Scenes from Early Life by Philip Hensher

Author:Philip Hensher [Hensher, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

How Amit Went to Calcutta

1.

At the school where Amit taught, there was a new teacher. He was a man in early middle age called Khadim Hussain. He was said to be an English master although, as far as Amit knew, no English master had left and none needed replacing.

The headmaster, Mr D. B. Chakravarty, introduced Khadim Hussain at a short meeting of all the staff. Mr D. B. Chakravarty usually did this but always before, when introducing a new member of staff, he had taken the opportunity to talk about the ethos of the school, the high standards it had maintained, and his hopes for its future. The school had been set up in the British time, and Mr D. B. Chakravarty was very keen on the idea that it had managed to maintain the best standards of the past to build a better nation for the future.

Amit had heard this speech several times before. It had been made when he himself had been introduced to the rest of the staff. He had wondered at the time what application it had to him personally, but had been flattered by such fine-sounding phrases. On subsequent occasions, Mr D. B. Chakravarty had made very much the same speech over the head of a series of different new teachers. Mr D. B. Chakravarty’s speeches at Founder’s Day, when the boys placed a garland of orange blossom around the marble neck of the bust in the great hall, were not intended for the boys whom they seemed to address. They were intended for the parents of the boys, who would understand what a good-quality education their sons were receiving. In the same way, when Mr D. B. Chakravarty made these speeches on the arrival of a new member of staff, they were intended to remind the rest of the staff of how they should behave, and the standards they were expected to keep up. The school was a good one, and the headmaster had succeeded, during his twenty years in post, in maintaining the standards he regularly proclaimed.

Khadim Hussain entered the staff quarters with Mr D. B. Chakravarty. They made a small kind of pantomime of politeness at the door: Mr D. B. Chakravarty offered to give way to this unfamiliar face. The unfamiliar face, a thin, alert face with hair divided down the middle, a large nose, thin eyebrows and not very good, rather broken teeth as he smiled, gave a generally not very trustworthy impression. The person insisted, as Mr D. B. Chakravarty offered to follow him into the room, on giving way to the headmaster. But he did so in a smiling, insincerely respectful way. It was not the way of a junior teacher. Amit had the impression, watching this performance, that this person was a government inspector of some sort.

And Mr D. B. Chakravarty did not make his normal speech of welcome and exhortation, but merely said, in a brief way, that this was Mr Khadim Hussain; that he

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