Chipanthi: Protesting the Absurd

In one of the more eventful episodes of the novel, Agastya travels into the hinterland to the village of Chipanthi. He has come to the village with a Deputy Engineer after a conversation with a tribal woman who visited him in Jompanna to explain the extremity of Chipanthi's water dilemma. Upon arrival, Agastya immediately feels strange about the conditions of the village. He notices that there is an unsettling silence in the air that is unlike anything to which he is accustomed. There is no laughter, nor are there any conversations taking place. Agastya and his colleague make their way over to well to examine exactly how bad the water conditions are in the village. As the two of them are approaching the well, more and more villagers become aware of their presence.

The well is an awful sight. The tribal women are tying the children to ropes (this is where the children are) and lowering them down into the well so they can scoop buckets of "thin mud" from the bottom. Agastya is shocked. He demands that the Deputy Engineer have one of the water trucks sent to Chipanthi immediately. Before the Deputy Engineer has the time to finish making excuses about why it is impossible for a truck to come to Chipanthi, Agastya tells the man to take the jeep back to Jompanna while he (Agastya) stays in the village. I didn't this command upon first reading. Finally, I had a reason to like Agastya beyond his clever lies and love of marijuana. However, the reader later discovers that Agastya's reason for coming to Chipanthi in the first place was to escape the duties of his office. He stays in the village to expedite and assure that the Deputy Engineer will do exactly what Agastya has asked of him, but also to spend a bit more time with the beautiful women of the village. Not exactly a pure example of civil service, but in light of the rest of the novel, I'll take it.

After Agastya's colleague leaves, he is engaged in a conversation with a Naxalite. This man, Rao, begins explaining the reason for the Naxalite presence in Chipanthi. Rao continued to reel off injustices that needed to be addressed while Agastya slipped deeper into his own thoughts regarding Rao's appearance. The "conversation" is suddenly interrupted when one of the ropes unwinds around a child who is still hanging inside the well. The woman holding the rope gasps loudly and people begin to help her pull the child out of the well. At the sight of this, Agastya finds himself in a fit of irritation. The scene reads, "For a ghastly second he thought that they were putting on a show, intending to make him feel, yet again, absurd, or guilty." The narrator goes on to state that Agastya finds no adequate argument for the way the tribals live: "risking the lives of their children for half-buckets of mud." It makes no sense to him. Even after hearing the arguments of the Naxalites, Agastya feels that these people are subjecting themselves to the conditions that are so terribly difficult to witness as an outsider. For Agastya, it is simply absurd. This scene in the novel brings to the foreground the consideration, or lack thereof, of poverty in this book. The lifestyle of the tribals is presented from two opposing sides -- the Naxalites and Agastya. The Naxalites victimize the tribals inability to cope with the modern age by placing the blame on the government and their unwillingness to provide help. Contrastingly, Agastya feels that the tribals could better their lives in simple ways without needing the help of the government. In his eyes, all of us are at war with the ever-changing world, but some of us choose to cope while others hold on to the way things used to be. I think there is sound reason for each of the two arguments. Either way, I'm proud of Agastya for going to Chipanthi and taking a stand to help them, regardless of his reasoning.