school, he immediately hires 20 young men to ensure there will be no scavenging and then proceeds to sell all the plane’s scrap metal to the villagers. He does very well for himself, leading to a scene resembling those that Mary Trump tells about the Trump family:
In the evening after every little scrap had been sold he plodded back to his house, happily rubbing the folds of flesh on the back of his neck. He called his sons into a room and passed around wads of notes. He smiled as he watched them sensuously running their fingers over the rustling paper. That right, he said, his tiny eyes bulging. You can’t ever know what money means unless you feel it.
That’s not the end of the matter, however. First, he uses the insurance money to arm his twenty young men. Then, when the army shows up, he informs them who has each piece of metal. All is reclaimed and, when a spokesman for the villagers asks for their money back, he is threatened with the full force of the law. In this harangue we first encounter what will become Bhudeb-Roy’s obsession with straight lines:
Be grateful, he roared, that you’re not in gaol for being found in possession of government property. Do you know who you owe it to? Me. Me. Me. Should I charge you lawyer’s fees? And you’ll end up even poorer. If you know what’s good for you, you and all your bad-element friends will start working on straight lines instead of hanging around the banyan tree, doing nothing but rearing your heads and thinking anti-social thoughts.
Bolai-da was led out in a hurry by one of the young men. The other young men began to rattle their sticks and shine their knuckledusters, and the whole delegation was soon hurrying down the lane jaldi-toot-sweet.
Nobody ever talked again. After that, people said, not a bird chirruped in Lalpukur but with Bhudeb Roy’s permission, and under the supervision of his twenty young men.
In other words, only the privileged deserve good things. Everyone else is a a moocher and a loafer.
With his growing prominence, Bhudeb-Roy—like Trump—begins to consider a political career, although giving up the school will have one drawback:
After all, he had devoted a large part of his life to the school; it was a testament to a youth he was still loath to part with. There was some vanity in it, too: he liked to walk down those corridors looking at pictures of himself and he liked to hear visitors’ compliments.
However, as he informs the villagers in a tearful farewell upon the school’s closing (he’s the only one crying), they won’t lose out on those pictures altogether. In this speech we also get the first glimpse into his law and order platform:
Don’t worry, he wept, waving a consoling hand at the garlanded pictures of himself which had been arrayed behind him on the podium. These aren’t going away. They’re going to be closer to you than ever. They’ll be right among you, everywhere, in the banyan tree, in your houses, in your shops. You’ll never be far from me.
The tears flowed faster as he read accusations into the crowd’s silent, fixed gaze. I couldn’t help it, he cried. It had to come to an end. It was a good school in its time, but that time is past. A new time beckons. The time to teach is over. The time has come to serve the people.
The time has come, he said, his tears drying on his cheeks, for straight lines. The trouble with this village is that there aren’t enough straight lines. Look at Europe, look at America, look at Tokyo: straight lines, that’s the secret. Everything is in straight lines. The roads are straight, the houses are straight, the cars are straight (except for the wheels). They even walk straight. That’s what we need: straight lines. There’s a time and an age for everything, and this is the age of the straight line.
I haven’t yet finished the novel so I don’t know whether Bhudeb-Roy gets away with all his machinations, which include inventing a conspiracy theory to crush his former colleague. Like Trump’s resentment against Obama, Bhudeb-Roy’s detestation of Balaram has grown so intense that he persuades the police that he’s a terrorist out to destroy the country. So far in the novel, he has escaped all accountability.
The villagers, because they are poor and powerless, can be forgiven for not opposing Bhudeb-Roy’s excesses. Trump’s Congressional enablers, occupying one of the three branches of government, have no such excuse.
