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Shama
Savi is Mr Biswas’s eldest daughter, whom he intended to name “Sarojini Lakshmi Kamala Devi,” but Seth and Hari legally named “Basso” instead. While Mr Biswas lived at The Chase, she was born at Hanuman House, where her mother and aunts cared dearly for her, and her father barely visited her until she was old enough to go to school. In an attempt to “claim” her, Mr Biswas buys her an extravagant dollhouse for a month’s wages one Christmas, but Shama quickly dismantles it after it causes too much infighting among the sisters and children. Mr Biswas brings her to Green Vale afterwards, but she has nothing to do there and nothing in common with her father, so she quickly returns home to Hanuman House. Eventually, however, she takes a liking to Port of Spain and moves there enthusiastically, coming to see herself as superior to her backwards cousins in the countryside. At first, she is confident, proud, and mean to her “coward” brother Anand, but eventually she becomes meek and self-effacing, particularly after embarrassing the family during a singing performance and finding school more difficult than Anand. She goes abroad to study on scholarship and returns in the Epilogue; she grows very close to her dying father, finds a lucrative job, and appears poised to save the family’s finances at the end of the book.
Savi Quotes in A House for Mr Biswas
The A House for Mr Biswas quotes below are all either spoken by Savi or refer to Savi. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 1, Chapter 4
Quotes
Real calling name: Lakshmi. Signed by Mohun Biswas, father.
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Part 2, Chapter 4
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It was now that he began to speak to his children of his childhood. He told them of the hut, the men digging in the garden at night; he told them of the oil that was later found on the land. What fortune might have been theirs, if only his father had not died, if only he had stuck to the land like his brothers, if he had not gone to Pagotes, not become a sign-writer, not gone to Hanuman House, not married! If only so many things had not happened!
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Mr Biswas went past Dehuti to look at the body. Then he did not wish to see it again. But always, as he wandered about the yard among the mourners, he was aware of the body. He was oppressed by a sense of loss: not of present loss, but of something missed in the past. He would have liked to be alone, to commune with this feeling. But time was short, and always there was the sight of Shama and the children, alien growths, alien affections, which fed on him and called him away from that part of him which yet remained purely himself, that part which had for long been submerged and was now to disappear.
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Savi Quotes in A House for Mr Biswas
The A House for Mr Biswas quotes below are all either spoken by Savi or refer to Savi. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 1, Chapter 4
Quotes
Real calling name: Lakshmi. Signed by Mohun Biswas, father.
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Part 2, Chapter 4
Quotes
It was now that he began to speak to his children of his childhood. He told them of the hut, the men digging in the garden at night; he told them of the oil that was later found on the land. What fortune might have been theirs, if only his father had not died, if only he had stuck to the land like his brothers, if he had not gone to Pagotes, not become a sign-writer, not gone to Hanuman House, not married! If only so many things had not happened!
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Mr Biswas went past Dehuti to look at the body. Then he did not wish to see it again. But always, as he wandered about the yard among the mourners, he was aware of the body. He was oppressed by a sense of loss: not of present loss, but of something missed in the past. He would have liked to be alone, to commune with this feeling. But time was short, and always there was the sight of Shama and the children, alien growths, alien affections, which fed on him and called him away from that part of him which yet remained purely himself, that part which had for long been submerged and was now to disappear.
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