The Calcutta Chromosome

New York: sometime in the future. Thinking back to when he first met Murugan, Antar remembers finding a file waiting for him on his computer regarding Murugan’s requests for reassignment. The director of his department had wanted him to talk some sense into Murugan. Antar immediately emailed Murugan to meet him, which he did two days later. Announcing himself in a loud, screeching voice, heard throughout the open-plan office, Murugan arrives at Antar’s cubicle. Antar quickly goes to the speech he’s prepared, “explaining why a move to Calcutta would be a career disaster” (49) and how it would limit his ability to support himself, given his alimony payments to his ex-wife.

Murugan does not bite, and instead invites Antar to lunch. Antar reluctantly agrees, and they go to a small Thai restaurant. After ordering, Antar asks Murugan why he must go to Calcutta. Murugan replies that he wants to do something with his life, and that there is no other person alive who knows more about Ronald Ross’s malarial research than he. As Murugan tells it, Ross’s actual research took about 500 days, beginning in 1895 and finishing by the summer of 1898.