Agastya was reminded of Joshi's room on the first day, and Ahmed's voice dropping to a hush to pronounce 'Mrs'; to all the admission of conjugality seemed a cause for embarrassment. ‘What's your full name?’ Mrs Srivastav was wearing a black bra beneath a yellow blouse. Agastya sneered at Menon (startling him a little), that would be a hilarious dress sense in Trinity, but it's OK in Madna, no?
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'How old are you, sir?’
'Twenty-eight. 'Agastya was twenty-four, but he was in a lying mood. He also disliked their faces.
'Are you married, sir?' Again that demand that he classify himself. Ahmed leaned forward for each question, neck tensed and head angled with politeness.
'Yes.' He wondered for a second whether he should add 'twice'.
'And your Mrs, sir?' Agarwal's voice dropped at 'Mrs'; in all those months all references to wives were in hushed, almost embarrassed, tones. Agastya never knew why, perhaps because to have a wife meant that one was fucking, which was a dirty thing.
'She's in England. She's English, anyway, but she's gone there for a cancer operation. She has cancer of the breast.' He had an almost uncontrollable impulse to spread out his fingers to show the size of the tumour and then the size of the breast, but he decided to save that for later. Later in his training he told the District Inspector of Land Records that his wife was a Norwegian Muslim.
Well well…these are excerpts from English August…where Chatterji tells the story of this Agastya Sen, a young civil servant posted for his training in a nondescript district in India. And I am not trying my hand at writing a review of this novel. There are plenty in the internet. What fascinated me is the role of the ‘Mrs’ (the bitter halves-as they say) of these Babus depicted in the novel.
“We will have to speed up things as I have to pack my stuff for the forthcoming holidays and go to the market to shop for some important stuff.”
Isn’t this the much-conceived image of a bureaucrat’s wife enjoying the pleasure of bossing around the fleet of servants? Well…that’s what Suchita Malik wanted to prove wrong in her maiden attempt ‘Indian memsahib.’ In India, being the wife of a bureaucrat comes across as the best fortune (unfortunately, this mindset is rampant even today). She tried to highlight the wives struggle… involved in adjusting one’s career, routine and even social circle according to the husband’s status. Indian Memsahib: The untold story of a bureaucrat's wife... depicts the roller-coaster journey of Sunaina, a bureaucrat’s wife. (But as one reads the book, one discovers.. more than the untold story of the wife, it’s actually Raghu, her husband’s life being described for most of the book—the most common problem with Indian wives, can’t stop discussing their husbands).
(Unlike English August, people hardly know about this Indian Memsahib. Nevertheless, have to say, the latter gave a better description of the ‘Mrs’ of the August *servants*)
----------
'How old are you, sir?’
'Twenty-eight. 'Agastya was twenty-four, but he was in a lying mood. He also disliked their faces.
'Are you married, sir?' Again that demand that he classify himself. Ahmed leaned forward for each question, neck tensed and head angled with politeness.
'Yes.' He wondered for a second whether he should add 'twice'.
'And your Mrs, sir?' Agarwal's voice dropped at 'Mrs'; in all those months all references to wives were in hushed, almost embarrassed, tones. Agastya never knew why, perhaps because to have a wife meant that one was fucking, which was a dirty thing.
'She's in England. She's English, anyway, but she's gone there for a cancer operation. She has cancer of the breast.' He had an almost uncontrollable impulse to spread out his fingers to show the size of the tumour and then the size of the breast, but he decided to save that for later. Later in his training he told the District Inspector of Land Records that his wife was a Norwegian Muslim.
Well well…these are excerpts from English August…where Chatterji tells the story of this Agastya Sen, a young civil servant posted for his training in a nondescript district in India. And I am not trying my hand at writing a review of this novel. There are plenty in the internet. What fascinated me is the role of the ‘Mrs’ (the bitter halves-as they say) of these Babus depicted in the novel.
“We will have to speed up things as I have to pack my stuff for the forthcoming holidays and go to the market to shop for some important stuff.”
Isn’t this the much-conceived image of a bureaucrat’s wife enjoying the pleasure of bossing around the fleet of servants? Well…that’s what Suchita Malik wanted to prove wrong in her maiden attempt ‘Indian memsahib.’ In India, being the wife of a bureaucrat comes across as the best fortune (unfortunately, this mindset is rampant even today). She tried to highlight the wives struggle… involved in adjusting one’s career, routine and even social circle according to the husband’s status. Indian Memsahib: The untold story of a bureaucrat's wife... depicts the roller-coaster journey of Sunaina, a bureaucrat’s wife. (But as one reads the book, one discovers.. more than the untold story of the wife, it’s actually Raghu, her husband’s life being described for most of the book—the most common problem with Indian wives, can’t stop discussing their husbands).
(Unlike English August, people hardly know about this Indian Memsahib. Nevertheless, have to say, the latter gave a better description of the ‘Mrs’ of the August *servants*)
1 comment:
Nice one. In today's world most of the women have careers of their own and it is a different struggle altogether to reconcile their career with the tumultous life of an 'honest' bureaucrat.
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