THE ISSUES OF COMPLEXITY, PREDICTABILITY, AND PROBABILITY IN THE CALCUTTA CHROMOSOME: A RE-READING

Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) occupies a singular position within contemporary Indian English fiction for its refusal to conform to generic, epistemological, or narrative expectations. Straddling the domains of historical fiction, speculative science, and philosophical inquiry, the novel interrogates the foundations upon which modern scientific knowledge is built. This paper offers a re-reading of The Calcutta Chromosome through the interrelated concepts of complexity, predictability, and probability-ideas central to both scientific discourse and postmodern literary thought. It argues that Ghosh systematically unsettles linear causality, empirical certainty, and deterministic logic through a fragmented narrative form and competing knowledge systems. By juxtaposing colonial science with subaltern epistemologies grounded in silence, intuition, and ritual, the novel exposes the limits of rationalist paradigms. In blurring the boundary between the probable and the possible, The Calcutta Chromosome proposes an alternative vision of knowledge-one that resists transparency, embraces uncertainty, and foregrounds the ethical and political significance of the unknowable.