A House for Mr Biswas: Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

“Hanuman House stood like an alien white fortress” in Arwacas, with the Tulsi Store downstairs and a statue of “the benevolent monkey-god Hanuman” standing on the roof, barely visible and vaguely sinister. The “pious, conservative, landowning” Tulsis were descended from the famous Pundit Tulsi, about whom “an irreverent and extremely popular song” was penned after his death in a car accident. Nobody knew why he came to Trinidad as a laborer—his family was prominent in India and, as a result, his family was revered in Trinidad too.

An intimidating Tulsi named Seth hired Mr Biswas at a paltry rate to paint some signs for the windowless and awkwardly-shaped Tulsi Store. As he painted, Mr Biswas secretly watched the unmarried Tulsi girls who worked in the store, and especially the beautiful Shama, who was about sixteen. Because her relatives were all over the store, he felt uncomfortable talking to her, and when she noticed him staring he pretended to whistle and look the other way. But Shama glanced back, too, and so upon returning to Pagotes Mr Biswas announced to Alec, “I got a girl in Arwacas,” to his friend’s delight. News quickly spread, and although Bhandat’s older son (Jagdat) openly bragged of his illegitimate child with a woman of a different race, Bhandat’s younger son (Rabidat) questioned whether Mr Biswas was telling the truth.

The next day, when the Tulsi Store closed down for lunch, Mr Biswas slipped a note to Shama, who smiled mockingly at him before turning to a client, “a fat Negro woman” looking for “flesh-coloured stockings.” Shama pulled out a pair of black cotton stockings, and the woman grew furious, throwing boxes onto the floor and frightening Shama. This made Mr Biswas even more ashamed, and upon noticing that the commotion had thrown the note into the open he went to hide it—but the woman stood in the way, and the stoic Mrs Tulsi, adorned in as much jewelry as Tara, came inside to speak with her.

As Mrs Tulsi stood behind the desk, right next to the note—“I love you and I want to talk to you”—Mr Biswas was convinced that she had found it. She shouted obscenities at Shama in Hindi and gave the woman a free pair of stockings; Shama’s tears made Mr Biswas lose all affection for her. He went to a nearby café and ate a deeply unsatisfying sardine roll, feeling grateful that he did not sign his name on the note. Upon his return to the store, Shama was gone and nobody bothered him as he painted “BARGAINS! BARGAINS!” on a misshapen column. At the end of the day, Seth came inside, muddy and stained, to request in English that Mr Biswas talk with Mrs Tulsi.

Seth led Mr Biswas out the back door to a “damp, gloomy courtyard” and left him in the ugly grey wooden house behind it. He was surprised at the house’s walls—the wooden ones had deteriorated, and those in the dark kitchen were mud—and the juxtaposition of deteriorating and elegant furniture in the main hall.

Mrs Tulsi sauntered down the stairs, holding the note. Mr Biswas denied writing it but Mrs Tulsi said that someone saw him put it down. The children rushed inside, home from school, alongside Seth, who told Mr Biswas the note was “nothing to be ashamed about.” This astonished the boy, who expected to be kicked out forever, and then Shama’s sisters brought him food, which he was reluctant to eat.

Seth suggested that he might know Mr Biswas’s family and asked who his father was—Mr Biswas simply responded that he was Ajodha’s nephew, and Seth said he remembered selling Ajodha some land. C, one of Shama’s sisters, brought Mr Biswas some tea with “a frank, unimpressed stare,” and her smiling, sunburnt husband (Govind) soon came inside and told Seth how their animals were faring. Mr Biswas wondered whether the couples had their own rooms and where the children lived.

Mrs Tulsi asked Mr Biswas whether he liked “the child” and he affirmed that he did. Seth offered to speak to Ajodha and insisted that Shama was “a good child” with “a little bit of reading and writing even.” Dodging the question of whether Shama liked Mr Biswas back, Seth assured Mr Biswas that they were not “forcing” him. Mrs Tulsi called him shy, but Mr Biswas suddenly shouted back that he was not—only that he did not have the money to think about marriage. Mrs Tulsi ensured him that it did not matter.

With the children running about, Mr Biswas “felt trapped,” for “the world was too small, the Tulsi family too large.” (For years, at night when he slept alone and Shama with the children, he regretted “his weakness, his inarticulateness, that evening!”) And the most absurd part of all was that he was overjoyed on his way back to Pagotes. He still felt strong-armed by the Tulsis, but he was elated that “he had been involved in large events. He felt he had achieved status.”

Mr Biswas’s route home passed “ambitious, incomplete, unpainted, often skeletal” wooden houses that deteriorated as their impoverished owners lived in only a few rooms. Mr Biswas felt “he had by one stroke made himself exempt” from the failure they represented and eagerly reported to Alec that he had met his girl’s mother and would soon marry into her wealthy family. As he secretly wondered that night whether he should really return, he began to feel “that it was he who had acted,” and that he must have done so in good conscience. Shama was beautiful and her dowry would be significant, but Mr Biswas still felt “he would be losing romance forever.”

In the morning, feeling that all was normal, Mr Biswas returned to work at the Tulsi Store and ate a lunch he did not much enjoy, on brass plates he did not much enjoy, with the family. He noticed a photograph of Pundit Tulsi on the wall, and Mrs Tulsi reminisced solemnly about his protectiveness and decency, mentioning that he built the house with his own hands—out of clay brick that he made in the backyard, which the family calls Ceylon—and then died suddenly right before the family was about to travel to India, leaving the family penniless and two sons unmarried.

Their family’s sudden poverty was no big deal, affirmed Mrs Tulsi, for they did not much care about “drums and dancing and big dowry” at weddings. Mr Biswas agreed that this fanfare was irrelevant and she compared him to Pundit Tulsi, whose photographs were scattered all over the wall. Mrs Tulsi praises Mr Biswas’s “good blood,” and he agreed that “a simple little ceremony at the registrar’s office” would suffice.

When Mr Biswas left Hanuman House, he realized that marriage would create enormous problems for him: where he and his mother, Bipti, would live, and especially how he would get a job. He figured that the Tulsis might help, but as soon as they notified the registrar, they became “unapproachable” and he was too ashamed to tell anyone in Pagotes that he was to marry. He felt unacknowledged and invisible at Hanuman House, as even Shama “ostentatiously ignored him.” Despite this, he never considered reneging on his plans, for he felt entirely committed. Mr Biswas soon moved into Hanuman House, but left most of his clothes at home and lied to his mother to ensure that he would return there.

After the marriage ceremony, Mr Biswas moved with Shama into an upstairs room in Hanuman House and began plotting his escape. He did not touch her—not that he would have known how—or even look at her. He received no dowry, house, or job from the Tulsis—Mrs Tulsi and Seth did not even consider it.

The Tulsis had a servant whom everyone called Miss Blackie (except Mrs Tulsi), but the daughters did most of the housework, and the husbands worked their land and cared for their animals in return for food, housing, paltry wages, and respect from everyone outside the family. “They became Tulsis,” and all the Tulsi daughters who married wealthy or powerful men left and joined their families. Mr Biswas began to realize how little the family cared for their daughters, and that “he was expected to become a Tulsi.”

After finishing the signs in the Tulsi Store, as Shama began to cry about being neglected in front of her family, Mr Biswas packed his things and returned to Pagotes, coming to see the whole affair as a “good fright.” However, Bipti immediately began praising him for marrying into a good family and went to visit Hanuman House the next day. Upon her return, she was thrilled with the family’s lovely manners and beautiful house—by which she meant the upper floor of the clay-brick building, which Mr Biswas was not even allowed to enter.

After hiding at home for two days, Mr Biswas visited Tara’s house in search of emotional support and found Bhandat’s younger son (Rabidat) reading That Body of Yours to Ajodha, who exclaimed, “Married man!” and called Tara over. She wept and gave Mr Biswas twenty dollars and then dinner, speaking with “unhappiness and disappointment,” which Mr Biswas echoed in noting that he didn’t receive a dowry or compensation for the signs he painted.

Tara insisted on going to Hanuman House and soon returned with the news that he would be running a shop for the Tulsis “in a village called The Chase.” Nothing could change the fact that Mr Biswas was now married. Tara explained that the Tulsis wanted to help him with the job, rather than “any dowry or big wedding,” because his was a “love match.” Ajodha yelled “Love match!” in excitement at Rabidat, Bhandat’s younger son, whose taunts Mr Biswas primarily blamed for his marriage. Tara and Ajodha encouraged Mr Biswas to head back to Shama, and he was disappointed when Tara claimed that his wife was “none of her business.”

Noticing his apprehension, Tara asked Mr Biswas whether he was “afraid of them already, like every other man in that place.” And a few days later, he returned to Hanuman House.

Surprised that Mr Biswas had returned so fast, Shama asked whether he was “tired catching crab in Pagotes”—that occupation was “the lowest of the low.” He said he had returned to “help all-you catch some here” as everyone stared and then continued on with their lives, “hardly to notice him.” His status in the house was “fixed”: the rest saw him as untrustworthy, weak, and contemptible.

Nobody mentioned the store in The Chase, so Mr Biswas continued his sign-writing as best he could until he struck up a friendship with Misir, who worked for the Trinidad Sentinel. Every day, he returned home unceremoniously, propped himself up in bed and read as the Tulsis complained about his pants made of floursacks.

The nosy children slept in the Book Room, on the verandah, and on the bridge that connected that part of the house to the statue-filled drawing-room that Bipti had found so impressive. The small, unadorned prayer-room lay above the drawing-room.

Mr Biswas always stayed in his small corner of the long room; Shama even brought his food there, and despite his insistent silence she gradually realized that “she had to make do with what Fate had granted her.” When eating, he would ask about the “little gods”—her studious brothers (Shekhar and Owad) who slept in and seldom left the new upstairs wing that included the drawing-room and prayer-room. He also asked about Seth, the “Big Boss,” and Mrs Tulsi, the “old queen” or “old hen” or “old cow.” During his “vile abuse of the family,” he would sometimes spit into the courtyard downstairs, hoping to hit some of them.

After a few weeks, Mr Biswas grew tired of hating everyone in the house and decided to make some “alliances.” The sisters talked about their husbands’ ailments and took care of each other’s children; Shama and C were close, so Mr Biswas approached C’s handsome and jovial husband, Govind, a former coconut-seller who now worked in the Tulsis’ fields. Mr Biswas considered Govind “a fellow sufferer” who had thrown away his own life to become part of the Tulsis’, and when Govind occasionally agreed to chat with Mr Biswas, they had little to talk about besides the Tulsis—whom Govind didn’t much mind.

One day, Shama reported that Seth wanted to talk to Mr Biswas, who refused to go downstairs until she began crying. In front of the whole family, Seth asked Mr Biswas how long he had been living there—two months—and whether he had “been eating well”—of course he had. Mr Biswas felt small and powerless as Seth insisted he should be feeding his wife rather than letting her family feed him, remarked on Mr Biswas’s cruel nicknames for his family members, and began reprimanding Mr Biswas—now in Hindi—for failing to appreciate the Tulsis’ generosity.

Seth asked Mr Biswas to work on the fields—his literacy was no excuse, for Seth and the “gods” could read and write too. The younger of those gods, Owad, implored Mr Biswas to apologize, but Mr Biswas “abruptly lost his temper” and yelled that he would never apologize before rushing back upstairs.

Mr Biswas packed his things as he argued with Shama and finally asked her to tell Seth he was never paid for the signs he painted. She refused, and they resumed bickering, until C and Seth’s wife, Padma, came upstairs to beg him to stay. C revealed that her name was Chinta “to indicate the depth of her unhappiness and the sincerity of her plea,” which proved to Mr Biswas that Govind told Seth about his “blasphemies,” and Chinta had come to placate him.

Mr Biswas realized that, for the first time, he had a true enemy—and so he decided to stay, thinking “he had already won” and feeling pity for Chinta and Padma, who showed little emotion because she had ostensibly been called to resolve Seth’s conflicts many times before. Mr Biswas admitted that he would not go—Chinta stopped crying but Shama started to, and her body seemed to melt.

Mr Biswas started to seek out friendships with his other brothers-in-law. First was the pale and sickly Hari, who spent extraordinary amounts of time eating rice and using the latrine. He looked uniquely unfit to work on the Tulsis’ estate and, as a trained pundit, found no greater pleasure than reading upstairs after work and performing puja. The only place Mr Biswas could talk with him was the dinner table, but he chewed his food forty times, so Mr Biswas spoke quickly to take advantage of the occasional gaps between bites that were his only chance at conversation: “What do you feel about the Aryans?”

The Aryans were Hindu missionaries from India who protested the orthodox tenets of their religion: they wanted to overturn caste and reject idols, educate women and accept converts. Hari was clearly not amused and accused Mr Biswas of “doing a lot of thinking about them.”

Indeed, “Mr Biswas was almost an Aryan convert” because of his conversations with Misir, who told him to listen to the “purist” pundit Pankaj Rai. Mr Biswas did not know what “purist” meant and was afraid to ask, but he liked the sound of the word and looked forward to the opportunity to meet “the Tulsis’ most important rivals,” the wealthy landowning Naths. Mr Biswas immediately appreciated that Pankaj Rai wore an elegant coat and was as short as he was, with “an equally ugly nose” and “unusually heavy, drooping eyelids” that made his critiques of orthodox Hinduism particularly poignant. Mr Biswas ended up agreeing with the pundit’s arguments and was honored that he signed a copy of his book with reference to Mr Biswas as a “dear friend.”

Upon returning home, Mr Biswas mocked Shama for what Pankaj Rai would do to her high-caste family members—Seth would become a leather-worker and the “two gods” (Shekhar and Owad) barbers. Worst of all, Mrs Tulsi “ain’t a Hindu at all” because she married Shama off so unceremoniously and sent her sons to a Catholic school: “Ro-man Cat-o-lic! Roman cat, the bitch.” But at least Pankaj Rai would let her convert. The Tulsis, Mr Biswas insisted, were “just one big low-caste bunch.”

Although Mr Biswas intended to address Hari respectfully and expected that his brother-in-law “would welcome disputation,” Hari and his wife barely responded at dinner. Later, Mr Biswas met him on the verandah with his copy of Pankaj Rai’s book, Reform the Only Way, but Hari gave it back after a glance. Mr Biswas resolved not to try and make friends with the other, “less intelligent and more temperamental” brothers-in-law.

After a week or so, Seth asked Mr Biswas about Pankaj Rai in the hall and mentioned that he was almost imprisoned for “interfering with Nath’s daughter-in-law.” Despite Pankaj Rai’s two degrees—BA and LLB—Seth did not trust him. Mr Biswas, who by now insisted on speaking English with the Tulsis, was perturbed but still defended his “dear friend,” rejecting Seth’s “piece of scandal.” Seth said he would “cut the balls off all these Aryans” and mentioned that Mr Biswas should try and make friends with his “creole converts.”

Mr Biswas shouted “Hello, pundit!” to Hari on the verandah as he passed to the Book Room, observed the decaying religious texts that filled its shelves, and turned around to greet Hari again on the verandah: “Hello, Mr God.” He told Shama he had a new nickname for Hari: “the constipated holy man.” She had started playing into his game, and he offered “the holy ghost,” too, before noting that “the two gods” (Shekhar and Owad) looked more like monkeys and joking that “the place is like a blasted zoo.” Shama suggests that he should be called “the barking puppy dog,” but he preferred “man’s best friend.” They lay in bed together, her head on his flabby arm.

Instead of his brothers-in-law, Mr Biswas decided to hang around the Aryans, who were now led by Shivlochan, a definite non-purist who barely spoke English and effectively let Misir set the group’s policy agenda: more education, less child marriage, more love marriages (Misir called arranged marriages like his own “cat-in-bag,” which Mr Biswas found charming). Misir and Shivlochan agreed that “peaceful persuasion” would be the best strategy to spread their ideas, but Mr Biswas protested that they should not “start with your own family” because his was so orthodox. If not “peaceful persuasion,” Mr Biswas and Misir agreed, the only option was “conversion by the sword.” Shivlochan protested their rejection of non-violence but Misir talked him down and called the Sentinel, which printed a two-inch notice on the AAA (Arwacas Aryan Association) the next day.

The newspaper notice mentioned Mr Biswas’s name, and Shama insisted that he talk to Seth, who complained that he threatened to “disgrace the family” and hinder the boys’ odds of getting into the Catholic college. Mr Biswas declared them “just jealous” and “the elder god” (Shekhar) blamed Mrs Tulsi for letting Mr Biswas move in. Furious that Mr Biswas wanted the girls to go to school and choose their own husbands, Seth declared that “The Black Age has come at last.” Mr Biswas commented that he still agreed with “the old ways too” but never got what the Tulsis promised him—when he did, he said, he would finally leave. Mr Biswas was clearly defeated, but in his mind “he was winning” his war against the Tulsis.

Soon, Mrs Weir, a sugar estate owner’s wife who took a particular interest in Hinduism, began coming to Aryan Association meetings and invited a handful of Aryans to tea, giving them Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Epictetus’s Discourses, and various “other booklets” before she left. These booklets soon littered the Tulsi house and led Mr Biswas to an argument with “the elder god” (Shekhar), who in fact wore a crucifix, the weekend before he left for his examinations for the Catholic college. Shama began taking Mr Biswas upstairs, and Chinta ran to make sure she did not faint before continuing to the room of Mrs Tulsi, who actually had fainted.

Mrs Tulsi fainted frequently, and her children had a complex protocol to get her to her room, which was usually led by Padma or, in her absence, the widowed Sushila, whose status in the household was never quite clear. While Mrs Tulsi’s children fanned and massaged her, the children waited downstairs in silence with the sons-in-law. One of them “was invariably responsible for precipitating Mrs Tulsi’s faint” and would be ostracized until things returned to usual the following evening.

Mr Biswas refused to wait downstairs, as was expected, and nobody would talk to him in the morning—until he asked Mrs Tulsi whether she was feeling better and she replied that she was, which astonished and pleased him. He ate his biscuits and tea on the staircase as Owad, “the younger god,” brought a camphor cube from his morning puja to Mrs Tulsi, who—to everyone’s surprise—ordered him to take it to Mr Biswas next. Mr Biswas rejected his “idol worship,” everyone fell silent, and Mrs Tulsi went upstairs.

Shama cried out and Owad’s eyes welled up with “tears of anger;” even the Catholic Miss Blackie was offended. Mr Biswas quoted Pankaj Rai’s criticism of idols and Owad called him a Christian; Sushila told Owad to calm down and “just give him enough rope. He will hang himself.”

Mr Biswas sang an old song from school upstairs, then left Hanuman House. All day, his depression compromised his sign-painting. He returned home, his joy transformed “into disgust at his condition” and hopelessness about his “campaign against the Tulsis.” He wished to disappear—the house would go on without him, as had all the houses he ever lived in as nothing more than “a visitor, an upsetter of routine.” Bipti probably was not thinking of him, and his childhood home had been destroyed.

Shama brought Mr Biswas’s food upstairs, and he complained again about “those blasted brass plates” and the preponderance of starch on them. He spit out the window and finally hit someone: Owad. He tried again and missed, paced around his plate and picked it up, planning to throw it all out the window. But he decided to just spill the food down on Owad, who bawled and called Mrs Tulsi.

After a commotion downstairs, Govind came upstairs and attacked Mr Biswas, who “allowed himself to be pummeled.” Chinta called the others to stop Govind before he killed Mr Biswas and got sent to the gallows. Mr Biswas thought clearly throughout the beating, trying his hardest to strike Govind back but deciding it might be “unmanly to do so.” Owad cheered for Govind to kill Mr Biswas, and the women’s laments did little to stop him. Mr Biswas felt no pain until, suddenly, “he heard himself bawling,” and everyone fell silent.

Everyone but Shama and Mr Biswas left, and as dinner began downstairs, Mr Biswas noticed “a new bond” among the members of the Tulsi family: himself. He asked Shama to bring him dinner, but she began to cry, and “he would have liked to hit her.” She told him to get his own food and left.

Alone, Mr Biswas kicked the lotus pattern on the wall and then his books, felt his “heavy and dead” face and noticed the pain he felt everywhere. He saw his “absurd” reflection in the mirror and resolved to go get the salmon and bread with peppersauce that he wanted for dinner. He looked at his body, which he felt he could not develop because of “all that bad food from that murky kitchen,” and put on a hat to cover his face. He passed the whole family, insulting their food on his way out of the house, and began eating oysters with peppersauce at a roadside stall.

The oysterman drunkenly told a disjointed story about his son shooting a tin can before waving a stick around and yelling, “Tell anybody to come!” Meanwhile, the woman with him kept shucking the oysters. In all, Mr Biswas ate 26, and he paid his 13 cents as he walked with satisfaction to Mrs Seeung’s shop, where he bought salmon and bread; the bread was stale, but he was happy to defy the Tulsis’ wishes by eating bread from a shop, which they believed was unclean. He did not enjoy the salmon but felt he had to finish it and was increasingly distressed in doing so.

The next morning, Seth kicked Mr Biswas out of the house. He went to the shop in The Chase along with Shama, who was pregnant