A house for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul

Author:V. S. Naipaul
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Autobiography, Home ownership, Journalists, East Indians - Trinidad and Tobago, East Indians, Humorous, Middle aged men, Middle-aged men, Homeowners, Editors, Fiction, Literary, Biography & Autobiography, Trinidad and Tobago, Publishers, Humorous fiction, General, Domestic fiction, Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago)
ISBN: 9780375707162
Publisher: New York : Vintage International, 2001.
Published: 2001-01-15T09:11:27.242000+00:00

‘Savi, what you drinking?’

‘Ovaltine.’

‘Anand, what you drinking?’

‘Ovaltine.’

‘It nice?’

‘Very nice.’

‘Ma, Savi and Anand drinking Ovaltine. Their pappa give it to them.’

‘Well, let me tell you, eh, boy, your father is not a millionaire to give you Ovaltine. You hear?’

And the next day:

‘Jai, what you drinking?’

‘Ovaltine, like you.’

‘Vidiadhar, you drinking Ovaltine too?’

‘No. We drinking Milo. We like it better.’

Mr Biswas came out from the Blue Room to the drawingroom with the thronelike chairs and the statuary. He felt safe and even a little adventurous. He went through to the wooden house. In the verandah Hari was reading. Instinctively Mr Biswas took a step back. Then he remembered there was no need. The two men looked at one another and looked away again.

Leaning on the verandah half-wall, with his back to Hari, Mr Biswas thought about Hari’s position in the family. Hari spent all his free time reading. He used this reading for nothing; he disliked disputation of any sort. No one was able to check his knowledge of Sanskrit and his scholarship had to be taken on trust. Yet he was respected inside the family and outside it. How did Hari get to that position? Mr Biswas wondered. Where did he start?

What would happen if he, Mr Biswas, made a sudden appearance in the hall in dhoti and beads and sacred thread? Let his top-knot grow again, as it had grown at Pundit Jairam’s. Would Hanuman House care to have two sick scholars? But he couldn’t see himself as a holy man for long. Sooner or later someone was bound to surprise him, in dhoti, top-knot, sacred thread and caste-marks, reading The Manxman or The Atom.

Speculating about this, he reviewed his situation. He was the father of four children, and his position was as it had been when he was seventeen, unmarried and ignorant of the Tulsis. He had no vocation, no reliable means of earning a living. The job at Green Vale was over; he could not rest in the Blue Room forever; soon he would have to make a decision. Yet he felt no anxiety. The second to second agony and despair of those days at Green Vale had given him an experience of unhappiness against which everything had now to be measured. He was more fortunate than most people. His children would never starve; they would always be sheltered and clothed. It didn’t matter if he were at Green Vale or Arwacas, if he were alive or dead.

His money dwindled: Ovaltine, Ferrol, Sanatogen; the doctor’s fees, the midwife’s, the thaumaturge’s. And there was no more money to come.

One evening Seth said, ‘That tin of Ovaltine could very well be your last, if you don’t decide to do something.’

Decide. What was there to decide?

There was room for him at Hanuman House if he stayed. If he left he would not be missed. He had not claimed his children; they avoided him and were embarrassed when they met him.

But it was only when Seth said, ‘Mai and Owad are coming home

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