He: (Shey) (Modern Classics (Penguin)) Read Online Free PDF Page B

great good fortune to have found such a person to help me make up my impossible tales. I sometimes present this native of Make-Believe-and-Wonder Land before Pupu-didi—her eyes grow round with pleasure when she sees him. In her delight, she stuffs him with specially ordered jalebis. 11 He loves jalebis with a passion, and the chamcham 12 sold in Sikdarpara Lane. Pupudidi asks him, ‘Where do you live?’ He replies, ‘In Which Town, down Question-Mark Alley.’
    Why do I refuse to reveal his name? Perhaps I’m afraid that if I tell you his name, he’ll come to rest within his name alone. In all the world, there can be only one me, and only one you; everyone else belongs to ‘them’. In this story of mine, He stands surety for all of ‘them’.
    It would be wrong not to tell you one thing, which is that those who judge him from this drama built up around him judge wrongly. Those who have actually seen him know that he’s tall and well built, his features grave. Just as the night is lit up by the glow of countless stars, hidden laughter lurks behind his pretence of gravity. He is a person of the very highest order; all our joking can’t demean him. I enjoy disguising him as a fool, because, actually, he’s far cleverer than I am. If we pretend he doesn’t understand anything, it doesn’t hurt his dignity. Rather, it’s convenient, as it helps him match Pupu’s temperament.
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    1 Tepantar : a vast, faraway, mythical plain, often mentioned in Bengali folk tales.
    2 Jamewar : a kind of intricately embroidered shawl or quilt.
    3 Yama : the Hindu god of death.
    4 Chitragupta : Yama’s scribe, who records people’s deeds for judgement after
death.
    5 Pupe-didi : Didi means ‘elder sister’, but is used affectionately by grandparents
to address their granddaughters.‘Pupe’ and ‘Pupu’ are variant forms of the
same pet name.
    6 Mohun Bagan : a famous Calcutta football club.
    7 Bhim Nag : an old and popular Calcutta sweet shop.
    8 Din-da : the form of address Pupe used for Dinendranath Tagore, Rabindranath’s great-nephew, a noted singer and musician.
    9 Kanchrapara for the Kumbh Mela : a town to the north of Calcutta. Facetiously said to be a site of the Kumbh Mela, a fair held as part of a pilgrimage in four holy places (Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik) in rotation.
    10 Doctor Nilratan : Nilratan Sarkar, a famous physician, founder of the present R.G. Kar Medical College in Calcutta.
    11 jalebi : a syrupy fried sweet popular in Bengal and North India.
    12 chamcham : another popular Bengali sweet.

2
    PUPU-DIDI HAS GONE TO DARJEELING. HE REMAINS AT SCRUBHEAD LANE in my care. He’s moping. I’m irritated too. ‘Send me to Darjeeling,’ he whined.
    ‘Why?’ I asked.
    He explained, ‘I’m a grown man, yet I’m sitting at home without work. My relatives say all kinds of nasty things.’
    ‘What work are you thinking of doing?’
    ‘Pupu-didi likes to play at cooking, and I’ll chop up the paper she cooks.’
    ‘You won’t be able to stand such labour. Let’s see you keep quiet for a bit. I’m writing a history of Hoonhau Island.’
    ‘Hoonhau? The name sounds good, Dada. It’s more suited to my pen than yours. Could you give me some idea of the subject?’
    ‘No joking! It’s a very serious subject. I hope to have my essay accepted as a college text. A group of scientists have settled on this otherwise uninhabited island. They’re performing a very difficult experiment.’
    ‘Put it more simply, will you—what exactly are they doing? Testing some new method of farming?’
    ‘Quite the reverse. Their work has no connection with agriculture.’
    ‘How do they arrange for food?’
    ‘No arrangements.’
    ‘Then how do they stay alive?’
    ‘That’s the most trivial of considerations. They’ve launched a campaign of resistance to the digestive organs. They’ve declared nothing’s as convoluted as the stomach. The causes of most maladies, wars and robberies are rooted