320
VICTOR ANANT
British seems to imply that one does not ask fundamental ques–
tions. I read American reviews more seriously than I do British
ones. And as for food I often cook an Indian meal for myself,
and find that I cannot drink beer because it upsets my stomach.
What about the "intangible" advantages?
It is
mainly in
my relationship to the English language that I find a curious
change, a certain kind of revulsion at the way the language is
used in England. During my early days here, walking down Soho,
I was appalled when I was hailed by a prostitute with the words,
"Want to come home, darling?" and, a little further along,
"Want a short time, darling?" Home-and a short time-what
ghastly words to associate with going to a harlot! I am sure that
if this is the vocabulary of sex there can be no genuine whores
in England. My second shock was to hear a middle-class girl of
reasonable intelligence describe a weekly picture magazine as a
"book." My third was to see a debutante arrive at a party and
announce, "I think I'll traipse over and perch on that seat." Mr.
Dwight Macdonald reproduced a classic English conversation in
an article in
Encounter.
It went: "Is it raining?" "Not really."
I have now decided that what I need to protect myself from
is the danger of writing
in
English; I want to write English; I
want to write
badly in English.
The Christian spell, my second main source of "intangible"
anxiety, is, I now discover, one that was cast by the greatest
Christian this age has produced, Gandhi. Influenced by Tolstoy,
Gandhi modelled himself closely, as I now see, on the life of
Christ. His "miracle," to make salt from sea water the staff of
life for India's multitudes, his days of silence, his abandoning the
first civil disobedience movement to go into solitary retreat, all
these were clearly derived from Christ's manoeuvers. His language
was deliberately biblical. And I think the reason why Gandhi
terrified Britain was that he used a Christian conscience against
a power that was Christian.
Political disillusionment came with the understanding that
there was not the slightest shred of charity in the manner in which
India was partitioned, and that if power was transferred, for any
reason at all, is was because it was too expensive maintaining an
Empire.
