The Trotter-Nama by I. Allan SealyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a book that can really be appreciated only by Indians. It is tour de force of India during the British Raj and post-Independence times about a section of the population that were neither colonists nor colonizers. It has echoes of Norman Mailer, Rushdie’s magic realism and bit of Joycean stream of consciousness. The style ranges from the cryptic in its brevity to the verbose at the other extreme. Here are the choicest bits from an interminable olla podrida of a miasma of mephitic odours (Warning: not for the faint-hearted):
What was this? A stink, foul and sewage, was coiling in his nostrils, an odour to which every pestilential thing in India seemed to have contributed its part.
The vapour of privies … the sweat of bird-catchers, the lime of seducers, the lint of navels … the footbaths of postmen… the oilings of lechers, the slime of ruttings… the navel-cords od outcastes … the swabs of morticians, the sweeping of barbershops, the flushings of abattoirs, the slop of stews, the parings of pariahs, the dressings of doctors … the findings of ear-cleaners, the leavings of surgeons … the waterbrash of lalas … the mange of muskrats … the semen of eunuchs… the spittle of mendicants, the turds of soldiers … the scabs of traitors… the blisters of table-masters, the phlegm of palki-bearers, the ordure of chamberpots … the dunnage of pyres, the rankling of boils … the disjecta of ragmen… the heavings of gluttons …the retchings of beggars, the warts of harlots… the matter of sores, the armpit hair of cowards… the cuckings of cloaca, the cotton of monthly-pads
There are two pages devoted to every possible source of a foul odour found uniquely in India.
Here are the dyspeptic consequences of a night of gluttony:
The double-onion mutton curry and the Goanese masala fish of the fourth setting were doing noisy battle in his stomach, on top of which there were flanking movements by a luscious date halva, itself harassed by an insurgent khir. He tossed and groaned on his bed, now rolling himself into a ball, now lying on his back with his feet straight out, now stretched diagonally across the bed with one knee bent and his arms spread like a trapeze artist.
The author accurately observes the Indian obsession with ‘convent education’:
A matrimonial ad in the Sunday paper, after describing the bride-to-be as very fair, beautiful, and homely (meaning house-trained), clinched the business with convented. Naturally, convents multiplied all across the country, most without any trace of a nun, and one of them named, memorably, BLONDIE CONVENT. Others, less fastidious, settled for plain SCHOOL, but since recognition was important their signs said: LOVELY SCHOOL, English-Medium (Recognized by the Petroleum Corporation), or SAINTLY HEART SCHOOL, English-Medium (Recognized by the Pulp Mill), or, with disarming modesty, NICE SCHOOL (English-Recognized).
"House-trained"? Is the ad for a bride or a dog? Viva Indianisms! It is cameos like this that make for engrossing and hilarious reading.
Conversations ending with men as a punctuation mark takes me back to my school-days – this is how all of us spoke, including our teachers.
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