Literary Occasions_ Essays Part 5

I had known about my father's long nervous illness. I hadn't know about its origins. My own ambitions had been seeded in something less than half knowledge of my father's early writing life.

6.

MY FATHER, when I got to know him, was full of rages against my mother's family. But his early writings for the when I got to know him, was full of rages against my mother's family. But his early writings for the Guardian Guardian show that shortly after his marriage he was glamoured by the family. show that shortly after his marriage he was glamoured by the family.

They were a large brahmin family of landowners and pundits. Nearly all the sons-in-law were the sons of pundits, men with big names in our own private world, our island India. Caste had won my father admittance to the family, and for some time he seemed quite ready, in his Guardian Guardian reports, to act as a kind of family herald. "Popular Hindu Engagement-Chaguanas Link with Arouca": MacGowan couldn't have known, but this item of "Indian" news was really a family circular, court news: it was about the engagement of my grandmother's eldest granddaughter. reports, to act as a kind of family herald. "Popular Hindu Engagement-Chaguanas Link with Arouca": MacGowan couldn't have known, but this item of "Indian" news was really a family circular, court news: it was about the engagement of my grandmother's eldest granddaughter.

With the departure of my mother's father for India, and his subsequent death, the direction of the family had pa.s.sed to the two eldest sons-in-law. They were brothers. They were ambitious and energetic men. They were concerned with the establis.h.i.+ng of the local Hindu-Muslim school; with the affairs of the Local Road Board; and-in those days of the property franchise-with the higher politics connected with the island Legislative Council. They were also, as brahmins of the Tiwari clan, defenders of the orthodox Hindu faith-against Presbyterianism, then making converts among Hindus; and also against those reforming Hindu movements that had sent out missionaries from India. The brothers sought to be leaders; and they liked a fight. They were engaged in constant power games, which sometimes took a violent turn, with other families who also presumed to lead.

To belong to the family was to be in touch with much that was important in Indian life; or so my father made it. And in MacGowan's Guardian Guardian Indian news became mainly Chaguanas news, and Chaguanas news was often family news. "600 at Ma.s.s Meeting to Protest the Att.i.tude of Cipriani." That was news, but it was also a family occasion: the meeting had been convened by the two senior sons-in-law. And when three days later the Chaguanas correspondent reported that feeling against Cipriani (a local politician) was still so strong that an eleven-year-old boy had been moved to speak "pathetically" at another public gathering, MacGowan couldn't have known that the boy in question was my mother's younger brother. (He became a Reader in mathematics at London University; and thirty years after his "pathetic" speech he also became the first leader of the opposition in independent Trinidad.) Indian news became mainly Chaguanas news, and Chaguanas news was often family news. "600 at Ma.s.s Meeting to Protest the Att.i.tude of Cipriani." That was news, but it was also a family occasion: the meeting had been convened by the two senior sons-in-law. And when three days later the Chaguanas correspondent reported that feeling against Cipriani (a local politician) was still so strong that an eleven-year-old boy had been moved to speak "pathetically" at another public gathering, MacGowan couldn't have known that the boy in question was my mother's younger brother. (He became a Reader in mathematics at London University; and thirty years after his "pathetic" speech he also became the first leader of the opposition in independent Trinidad.) My father might begin a political item like this: "At a surprise meeting last night ..." And the chances were that the meeting had taken place in the "hall," the big downstairs room in the wooden house at the back of the main family house in Chaguanas.

But this closeness to the news-makers of Chaguanas had its strains. The family was a totalitarian organization. Decisions-about politics, about religious matters and, most importantly, about other families-were taken by a closed circle at the top-my grandmother and her two eldest sons-in-law. Everyone in the family was expected to fall into line; and most people did. There was something like a family propaganda machine constantly at work. It strengthened approved att.i.tudes; it could also turn inwards, to discredit and humiliate dissidents. There was no plan; it simply happened like that, from the nature of our family organization. (When the two senior sons-in-law were eventually expelled from the family, the machine was easily turned against them.) And even today, when I meet descendants of families who were once "blacked" by my mother's family, I can feel I am in the presence of the enemy. To grow up in a family or clan like ours was to accept the ethos of the feud.

But what could be asked of a member of the family couldn't be asked of the reporter. The family had been strong supporters of the sitting member for the county in the Legislative Council. This man was a Hindu, and he was as good a legislator as the colonial const.i.tution of the time permitted. Suddenly, perhaps for some Hindu sectarian reason, or because of a squabble over the running of the Hindu-Muslim school, our family decided to drop this man. They decided that at the next election, in 1933, they would support Mr. Robinson, who was a white man and the owner of large sugar estates in the area.

Mr. Robinson believed in child labour and his election speeches were invariably on this subject. He thought that any law that raised the school-leaving age to fourteen would be "inhuman." He was ready to be prosecuted "a thousand times," he was ready to go to jail, rather than stop giving work to the children of the poor. One of our family's ruling sons-in-law made a similar speech. Mr. Robinson, he said, was keeping young people out of jail.

It would not have been easy for my father, whose brother had gone to work as a child in the fields for eight cents a day, to be wholeheartedly on the family's side. But he tried; he gave a lot of attention to Mr. Robinson. Then my father had to report that the two sons-in-law had been charged with uttering menaces (allegedly, a "death threat") against someone on the other side.

Mr. Robinson lost the election. This was more than political news. This was a family defeat which, because it was at the hands of another Hindu family, was like a family humiliation; and my father had to report it in the jaunty Guardian Guardian style. The day after the election there was a riot in Chaguanas. A Robinson crowd of about a thousand attacked a bus carrying exultant supporters of the other side. The bus drove through the attacking crowd; a man in the crowd was killed; a man in the bus had his arm torn off; the police issued seventy summonses. That also had to be reported. And it would not have been at all easy for my father to report that-after another violent incident-the two senior sons-in-law of the family had appeared in court and had been fined. The family house was on the main road. Only a few hundred yards away, in a cl.u.s.ter, were the official buildings: the railway station, the warden's office, the police station and the court-house. The reporter would have had no trouble getting his story and returning, as it were, to base. style. The day after the election there was a riot in Chaguanas. A Robinson crowd of about a thousand attacked a bus carrying exultant supporters of the other side. The bus drove through the attacking crowd; a man in the crowd was killed; a man in the bus had his arm torn off; the police issued seventy summonses. That also had to be reported. And it would not have been at all easy for my father to report that-after another violent incident-the two senior sons-in-law of the family had appeared in court and had been fined. The family house was on the main road. Only a few hundred yards away, in a cl.u.s.ter, were the official buildings: the railway station, the warden's office, the police station and the court-house. The reporter would have had no trouble getting his story and returning, as it were, to base.

So my father's position in the family changed. From being the reporter who could act as family herald, he became the reporter who got people into the paper whether they wanted it or not; he became a man on the other side.

And, in fact, in one important way my father had always been on the other side. The family, with all its pundits, were defenders of the orthodox Hindu faith. My father wasn't. Later-just ten years later-when we were living in Port of Spain and our Hindu world was breaking up, my father was to write lyrically about Hindu rituals and Indian village life. But when he was a young man this Indian life was all he knew; it seemed stagnant and enduring; and he was critical. He was not alone. He belonged, or was sympathetic, to the reforming movement known as the Arya Samaj, which sought to make of Hinduism a pure philosophical faith. The Arya Samaj was against caste, pundits, animistic ritual. They were against child marriage; they were for the education of girls. On both these issues they clashed with the orthodox. And even smaller issues, in Trinidad, could lead to family feuds. What was the correct form of Hindu greeting? Could marriage ceremonies take place in daylight? Or did they, as the orthodox insisted, have to take place at night?

It was as reformer that my father had presented himself to MacGowan. And he had been encouraged by MacGowan: a "controversial" reporter was better for the paper, and MacGowan's att.i.tude to Indians was one of paternal concern. And it was as a reformer that my father tackled the Indian side of the paralytic rabies story.

There had been a recrudescence of the disease in the weeks following the election, and Hindus were still not having their cattle vaccinated. One reason was that the government charge was too high-twenty-four cents a shot, at a time when a labourer earned thirty cents a day. But there was also a strong religious objection. And in some villages, as a charm against the disease, there was a ceremony of sacrifice to Kali, the black mother-G.o.ddess. Women went in procession through five villages, singing, and asking for alms for Kali. With the money they got they bought a goat. On the appointed day the goat was garlanded, its head cut off, and its blood sprinkled on the altar before the image of the G.o.ddess.

This was the story my father wrote, a descriptive piece, naming no names. But the reformer could not stay his hand: he spoke of "superst.i.tious remedies" and "amazing superst.i.tious practices," and that was how MacGowan played it up. Ten days later-what deliberations took place in those ten days?-my father received an anonymous threatening letter in Hindi. The letter said he was to perform the very ceremony he had criticised, or he was going to die in a week.

There is an indication, from my father's reporting of the incident, that the threat came from within the ruling circle of the family, perhaps from one of the senior sons-in-law. This man, at any rate, when approached, offered no help and seemed anxious only to confirm the contents of the letter. And, in the abas.e.m.e.nt that was demanded of my father, there is something that suggests family cruelty: as though the reporter, the errant family member, was to be punished this time for all his previous misdemeanours and disloyalties.

In the week that followed my father existed on three planes. He was the reporter who had become his own very big front-page story: "Next Sunday I am doomed to die." He was the reformer who wasn't going to yield to "ju-jus": "I won't sacrifice a goat." At the same time, as a man of feud-ridden Chaguanas, he was terrified of what he saw as a murder threat, and he was preparing to submit. Each role made nonsense of the other. And my father must have known it.

He wasn't going to sacrifice a goat to Kali. But then the readers of the Guardian Guardian discovered that he had made the sacrifice-not in Chaguanas, but in a little town a safe distance away. discovered that he had made the sacrifice-not in Chaguanas, but in a little town a safe distance away.

A young English reporter, Sidney Rodin, who had been brought out recently by MacGowan to work on the Guardian, Guardian, wrote the main story. It was a good piece of writing (and Rodin was to go back to London, to a long career in Fleet Street). Rodin's report, full of emotion, catches all the details that must have horrified my father: the goat anointed and garlanded with hibiscus; red powder on its neck to symbolize its own blood, its own life; the cutla.s.s on the tree stump; the flowers and fruit on the sacrificial altar. wrote the main story. It was a good piece of writing (and Rodin was to go back to London, to a long career in Fleet Street). Rodin's report, full of emotion, catches all the details that must have horrified my father: the goat anointed and garlanded with hibiscus; red powder on its neck to symbolize its own blood, its own life; the cutla.s.s on the tree stump; the flowers and fruit on the sacrificial altar.

My father, in Rodin's account, is, it might be said, a little to one side: a man who (unknown to Rodin) had been intended by his grandmother and mother to be a pundit, now for the first time going through priestly rites: a man in white, garlanded like the goat with hibiscus, offering sacrificial clove-scented fire to the image of the G.o.ddess, to the still living goat, to the onlookers, and then offering the severed goat's head on a bra.s.s plate.

My father, in his own report accompanying Rodin's story, has very little to say. He has no means of recording what he felt. He goes back to the reformist literature he had read; he plagiarizes some paragraphs. And he bl.u.s.ters. He will never sacrifice again, he says; he knows his faith now. And he records it as a little triumph that he didn't wear a loincloth: he went through the ceremony in trousers and s.h.i.+rt. The odd, illogical bl.u.s.ter continues the next day, on the front page of the Sunday paper. "Mr Naipaul Greets You!-No Poison Last Night." "Good morning, everybody! As you behold, Kali has not got me yet ..."

It was his last piece of jauntiness from Chaguanas. Two months later he worked on a big hurricane story, but that was in the south of the island. His reports from Chaguanas became intermittent, and then he faded away from the paper.

A few months later MacGowan left Trinidad. There was an idea that my father might go with MacGowan to the United States; and he took out a pa.s.sport. But my father didn't go. Dread of the unknown overcame him, as it had overcome him when he was a child, waiting on Nelson Island for the s.h.i.+p to take him to India. The pa.s.sport remained crisp and unused in his desk, with his incomplete ledger.

He must have become unbalanced. It was no help when the new editor of the Guardian Guardian took him off the staff and reduced him to a stringer. And soon he was quite ill. took him off the staff and reduced him to a stringer. And soon he was quite ill.

I said to my mother one day when I came back from the Port of Spain newspaper library, "Why didn't you tell me about the sacrifice?"

She said, simply, "I didn't remember." She added, "Some things you will yourself to forget."

"What form did my father's madness take?"

"He looked in the mirror one day and couldn't see himself. And he began to scream."

The house where this terror befell him became unendurable to him. He left it. He became a wanderer, living in many different places, doing a variety of little jobs, dependent now on my mother's family, now on the family of his wealthy uncle by marriage. For thirteen years he had no house of his own.

My mother blamed MacGowan for the disaster. It gave her no pleasure to hear the name my father spoke so often or to follow MacGowan's later adventures. In 1942 we read in Time Time magazine that MacGowan, then nearly fifty, had gone as a war correspondent on the Dieppe raid and had written his story immediately afterwards, keeping himself awake (a MacGowan touch) on Benzedrine. And the magazine that MacGowan, then nearly fifty, had gone as a war correspondent on the Dieppe raid and had written his story immediately afterwards, keeping himself awake (a MacGowan touch) on Benzedrine. And the Guardian, Guardian, relenting towards its former editor, reported in 1944 that MacGowan had been taken prisoner by the Germans in France but had managed to escape, jumping off a train. relenting towards its former editor, reported in 1944 that MacGowan had been taken prisoner by the Germans in France but had managed to escape, jumping off a train.

I understand my mother's att.i.tude, but it isn't mine. It was no fault of MacGowan's that he had the bigger world to return to, and my father had only Trinidad. MacGowan transmitted his own idea of the journalist's or writer's vocation to my father. From no other source in colonial Trinidad could my father have got that. No other editor of the Guardian Guardian gave my father any sense of the worth of his calling. It was the idea of the vocation that exalted my father in the MacGowan days. It was in the day's story, and its reception by a sympathetic editor, that the day's struggle and the day's triumph lay. He wrote about Chaguanas, but the daily exercise of an admired craft would, in his own mind, have raised him above the constrictions of Chaguanas: he would have grown to feel protected by the word, and the quality of his calling. Then the props went. And he had only Chaguanas and Trinidad. gave my father any sense of the worth of his calling. It was the idea of the vocation that exalted my father in the MacGowan days. It was in the day's story, and its reception by a sympathetic editor, that the day's struggle and the day's triumph lay. He wrote about Chaguanas, but the daily exercise of an admired craft would, in his own mind, have raised him above the constrictions of Chaguanas: he would have grown to feel protected by the word, and the quality of his calling. Then the props went. And he had only Chaguanas and Trinidad.

Admiration of the craft stayed with him. In 1936, in the middle of his illness-when I would have been staying in Chaguanas at my mother's family house-he sent me a little book, The School of Poetry, The School of Poetry, an anthology, really a decorated keepsake, edited by Alice Meynell. It had been marked down by the shop from forty-eight cents to twenty-four cents. It was his gift to his son of something n.o.ble, something connected with the word. Somehow the book survived all our moves. It is inscribed: "To Vidyadhar, from his father. Today you have reached the span of 3 years, 10 months and 15 days. And I make this present to you with this counsel in addition. Live up to the estate of man, follow truth, be kind and gentle and trust G.o.d." an anthology, really a decorated keepsake, edited by Alice Meynell. It had been marked down by the shop from forty-eight cents to twenty-four cents. It was his gift to his son of something n.o.ble, something connected with the word. Somehow the book survived all our moves. It is inscribed: "To Vidyadhar, from his father. Today you have reached the span of 3 years, 10 months and 15 days. And I make this present to you with this counsel in addition. Live up to the estate of man, follow truth, be kind and gentle and trust G.o.d."

Two years later, when my father got his Guardian Guardian job back, we moved to the house in Port of Spain. It was for me the serenest time of my childhood. I didn't know then how close my father was to his mental illness; and I didn't understand how much that job with the job back, we moved to the house in Port of Spain. It was for me the serenest time of my childhood. I didn't know then how close my father was to his mental illness; and I didn't understand how much that job with the Guardian Guardian was for him a daily humiliation. He had had to plead for the job. In the desk were the many brusque replies, which I handled lovingly and often for the sake of the raised letter-heads. was for him a daily humiliation. He had had to plead for the job. In the desk were the many brusque replies, which I handled lovingly and often for the sake of the raised letter-heads.

Among the books in the bookcase were the books of comfort my father had picked up during his lost years: not only Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, but also many mystical or quasi-religious books. One healing incantation from the time of his illness I got to know, because he taught it to me. It was a line he had adapted from Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x: "Even this shall pa.s.s away." It was an elastic consolation. It could deal with the pain of a moment, a day, life itself.

He never talked about the nature of his illness. And what is astonis.h.i.+ng to me is that, with the vocation, he so accurately transmitted to me-without saying anything about it-his hysteria from the time when I didn't know him: his fear of extinction. That was his subsidiary gift to me. That fear became mine as well. It was linked with the idea of the vocation: the fear could be combated only by the exercise of the vocation.

And it was that fear, a panic about failing to be what I should be, rather than simple ambition, that was with me when I came down from Oxford in 1954 and began trying to write in London. My father had died the previous year. Our family was in distress. I should have done something for them, gone back to them. But, without having become a writer, I couldn't go back. In my eleventh month in London I wrote about Bogart. I wrote my book; I wrote another. I began to go back.

JulyOctober 1982

Foreword to The Adventures of Gurudeva The Adventures of Gurudeva

1.

MY FATHER, Seepersad Naipaul, who was a journalist on the Seepersad Naipaul, who was a journalist on the Trinidad Guardian Trinidad Guardian for most of his working life, published a small collection of his short stories in Trinidad in 1943. He was thirty-seven; he had been a journalist off and on for fourteen years and had been writing stories for five. The booklet he put together, some seventy pages long, was called for most of his working life, published a small collection of his short stories in Trinidad in 1943. He was thirty-seven; he had been a journalist off and on for fourteen years and had been writing stories for five. The booklet he put together, some seventy pages long, was called Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales; Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales; and it was my introduction to book-making. The printing was done, slowly, by the Guardian Commercial Printery; my father brought the proofs home bit by bit in his jacket pocket; and I shared his hysteria when the linotypists, falling into everyday ways, set-permanently, as it turned out-two of the stories in narrow newspaper-style columns. and it was my introduction to book-making. The printing was done, slowly, by the Guardian Commercial Printery; my father brought the proofs home bit by bit in his jacket pocket; and I shared his hysteria when the linotypists, falling into everyday ways, set-permanently, as it turned out-two of the stories in narrow newspaper-style columns.

The book, when it was published, drew one or two letters of abuse from people who thought that my father had written damagingly of our Indian community. There also came a letter many pages long, closely written in inks of different colours, the handwriting sloping this way and that, from a religion-crazed Muslim. This man later bought s.p.a.ce in the Trinidad Guardian Trinidad Guardian to print his photograph, with the query: to print his photograph, with the query: Who is this Who is this [here he gave his name]? And so, at the age of eleven, with the publication of my father's book, I was given the beginnings of the main character of my own first novel. [here he gave his name]? And so, at the age of eleven, with the publication of my father's book, I was given the beginnings of the main character of my own first novel.

Financially, the publication of Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales was a success. A thousand copies were printed and they sold at a dollar, four s.h.i.+llings, high for Trinidad in those days. But the copies went. Of the thousand copies-which at one time seemed so many, occupying so much s.p.a.ce in a bedroom-only three or four now survive, in libraries; even my mother has no copy. was a success. A thousand copies were printed and they sold at a dollar, four s.h.i.+llings, high for Trinidad in those days. But the copies went. Of the thousand copies-which at one time seemed so many, occupying so much s.p.a.ce in a bedroom-only three or four now survive, in libraries; even my mother has no copy.

Shortly after the publication of Gurudeva Gurudeva my father left the my father left the Guardian Guardian for a government job that paid almost twice as well; and during the four or five years he worked for the government he wrote little for himself. He was, at first, "surveying" rural conditions for a government report. He was, therefore, surveying what he knew, his own background, the background of his early stories. But as a social surveyor compiling facts and figures and tables, no longer a writer concerned with the rituals and manners and what he had seen as the romantic essence of his community, my father was unsettled by what he saw. Out of this unsettlement, and with no thought of publication, he wrote a sketch, "In the Village," a personal response to the dereliction and despair by which we were surrounded and which we had all-even my father, in his early stories-taken for granted. for a government job that paid almost twice as well; and during the four or five years he worked for the government he wrote little for himself. He was, at first, "surveying" rural conditions for a government report. He was, therefore, surveying what he knew, his own background, the background of his early stories. But as a social surveyor compiling facts and figures and tables, no longer a writer concerned with the rituals and manners and what he had seen as the romantic essence of his community, my father was unsettled by what he saw. Out of this unsettlement, and with no thought of publication, he wrote a sketch, "In the Village," a personal response to the dereliction and despair by which we were surrounded and which we had all-even my father, in his early stories-taken for granted.

Later, out of a similar deep emotion, perhaps grief for his mother, who had died in great, Trinidad poverty in 1942, he wrote an autobiographical sketch. It was the only piece of autobiography my father permitted himself, if autobiography can be used of a story which more or less ends with the birth of the writer. But my father was obsessed by the circ.u.mstances of his birth and the cruelty of his father. I remember the pa.s.sion that preceded the writing; I heard again and again the forty-year-old stories of meanness and of the expulsion of his pregnant mother from his father's house; and I remember taking down, at my father's dictation, a page or two of a version of this sketch.

A version: there were several versions of everything my father wrote. He always began to write suddenly, after a day or two of silence. He wrote very slowly; and there always came a moment when the emotion with which he had started seemed to have worked itself out and to my surprise-because I felt I had been landed with his emotion-something like literary mischief took over.

The autobiographical piece was read, long after it had been written, to a Port of Spain literary group which included Edgar Mittelholzer and, I believe, the young George Lamming. There was objection to the biblical language and especially to the use of "ere" for "before"; but my father ignored the objection and I, who was very much under the spell of the story, supported him. "In the Village" was printed in a Jamaican magazine edited by Philip Sherlock.

A reading to a small group, publication in a magazine soon lost to view: writing in Trinidad was an amateur activity, and this was all the encouragement a writer could expect. There were no magazines that paid; there were no established magazines; there was only the Guardian. Guardian. A writer like Alfred Mendes, who in the 1930s had had two novels published by Duckworth in London (one with an introduction by Aldous Huxley and a blurb by Anthony Powell), was said to get as much as twenty dollars, four guineas, for a story in the A writer like Alfred Mendes, who in the 1930s had had two novels published by Duckworth in London (one with an introduction by Aldous Huxley and a blurb by Anthony Powell), was said to get as much as twenty dollars, four guineas, for a story in the Guardian Guardian Sunday supplement; my father only got five dollars, a guinea. My father was a purely local writer, and writers like that ran the risk of ridicule; one of the criticisms of my father's book that I heard at school was that it had been done only for the money. Sunday supplement; my father only got five dollars, a guinea. My father was a purely local writer, and writers like that ran the risk of ridicule; one of the criticisms of my father's book that I heard at school was that it had been done only for the money.

But att.i.tudes were soon to change. In 1949, the Hogarth Press published Edgar Mittelholzer's novel, A Morning at the Office; A Morning at the Office; Mittelholzer had for some time been regarded as another local writer. And then there at last appeared a market. Henry Swanzy was editing Mittelholzer had for some time been regarded as another local writer. And then there at last appeared a market. Henry Swanzy was editing Caribbean Voices Caribbean Voices for the BBC Caribbean Service. He had standards and enthusiasm. He took local writing seriously and lifted it above the local. And the BBC paid; not quite at their celebrated guinea-a-minute rate, but sufficiently well-fifty dollars a story, sixty dollars, eighty dollars-to spread a new idea of the value of writing. for the BBC Caribbean Service. He had standards and enthusiasm. He took local writing seriously and lifted it above the local. And the BBC paid; not quite at their celebrated guinea-a-minute rate, but sufficiently well-fifty dollars a story, sixty dollars, eighty dollars-to spread a new idea of the value of writing.

Henry Swanzy used two of my father's early stories on Caribbean Voices. Caribbean Voices. And from 1950, when he left the government to go back to the And from 1950, when he left the government to go back to the Guardian, Guardian, to 1953, when he died, it was for to 1953, when he died, it was for Caribbean Voices Caribbean Voices that my father wrote. In these three years, in circ.u.mstances deteriorating month by month-the low that my father wrote. In these three years, in circ.u.mstances deteriorating month by month-the low Guardian Guardian pay, debt, a heart attack and subsequent physical incapacity, the hopeless, wounded longing to publish a real book and become in his own eyes a writer-in these three years, with the stimulus of that weekly radio programme from London, my father, I believe, found his voice as a writer, developed his own comic gift, and wrote his best stories. pay, debt, a heart attack and subsequent physical incapacity, the hopeless, wounded longing to publish a real book and become in his own eyes a writer-in these three years, with the stimulus of that weekly radio programme from London, my father, I believe, found his voice as a writer, developed his own comic gift, and wrote his best stories.

I didn't partic.i.p.ate in the writing of these stories: I didn't watch them grow, or give advice, as I had done with the others. In 1949 I had won a Trinidad government scholars.h.i.+p, and in 1950 I left home to come to England to take up the scholars.h.i.+p. I left my father at the beginning of a story called "The Engagement"; and it was two years before I read the finished story.

My father wrote me once and sometimes twice a week. His letters, like mine to him, were mainly about money and writing. When Henry Swanzy, in his half-yearly review of Caribbean Voices, Caribbean Voices, praised "The Engagement," my father, who had never been praised like that before, wrote me: "I am beginning to feel I praised "The Engagement," my father, who had never been praised like that before, wrote me: "I am beginning to feel I could could have been a writer." But we both felt ourselves in our different ways stalled, he almost at the end of his life, I at the beginning of mine; and our correspondence, as time went on, as he became more broken, and I became more separate from him and Trinidad, more adrift in England, became one of half-despairing mutual encouragement. I had sent him some books by R. K. Narayan, the Indian writer. In March 1952 he wrote: "You were right about R. K. Narayan. I like his short stories ... he seems gifted and has made a go of his talent, which in my own case I haven't even spotted." have been a writer." But we both felt ourselves in our different ways stalled, he almost at the end of his life, I at the beginning of mine; and our correspondence, as time went on, as he became more broken, and I became more separate from him and Trinidad, more adrift in England, became one of half-despairing mutual encouragement. I had sent him some books by R. K. Narayan, the Indian writer. In March 1952 he wrote: "You were right about R. K. Narayan. I like his short stories ... he seems gifted and has made a go of his talent, which in my own case I haven't even spotted."

In that month he sent me two versions of a story called "My Uncle Dalloo." He was uncertain about this story, which he thought long-winded, and wanted me to send what I thought was the better version to Henry Swanzy. I like the story now, for its detail and the drama of its detail; in a small s.p.a.ce it creates and peoples a landscape, and the vision is personal. My father hadn't done anything like that before, anything with that amount of historical detail, and I can see the care with which the story is written. I can imagine how those details which he was worried about, and yet was unwilling to lose, were worked over. But at the time-I was nineteen-I took the quality of the vision for granted and saw only the incompleteness of the narrative: my father, working in isolation, had, it might be said, outgrown me.

Henry Swanzy didn't use "My Uncle Dalloo." But his judgement of my father's later work was sounder than mine, and he used nearly everything else my father sent him. In June 1953, four months before my father died, Henry Swanzy, at my father's request, asked me to read "Ramdas and the Cow" for Caribbean Voices. Caribbean Voices. The reading fee was four guineas. With the money I bought the Parker pen which I still have and with which I am writing this foreword. The reading fee was four guineas. With the money I bought the Parker pen which I still have and with which I am writing this foreword.

2.

NAIPAUL (or Naipal or Nypal, in earlier transliterations: the transliteration of Hindi names can seldom be exact) was the name of my father's father; birth certificates and other legal requirements have now made it our family name. He was brought to Trinidad as a baby from eastern Uttar Pradesh at some time in the 1880s, as I work it out. (or Naipal or Nypal, in earlier transliterations: the transliteration of Hindi names can seldom be exact) was the name of my father's father; birth certificates and other legal requirements have now made it our family name. He was brought to Trinidad as a baby from eastern Uttar Pradesh at some time in the 1880s, as I work it out.

He received no English education but, in the immemorial Hindu way, as though Trinidad were India, he was sent-as a brahmin boy of the Panday clan (or the Parray clan: again, the transliteration is difficult)-to the house of a brahmin to be trained as a pundit. This was what he became; he also, as I have heard, became a small dealer in those things needed for Hindu rituals. He married and had three children; but he died when he was still quite young and his family, unprotected, was soon dest.i.tute. My father once told me that at times there wasn't oil for a lamp.

There was some talk, among other branches of the family, of sending the mother and the children back to India; but that plan fell through, and the dependent family was scattered among various relations. My father's elder brother, still only a child, was sent out to work in the fields at fourpence a day; but it was decided that my father, as the youngest of the children, should be educated and perhaps made a pundit, like his father. And that family fracture shows to this day in their descendants. My father's brother, by immense labour, became a small cane-farmer. When I went to see him in 1972, not long before he died, I found him enraged, crying for his childhood and that fourpence a day. My father's sister made two unhappy marriages; she remained, as it were, dazed by Trinidad; until her death in 1972-more cheerful than her brother, though in a house not her own-she spoke only Hindi and could hardly understand English.

My father received an elementary-school education; he learned English and Hindi. But the attempt to make him a pundit failed. Instead, he began doing odd jobs, attached to the household of a relative (later a millionaire) in that very village of El Dorado which he was to survey more than twenty years later for the government and write about in "In the Village."

I do not know how, in such a setting, in those circ.u.mstances of dependence and uncertainty, and with no example, the wish to be a writer came to my father. But I feel now, reading the stories after a long time and seeing so clearly (what was once hidden from me) the brahmin standpoint from which they are written, that it might have been the caste-sense, the Hindu reverence for learning and the word, awakened by the beginnings of an English education and a Hindu religious training. In one letter to me he seems to say that he was trying to write when he was fourteen.

He was concerned from the start with Hinduism and the practices of Hinduism. His acquaintance with pundits had given him something of the puritan brahmin prejudice against pundits, professional priests, stage-managers of ritual, as "tradesmen." But he had also been given some knowledge of Hindu thought, which he valued; and on this knowledge, evident in the stories, he continued to build throughout his life; as late as 1951 he was writing me ecstatically about Aurobindo's commentaries on the Gita.

The Indian immigrants in Trinidad, and especially the Hindus among them, belonged in the main to the peasantry of the Gangetic plain. They were part of an old and perhaps an ancient India. (It was entrancing to me, when I read Fustel de Coulange's The Ancient City, The Ancient City, to discover that many of the customs, which with us in Trinidad, even in my childhood, were still like instincts, had survived from the pre-cla.s.sical world.) This peasantry, transported to Trinidad, hadn't been touched by the great Indian reform movements of the nineteenth century. Reform became an issue only with the arrival of reformist missionaries from India in the 1920s, at a time when in India itself religious reform was merging into political rebellion. to discover that many of the customs, which with us in Trinidad, even in my childhood, were still like instincts, had survived from the pre-cla.s.sical world.) This peasantry, transported to Trinidad, hadn't been touched by the great Indian reform movements of the nineteenth century. Reform became an issue only with the arrival of reformist missionaries from India in the 1920s, at a time when in India itself religious reform was merging into political rebellion.

In the great and sometimes violent debates that followed in Trinidad-debates that remained unknown outside the Indian community and are today forgotten by everybody-my father was on the side of reform. The broad satire of the latter part of Gurudeva Gurudeva-written in the last year of his life, but not sent to Henry Swanzy-shouldn't be misinterpreted: there my father fights the old battles again, with the pa.s.sion that in the 1930s had made him spend scarce money on a satirical reform pamphlet, Religion and the Trinidad East Indians, Religion and the Trinidad East Indians, one of the books of my childhood, but now lost. one of the books of my childhood, but now lost.

It was on Indian or Hindu topics that my father began writing for the Trinidad Guardian, Trinidad Guardian, in 1929. The paper had a new editor, Gault MacGowan. He had come from in 1929. The paper had a new editor, Gault MacGowan. He had come from The Times The Times and in Trinidad was like a man unleashed. The and in Trinidad was like a man unleashed. The Trinidad Guardian, Trinidad Guardian, before MacGowan, was a half-dead colonial newspaper: a large border of advertis.e.m.e.nts on its front page, a small central patch of closely printed cables. MacGowan's brief was to modernize the before MacGowan, was a half-dead colonial newspaper: a large border of advertis.e.m.e.nts on its front page, a small central patch of closely printed cables. MacGowan's brief was to modernize the Guardian. Guardian. He sc.r.a.pped that front page. But his taste for drama went beyond the typographical and he began to unsettle some people. Voodoo in backyards, obeah, prisoners escaping from Devil's Island, vampire bats: when the editor of the rival He sc.r.a.pped that front page. But his taste for drama went beyond the typographical and he began to unsettle some people. Voodoo in backyards, obeah, prisoners escaping from Devil's Island, vampire bats: when the editor of the rival Port of Spain Gazette Port of Spain Gazette said that MacGowan was killing the tourist trade, MacGowan sued and won. But MacGowan was more than a sensationalist. He was new to Trinidad, discovering Trinidad, and he took nothing for granted. He saw stories everywhere; he could make stories out of nothing; his paper was like a daily celebration of the varied life of the island. But sometimes his wit could run away with him; and the end came when he became involved in a lawsuit with his own employers (which the said that MacGowan was killing the tourist trade, MacGowan sued and won. But MacGowan was more than a sensationalist. He was new to Trinidad, discovering Trinidad, and he took nothing for granted. He saw stories everywhere; he could make stories out of nothing; his paper was like a daily celebration of the varied life of the island. But sometimes his wit could run away with him; and the end came when he became involved in a lawsuit with his own employers (which the Trinidad Guardian, Trinidad Guardian, MacGowan still the editor, reported at length, day after day, so that, in a perfection of the kind of journalism his employers were objecting to, the paper became its own news). MacGowan still the editor, reported at length, day after day, so that, in a perfection of the kind of journalism his employers were objecting to, the paper became its own news).

My father had written to MacGowan; and MacGowan, who had been to India and was interested in Indian matters, thought that my father should be encouraged. My father's iconoclastic views, and their journalistic possibilities, must have appealed to him. He became my father's teacher-beginning no doubt with English which, it must be remembered, was for my father an acquired language-and my father never lost his admiration and affection for the man who, as he often said, had taught him how to write. More than twenty years later, in 1951, my father wrote me: "And as to a writer being hated or liked-I think it's the other way to what you think: a man is doing his work well when people begin liking liking him. I have never forgotten what Gault MacGowan told me years ago: 'Write sympathetically'; and this, I suppose, in no way prevents us from writing truthfully, even brightly." him. I have never forgotten what Gault MacGowan told me years ago: 'Write sympathetically'; and this, I suppose, in no way prevents us from writing truthfully, even brightly."

My father began on the Guardian Guardian as the freelance contributor of a "controversial" weekly column. The column-in which I think MacGowan's improving hand can often be detected-was, provocatively, signed "The Pundit"; and my father remembered the Pundit's words well enough to give blocks of them, years later, to Mr. Sohun, the Presbyterian Indian schoolmaster, in the latter part of as the freelance contributor of a "controversial" weekly column. The column-in which I think MacGowan's improving hand can often be detected-was, provocatively, signed "The Pundit"; and my father remembered the Pundit's words well enough to give blocks of them, years later, to Mr. Sohun, the Presbyterian Indian schoolmaster, in the latter part of Gurudeva. Gurudeva Gurudeva. Gurudeva has other echoes of my father's early journalism: Gurudeva's beating up of the drunken old stick-fighter must, I feel, have its origin in the news story my father, now a regular country correspondent for the has other echoes of my father's early journalism: Gurudeva's beating up of the drunken old stick-fighter must, I feel, have its origin in the news story my father, now a regular country correspondent for the Guardian, Guardian, wrote in 1930: "Fight Challenge Accepted-Jerningham Junction 'Bully' Badly Injured-Six Men Arrested." A country brawl dramatized, the personalities brought close to the reader, made more than names in a court report: this was MacGowan's style, and it became my father's. wrote in 1930: "Fight Challenge Accepted-Jerningham Junction 'Bully' Badly Injured-Six Men Arrested." A country brawl dramatized, the personalities brought close to the reader, made more than names in a court report: this was MacGowan's style, and it became my father's.

It was through his journalism on MacGowan's Guardian Guardian that my father arrived at that vision of the countryside and its people which he later transferred to his stories. And the stories have something of the integrity of the journalism: they are written from within a community and seem to be addressed to that community: a Hindu community essentially, which, because the writer sees it as whole, he can at times make romantic and at other times satirize. There is reformist pa.s.sion; but even when there is shock there is nothing of the protest-common in early colonial writing-that implies an outside audience; the barbs are all turned inwards. This is part of the distinctiveness of the stories. I stress it because this way of looking, from being my father's, became mine: my father's early stories created my background for me. that my father arrived at that vision of the countryside and its people which he later transferred to his stories. And the stories have something of the integrity of the journalism: they are written from within a community and seem to be addressed to that community: a Hindu community essentially, which, because the writer sees it as whole, he can at times make romantic and at other times satirize. There is reformist pa.s.sion; but even when there is shock there is nothing of the protest-common in early colonial writing-that implies an outside audience; the barbs are all turned inwards. This is part of the distinctiveness of the stories. I stress it because this way of looking, from being my father's, became mine: my father's early stories created my background for me.

But it was a partial vision. A story called "Panchayat," about a family quarrel, reads like a pastoral romance: the people in that story exist completely within a Hindu culture and recognize no other. The wronged wife does not take her husband to the alien law courts; she calls a panchayat against him. The respected village elders a.s.semble; the wife and the husband state their cases without rancour; everyone is wise and dignified and acknowledges dharma, dharma, the Hindu right way, the way of piety, the old way. But Trinidad, and not India, is in the background. These people have been transported; old ways and old allegiances are being eroded fast. The setting, which is not described because it is taken for granted, is one of big estates, workers' barracks, huts. It is like the setting of "In the Village"; but that vision of material and cultural dereliction comes later, and it is some time before it can be accommodated in the stories. the Hindu right way, the way of piety, the old way. But Trinidad, and not India, is in the background. These people have been transported; old ways and old allegiances are being eroded fast. The setting, which is not described because it is taken for granted, is one of big estates, workers' barracks, huts. It is like the setting of "In the Village"; but that vision of material and cultural dereliction comes later, and it is some time before it can be accommodated in the stories.

Romance simplified; but it was a way of looking. And it was more than a seeking out of the picturesque; it was also, as I have since grown to understand, a way of concealing personal pain. My father once wrote me: "I have hardly written a story in which the princ.i.p.al characters have not been members of my own family." And the wronged wife of "Panchayat"-as I understood only the other day-was really my father's sister; the details in that story are all true. Her marriage to a Punjabi brahmin (a learned man, who could read Persian, as she told me with pride on her deathbed) was a disaster. My father suffered for her. In the story ritual blurs the pain and, fittingly, all ends well; in life the disaster continued. My father hated his father for his cruelty and meanness; yet when, in his autobiographical sketch, he came to write about his father, he wrote a tale of pure romance, in which again old ritual, lovingly described, can only lead to reconciliation. And my father, in spite of my encouragement, could never take that story any further.

He often spoke of doing an autobiographical novel. Sometimes he said it would be easy; but once he wrote that parts of it would be difficult; he would have trouble selecting the incidents. When in 1952 he sent me "My Uncle Dalloo"-which he described in another letter, apologetically, as a sketch-he wrote: "I'd like you to read it carefully, and if you think it good enough, send it to Mr Swanzy, with a note that it's from me; and that it is part of a chapter of a novel I'm doing. Indeed, this is what I aim to do with it. As soon as you can, get working on a novel. Write of things as they are happening now, be realistic, humorous when this comes in pat, but don't make it deliberately so. If you are at a loss for a theme, take me for it. Begin: 'He sat before the little table writing down the animal counterparts of all his wife's family. He was very a.n.a.lytical about it. He wanted to be correct; went to work like a scientist. He wrote, "The She-Fox," then "The Scorpion"; at the end of five minutes he produced a list which read as follows: ...' All this is just a jest, but you can really do it."

But for him it wasn't a jest. Once romance and its simplifications had been left behind, these little impulses of caricature (no more than impulses, and sometimes written out in letters to me), the opposite of MacGowan's "Write sympathetically," were all he could manage when he came to consider himself and the course of his life. He wrote up the animal-counterparts episode himself (I am sure he was writing it when he wrote that letter to me) and made it part of Gurudeva, Gurudeva, which had become his fictional hold-all. But even there the episode is sudden and out of character. There is something unresolved about it; the pa.s.sion is raw and comes out, damagingly, as a piece of gratuitous cruelty on the part of the writer. My father was unhappy about the episode; but he could do no more with it. And this was in the last year of his life, when as a writer-but only looking away from himself-he could acknowledge some of the pain about his family he had once tried to hide, and was able to blend romance and the later vision of dereliction into a purer kind of comedy. which had become his fictional hold-all. But even there the episode is sudden and out of character. There is something unresolved about it; the pa.s.sion is raw and comes out, damagingly, as a piece of gratuitous cruelty on the part of the writer. My father was unhappy about the episode; but he could do no more with it. And this was in the last year of his life, when as a writer-but only looking away from himself-he could acknowledge some of the pain about his family he had once tried to hide, and was able to blend romance and the later vision of dereliction into a purer kind of comedy.

It is my father's sister-once the wronged wife of "Panchayat," a figure of sorrow in a cla.s.sical Hindu tableau-who ten years afterwards appears as a road-mender's wife in another story and acts as a kind of comic chorus: the road-mender was the man of lesser caste with whom she went to live after she had separated from her first husband, the Punjabi brahmin. Ramdas of "Ramdas and the Cow"-the Hindu tormented by the possession of a sixty-dollar cow which turns out to be barren-is my father's elder brother in middle age.

The comedy was for others. My father remained unwilling to look at his own life. All that material, which might have committed him to longer work and a longer view, remained locked up and unused. Certain things can never become material. My father never in his life reached that point of rest from which he could look back at his past. His last years, when he found his voice as a writer, were years of especial distress and anxiety; he was part of the dereliction he wrote about.

My father's elder brother, at the end of his life, was enraged, as I have said. This st.u.r.dy old man, whose life might have been judged a success, was broken by memories of his childhood; self-knowledge had come to him late. My father's own crisis had come at an earlier age; it had been hastened by his journalism. One day in 1934, when he was twenty-eight, five years after he had been writing for the Guardian, Guardian, and some months after Gault MacGowan had left the paper and Trinidad, my father looked in the mirror and thought he couldn't see himself. It was the beginning of a long mental illness that caused him for a time to be unemployed, and as dependent as he had been in his childhood. It was after his recovery that he began writing stories and set himself the goal of the book. and some months after Gault MacGowan had left the paper and Trinidad, my father looked in the mirror and thought he couldn't see himself. It was the beginning of a long mental illness that caused him for a time to be unemployed, and as dependent as he had been in his childhood. It was after his recovery that he began writing stories and set himself the goal of the book.

3.

SHORTLY BEFORE he died, in 1953, my father a.s.sembled all the stories he wanted to keep and sent them to me. He wanted me to get them published as a book. Publication for him, the real book, meant publication in London. But I did not think the stories publishable outside Trinidad, and I did nothing about them. he died, in 1953, my father a.s.sembled all the stories he wanted to keep and sent them to me. He wanted me to get them published as a book. Publication for him, the real book, meant publication in London. But I did not think the stories publishable outside Trinidad, and I did nothing about them.

The stories, especially the early ones, in which I felt I had partic.i.p.ated, never ceased to be important to me. But as the years pa.s.sed-and although I cannibalized his autobiographical sketch for the beginning of one of my own books-my attachment to the stories became sentimental. I valued them less for what they were (or the memory of what they were) than for what, long before, they had given me: a way of looking, an example of labour, a knowledge of the literary process, a sense of the order and special reality (at once simpler and sharper than life) that written words could be seen to create. I thought of them, as I thought of my father's letters, as a private possession.

But the memory of my father's 1943 booklet, Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales, Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales, has never altogether died in Trinidad. Twelve years after his death, my father's stories were remembered by Henry Swanzy in a has never altogether died in Trinidad. Twelve years after his death, my father's stories were remembered by Henry Swanzy in a New Statesman New Statesman issue on Commonwealth writing. In Trinidad itself the att.i.tude to local writing has changed. And my own view has grown longer. I no longer look in the stories for what isn't there; and I see them now as a valuable part of the literature of the region. issue on Commonwealth writing. In Trinidad itself the att.i.tude to local writing has changed. And my own view has grown longer. I no longer look in the stories for what isn't there; and I see them now as a valuable part of the literature of the region.

They are a unique record of the life of the Indian or Hindu community in Trinidad in the first fifty years of the century. They move from a comprehension of the old India in which the community is at first embedded to an understanding of the colonial Trinidad which defines itself as their background, into which they then emerge. To write about a community which has not been written about is not easy. To write about this community was especially difficult; it required unusual knowledge and an unusual breadth of sympathy.

And the writer himself was part of the process of change. This wasn't always clear to me. But I find it remarkable now that a writer, beginning in the old Hindu world, one isolated segment of it, where all the answers had been given and the rituals perfected, and where, apart from religious texts, the only writings known were the old epics of the Ramayana Ramayana and the and the Mahabharat; Mahabharat; leaving that to enter a new world and a new language; using simple, easily detectable models-Pearl Buck, O. Henry; I find it remarkable that such a writer, working always in isolation, should have gone so far. I don't think my father read Gogol; but these stories, at their best, have something of the quality of the Ukrainian stories Gogol wrote when he was a very young man. There is the same eye that lingers lovingly over what might at first seem nondescript. Landscape, dwellings, people: there is the same a.s.sembling of sharp detail. The drama lies in that; when what has been relished is recorded and fixed, the story is over. leaving that to enter a new world and a new language; using simple, easily detectable models-Pearl Buck, O. Henry; I find it remarkable that such a writer, working always in isolation, should have gone so far. I don't think my father read Gogol; but these stories, at their best, have something of the quality of the Ukrainian stories Gogol wrote when he was a very young man. There is the same eye that lingers lovingly over what might at first seem nondescript. Landscape, dwellings, people: there is the same a.s.sembling of sharp detail. The drama lies in that; when what has been relished is recorded and fixed, the story is over.

Gogol at the beginning of his writing life, my father at the end of his: even if the comparison is just, it can mislead. After his young man's comedy and satire, after the discovery and exercise of his talent, Gogol had Russia to fall back on and claim. It was the other way with my father. From a vision of a whole Hindu society he moved, through reformist pa.s.sion, which was an expression of his brahmin confidence, to a vision of disorder and dest.i.tution, of which he discovered himself to be part. At the end he had nothing to claim; it was out of this that he created comedy.

The process is ill.u.s.trated by Gurudeva. Gurudeva. This story isn't satisfactory, especially in some of its later sections; and my father knew it. Part of the trouble is that the story was written in two stages. The early sections, which were written in 19412, tell of the beginnings of a village strongman. The character (based, remotely, on someone who had married into my mother's family but had then been expelled from it, the mention of his name forbidden) is not as negligible as he might appear now. He belongs to the early 1930s and, in those days of restricted franchise, he might have developed (as the original threatened to develop) into a district politician. Although in the story he is simplified, and his idea of manhood ridiculed as thuggery and a perversion of the caste instinct, Gurudeva is felt to be a figure. And in its selection of strong, brief incidents, its gradual peopling of an apparently self-contained Indian countryside (other communities are far away), this part of the story is like the beginning of a rural epic. This story isn't satisfactory, especially in some of its later sections; and my father knew it. Part of the trouble is that the story was written in two stages. The early sections, which were written in 19412, tell of the beginnings of a village strongman. The character (based, remotely, on someone who had married into my mother's family but had then been expelled from it, the mention of his name forbidden) is not as negligible as he might appear now. He belongs to the early 1930s and, in those days of restricted franchise, he might have developed (as the original threatened to develop) into a district politician. Although in the story he is simplified, and his idea of manhood ridiculed as thuggery and a perversion of the caste instinct, Gurudeva is felt to be a figure. And in its selection of strong, brief incidents, its gradual peopling of an apparently self-contained Indian countryside (other communities are far away), this part of the story is like the beginning of a rural epic.

Ten years later, when my father returned to the story (and brought Gurudeva back from jail, where in 1942 he had sent him), the epic tone couldn't be sustained. Gurudeva's Indian world was not as stable as Gurudeva, or the writer, thought. The society had been undermined; its values had to compete with other values; the world outside the village could no longer be denied. As seen in 19502, Gurudeva, the caste bully of the 1930s, becomes an easy target. Too easy: the irony and awe with which he had been handled in the first part of the story turn to broad satire, and the satire defeats itself.

Mr. Sohun the schoolmaster, the Presbyterian convert, holds himself up, and is held up by the writer, as a rational man, freed from Hindu prejudice and obscurantism. But Mr. Sohun, whose words in the 1930s might have seemed wise, is himself now seen more clearly. It is hinted-he hints himself: my father makes him talk too much-that he is of low caste. His Presbyterianism is more than an escape from this: it is, as Gurudeva says with sly compa.s.sion, Mr. Sohun's bread and b.u.t.ter, a condition of his employment as a teacher in the Canadian Mission school. Mr. Sohun's son has the un-Indian name of Ellway. But the boy so defiantly named doesn't seem to have done much or to have much to do. When Gurudeva calls, Ellway is at home, noisily knocking up fowl-coops: the detail sticks out.

In fact, the erosion of the old society has exposed Mr. Sohun, and the writer, as much as Gurudeva. The writer senses this; his att.i.tude to Gurudeva changes. The story jumps from the 1930s to the late 1940s. Gurudeva, no longer a caste bully and a threat, becomes a figure of comedy; and, curiously, his stature grows. He is written into the story of "Ramdas and the Cow" (originally an independent story); turning satirist himself, he writes down the animal counterparts of his wife's family and begins to approximate to his creator; at the end, abandoned by wife and girlfriend and left alone, he is a kind of brahmin, an upholder of what remains of old values, but powerless. He has travelled the way of his baffled creator.

Writers need a source of strength other than that which they find in their talent. Literary talent doesn't exist by itself; it feeds on a society and depends for its development on the nature of that society. What is true of my father is true of other writers of the region. The writer begins with his talent, finds confidence in his talent, but then discovers that it isn't enough, that, in a society as deformed as ours, by the exercise of his talent he has set himself adrift.