A House for Mr Biswas: Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

The Chase was a remote village of sugarcane workers with only two rumshops and a handful of small food-shops, including the one Mr Biswas operated out of a tiny, decrepit room for six years. There were two rooms in the back and, in the yard, a makeshift kitchen constructed of tree branches, pieces of corrugated iron, and walls made of “almost anything.” It was surrounded by empty land, and the Tulsis only bought it on the false tip that a road would be built nearby.

The move out of Hanuman House was easy for Mr Biswas but arduous for Shama, who owned much more and bought kitchen supplies from the family store with Mr Biswas’s hard-earned sign-writing income. When they arrived at The Chase, Mr Biswas faced hostility from other shopkeepers and, of course, his wife, who spent the whole voyage staring silently out of the donkey-cart. Mr Biswas did most of the unloading, paid the carter, and surveyed the tins that the previous shopkeeper had left behind as the village’s boys cheered for the departing cart outside.

Shama began crying loudly, complaining of her shame and lamenting that Mr Biswas’s desire to “paddle [his] own canoe” led them to this horrid place. Instead of comforting her, Mr Biswas started ruminating about the lonely, silent, dark establishment he was set to run; Shama ended up comforting him by starting to set up the house and lamenting his fruitless attempts at helping.

The previous owner left behind an iron bed that smelled of bedbugs (which never died out as Mr Biswas and Shama carried it from place to place), as well as a small, sturdy kitchen table. Mr Biswas was grateful that Shama brought an expensive Japanese coffee-set and admired her enthusiastic efforts to set up the house. She also made him food, which he found miraculous, since “for the first time a meal had been prepared in a house which was his own.” In the following weeks, they made the house “cleaner and habitable,” but it always felt “temporary and not quite real,” a mere preparation for the life to follow.

Mr Biswas set his mind to selling goods, and the ease of doing so astonished him, making him feel as though “he had pulled off a deep confidence trick” by stocking his shelves and waiting for people to come buy things. In the first month, he “made the vast profit of thirty-seven dollars,” and Shama quickly turned out to be an apt bookkeeper. They became accustomed to their solitude and no longer fought, although Mr Biswas found the place’s intimacy hard to bear and had mixed feelings about “the atmosphere of service and devotion” from his wife. So “he was even glad when abruptly, it broke.”

One day, Shama proposed a house-blessing ceremony and Mr Biswas flew into a rage. She sighed, and he soon discovered “how a woman nagged,” which astonished him since he was “living in a wife-beating society.” And he was further astonished that Shama nagged so adeptly, seemed like such “an experienced housewife,” and especially went through her pregnancy so smoothly.

After three days, Mr Biswas finally pointed out Shama’s nagging—mostly, she sighed and blew her nose in bed, and she did so even louder that night. In the morning, Mr Biswas agreed to the house-blessing. Shama hired three workers to build a bamboo tent in the yard and bring in food; all the Tulsis came “except Seth, Miss Blackie, and the two gods” (Shekhar and Owad), who were busy in school. Hari donned his pundit’s dhoti, and the Tulsis barely acknowledged Mr Biswas.

Mr Biswas felt like “a stranger in his own yard,” with the Tulsis even ignoring the sign he hung out front declaring himself the store’s proprietor. He had nowhere to go, so he stood out front and planned his coming argument with Shama. Sushila caught some of the older children playing in the dark, and Mr Biswas found others playing house in a hedge—one of them even imitated him, and the ensuing laughter “filled Mr Biswas’s mind with thoughts of murder.”

Since her family’s arrival, “Shama had become a Tulsi and a stranger again.” The ceremony was about to begin, but Mr Biswas did not want to see it and soon realized that his wares were in jeopardy. He rushed back to his shop and found a cluster of children in the corner, breaking soda bottles, surrounded by fallen and open tin jars. He kicked the children out and grabbed one boy by his collar, which prompted the boy to run outside to his mother, yelling, “Uncle Mohun beat me.”

Mr Biswas followed outside to set the record straight as “Hari droned imperturbably on” with the house-blessing and Padma found the broken bottles inside—eight cents each, Mr Biswas explained, and the boy’s mother, Sumati, began beating him with a stick over her sisters’ protests. Mr Biswas figured that the beating was for show and, after it ended, Sumati declared that “everybody is now satisfied” and returned to the ceremonial tent.

A swarm of “uninvited guests” from the village lined up outside Mr Biswas’s shop, seeking the free food that would follow the blessing ceremony. Mrs Tulsi told Mr Biswas he had a “nice little property” and he could not decide whether she used the English word “property” out of satire or sincerity. He complained about the state of the house, and she suggested he make some improvements with sugarsacks—he said perhaps people could just live in coal barrels instead of houses. Sushila led Mrs Tulsi away.

Mr Biswas went inside and lay down on his bed, resuscitating his old romantic fantasies of leaving everything and everyone. He heard Shama rattling the door hook and pretended to be asleep; she came inside and said, “you make me really proud of you today,” surprising him with her vitriol. He told her to go outside and “make sure it properly bless,” and she left, telling her sisters he had a headache.

After the house-blessing ceremony, Mr Biswas’s business took a turn for the worse—a new shopkeeper came into town and started making money. Shama complained that he let too many people buy on credit, reminding him that “ought oughts are ought.” He suggested that they un-bless the house; she suggested that people owed too much to even want to come by. He replied that perhaps he didn’t have a shopkeeper’s face, and in fact looked like nothing in particular—not a “shopkeeper, lawyer, doctor, labourer, overseer.” He came down with “the Samuel Smiles depression.”

“Shama was a puzzle,” composed of various selves: the girl from Hanuman House but also “the wife, the housekeeper, and now the mother.” Mr Biswas paid little attention to her pregnancy, but her sisters did, which led her to behave differently, enduring her pregnancy in the fashion of her sisters but not complaining about it. Clearly, Shama expected to undertake life’s “established pattern of sensation” by pursuing “a series of negatives: not to be unmarried, not to be childless, not to be an undutiful daughter, sister, wife, mother, widow.”

Shama’s sisters helped her make diapers out of Mr Biswas’s floursacks and brought her to Hanuman House when it was time for the birth. She left him clean clothes and simple recipes, written in the same words she usually spoke, which he found charming. And he started to think of “mostly male” names for the child; his customers suggested he let the pundit do his job naming the child, but Mr Biswas rejected the idea and continued writing names for his boy on the back of a volume of Shakespeare.

In fact, the baby was a girl, healthy and already named Savi when Mr Biswas reached her in Mrs Tulsi’s Rose Room in the Hanuman House. His pick was “Sarojini Lakshmi Kamala Devi,” but Seth and Hari named her instead and already registered her birth under the name Basso—that was the “real name” that someone could call her to “damage” her, but everyone would call her “Savi.”

Atop the birth certificate, Mr Biswas wrote, “Real calling name: Lakshmi. Signed by Mohun Biswas, father.” He and Shama both felt like he violated the sanctity of a government document. He complained that Seth had written his occupation as “labourer,” insisted on addressing his daughter as Lakshmi, and boldly wrote “proprietor” instead of “labourer” on the birth certificate.

Mr Biswas passed the drawing room, the wooden bridge, and the old verandah on his way to the hall, where nobody paid attention to him, and the children solemnly ate sulphur and condensed milk for their “eggzema.” Mrs Tulsi asked Mr Biswas about Savi and let out a string of “simple, unconnected statements” that built to a “puzzling profundity” as she cried on his shoulder and worried about the future. She finally declared that “they can never kill you,” and Mr Biswas wondered, “who are they?”

Seth came inside and implored Mr Biswas to start acting responsibly; in response, Mr Biswas asked whether Hari might be able to un-bless the house, and the children laughed before Seth reminded them that they would not get food because of their “eggzema.” Mrs Tulsi returned to her pontificating, and Mr Biswas asked her for a coal barrel.

Mr Biswas went to visit Misir, who had sent his family to his mother-in-law and begun focusing on writing short stories about starving, unemployed people who die tragically. Misir suggested that Mr Biswas start writing stories but recoiled in disgust when his friend mentioned his responsibilities and new daughter, blaming “this cat-in-bag business.” Mr Biswas asked about the Aryans; Misir said that nobody cared, that “Shivlochan is a damn fool” and Pankaj Rai is back in India, which would make a good story. Mr Biswas claimed to have seen a two-headed dead pig at Hanuman House and suggested that Misir write about that, instead, and went home.

After three lonely weeks, Shama and Savi returned; Mr Biswas delightedly resumed living “without having to assert his rights or explain his worth” and complaining to Shama. He loved watching her so gently bathe the baby and took solace in the fact that Savi would be massaged and hear rhymes like him, Shama, and generations of babies before them.

One evening six months later, “a small worried-looking man” named Moti came to Mr Biswas’s store and asked for some lard, then declared that he was proud Mr Biswas was a good Hindu and did not have any. Moti mentioned a devout Hindu lawyer named Seebaran, who saved “the man before you.” Despite his wealth, a man named Mungroo managed to live entirely off credit, which Mr Biswas was embarrassed to have given him.

Moti asked to look through Mr Biswas’s accounts, began leafing through his papers, and suggested that he talk to Seebaran lest he become a pauper. Then he declared he was leaving, but Mr Biswas begged him to tell Seebaran, who would have “a lot of work here.” He went to tell Shama, exclaiming, “you don’t know Seebaran?” before she revealed she heard his entire conversation with Moti. She suggested he ask Seth, whom Mr Biswas distrusted immensely even though “he used to study doctor. Doctor or druggist.”

Mungroo was a champion stick-fighter who organized the village’s young men in “a fighting band” in case The Chase needed defending. Mr Biswas used to enjoy watching their evening practices, and especially the way the sticks were made. First, designs were carved and then burnt into the sticks; the scent vaguely reminded him of when his own father used to burn the same poui bark in his childhood. Then, the sticks soaked in coconut oil and were “‘mounted’ with the spirit of a dead Spaniard.”

Mungroo was actually a roadmender but did not like to work, preferring to extort money out of the villagers in exchange for his protection. But Mr Biswas admired him and continued selling to him on credit, which only stopped when he complained to other villagers, who told Mungroo, who hurt Mr Biswas’s pride by ceasing to speak with him and spitting every time he walked by the store.

Moti soon came by with papers from Seebaran, full of dotted lines to sign, which cryptically declared that Mr Biswas must pay “this sum” plus “One Dollar and Twenty Cents ($1.02c)” for the letter. Moti declared that Mr Biswas need not pay it, went back through the accounts and noticed that many of the creditors had not signed their slips, and then explained that Mr Biswas would need to pay much more than one-twenty to get Seebaran to fight his case. They settled on five dollars, which Mr Biswas gave Moti alongside the accounting slips, and the visitor jumped on his bike and pedaled off while Mr Biswas watched from his counter.

Shama mockingly suggested Mr Biswas “empty the drawer and run after” Moti, then left for the back room, where she sang a cremation song and prepared to take Savi to Hanuman House. After her departure, Mr Biswas watched his creditors return from the fields, imagining that they would repay him soon.

Mungroo called Mr Biswas outside, where he stood leading a crowd of villagers with papers. Confident that “the law was on his side,” Mr Biswas threatened to send Mungroo to jail. Mungroo’s followers restrained him; Mr Biswas said they would testify for him in court and directed Mungroo to Seebaran

Moti visited after a week to go over the people who had and would pay. But he explained that Mungroo had retaliated and presented a letter calling Mr Biswas to court “for damaging his credit!” Seebaran always tells clients to keep their mouths shut, explained Moti, but Mr Biswas protested that he had never even met the man—although Moti replied that “he want to see you now.” Without signed slips, Moti continued, Mr Biswas had little chance of winning in court, so it was in his best interests to settle.

In fact, Seebaran and Mungroo’s lawyer already decided on a hundred dollars for damages and a hundred for legal fees. Mr Biswas went to bring Shama back from Arwacas, but did not tell her about the debt—instead, he borrowed the needed money from Misir, who had begun offering loans, and ultimately spent more than half of his time in The Chase paying it back.

The six years Mr Biswas lived at The Chase were boring, unnecessary, and monotonous. He aged, developing wrinkles and a “perpetually distended” stomach due to indigestion. He stopped reading Samuel Smiles and switched to theology (both Hindu and Christian), Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, but soon gave up entirely to focus on his work and financial issues. He thought perpetually of leaving.

Another comfort was painting. He made “cool, ordered forest scenes” and “perfect flowers” on his shop’s wall and floor, and even “attempted a portrait of Shama” before she gave up on posing for him after he focused endlessly on her clothes and the sack of flour she was sitting on.

Mr Biswas also read and tried to write stories, but “lacked Misir’s tragic vision” and gave up everything he started. Other times, “he devoted himself to some absurdity” for weeks on end, like growing out his fingernails or picking at his face, whenever Shama had gone home. She had a son, whom Mr Biswas agreed to name Anand at Seth’s behest, three years after Savi, who stayed at the Tulsis’ house. He visited her every week, asking prying questions, like who had given her heavy iron boots to straighten out her bow-legs. (It was Mrs. Tulsi.)

The Tulsis kept multiplying, with new children born and the family of a recently deceased son-in-law moving in. Shama complained about their lack of manners and tendency to “theft and obscene practices,” but was glad to hear that “the widow” had begun “inflicting spectacular punishments on her bereaved children.” Savi, too, celebrated their mistreatment even as Mr Biswas tried to convince her to return home. She loved her granny, despite her father’s protests and pleas for Shama to stop letting Mrs Tulsi feed her fish brains.

Because he continued to think he was only living at The Chase temporarily, Mr Biswas never improved the house, which made him surprised upon discovering “that house and shop bore so many marks of his habitation,” from the wear on the hammock to the smell of cigarettes and paint in the back room. And he realized “that these disregarded years had been years of acquisition,” that they now had too many possessions for a donkey-cart, like the hatrack they bought “because it was a piece of furniture all but the very poor had,” the hat Mr Biswas bought to put on it, and a beautiful mirror.

Mr Biswas began to see that Hanuman House was governed not by chaos but by a strict hierarchy: Padma ruled above Chinta, who superseded Shama, Savi, and then himself at the bottom. He realized that the adults valued the children as “a source of future wealth and influence” and realized “he needed such a sanctuary” as the Hanuman House, where he went whenever possible and did his best to win esteem. He usually failed but gradually won acceptance and “a certain licence,” securing laughs from the family and even the ability to have interesting conversations about religion, since he abandoned his Aryanism. During “important religious ceremonies,” he was now deemed “too incompetent, and too intelligent,” to work with the other men and instead went with Hari to argue with pundits.

Mr Biswas started to go back for these ceremonies the day before and fantasize about finding the comfort and satisfaction that had let Pundit Jairam and Ajodha live so happily. But he never found it, instead feeling uneasy at realizing that he would always have to return to the “nonentity” he had always lived and now found in The Chase’s boring store. And, as always, he feared for the future, which appeared to him as a timeless void. Once upon a time, conducting a motorbus for Ajodha at night, Mr Biswas had passed a boy leaning on his family’s solitary hut, wearing only a vest; he continued to remember the image of that boy.

This sense of “utter desolation” often came to Mr Biswas before the ceremonies at Hanuman House and, in time, he again grew resentful of the Tulsis. He began to blame Shama for his sense that The Chase was a temporary home; Hanuman House would always be hers, but never his, as the Tulsis’ unique Christmas celebrations—which excluded all the sons-in-law—invariably reminded him. He would always return to Pagotes and see Bipti, who always compared him to Raghu and claimed “she had nothing more to do, and was waiting for death.” She would bring him tea, chat with someone outside in her newly “energetic and capable” voice, and emphasize her poverty.

Eventually, Shama declared her intention to give up The Chase and go back to Hanuman House, which led her and Mr Biswas back to arguing, “only, now everything Shama said was true and cutting.” They argued like this for two years. When she again found herself pregnant and claimed “you had nothing to do with it,” they argued until Mr Biswas hit her; “they were both astonished,” and he was sure he lost the argument because of her humiliating emotional strength. She went back to Hanuman House while he fantasized about flying kites with Anand and determined that he would not visit Shama until she reached out—and then did go after the baby must have been born, somehow realizing “that he was closing the doors for the last time” in The Chase.

Mr Biswas cycled to Arwacas, sitting upright and belching to relieve his indigestion, dodging policeman because his bicycle had no lights. When he arrived, the usual group of old men was congregated outside Hanuman House, talking endlessly of returning to India even though they were afraid to do so and “leave the familiar temporariness.” As usual, the children were scattered throughout the hall, and fortunately “no one seemed surprised to see him.” He noticed new children who moved in after their father died. Savi mentioned that she had not seen her father “for a long time,” as well as that Shama had a new baby and reported that Mr Biswas beat her.

Shama was busy massaging her new daughter, Myna, upstairs on the bridge and barely acknowledged Mr Biswas’s presence before asking if he had eaten, overlooking his constant complaints about the Tulsis’ food and its effect on his digestive system.

Myna slept, and her parents walked past the children, including Savi, playing their new card and board games on the verandah. Shama said that Mrs Tulsi was sick, gave Mr Biswas cold leftovers, and asked whether he planned to return to The Chase that night. And “he knew then that he hadn’t intended to go back, ever.” He watched the sisters play cards—Chinta with particular flair—as Shama made him a bed with the children’s on the verandah.

In the morning, the mothers were preparing their children for school, and Mr Biswas suddenly realized that Savi had started going, too. Shama made Savi tie her shoes and Mr Biswas offered to help, but Savi needed to learn—or receive a beating from Shama, who found a stick and then stood watching while “Savi fumbled ineffectually” with her laces. Shama had Savi’s younger cousin, Jai, demonstrate his shoe-tying abilities and then hit Savi with the stick while Mr Biswas watched. But Sushila came to remind them that Mrs Tulsi was sick and the hall fell into silence, as Shama stormed away. Sumati finished readying Savi for school and sent her away. Shama almost never beat Savi at The Chase but it was a matter of course, tradition, and sibling rivalry among the sisters at Hanuman House.

Mr Biswas ate breakfast before Shama took him upstairs to see Mrs Tulsi, who was “barely recognizable” laying in her forehead bandage next to a table covered in medicine jars and bottles. Inadvertently, Mr Biswas began talking in Hindi to Mrs Tulsi, who replied, “it doesn’t matter how I am” and sniffed her smelling salts. She called Shama to massage her head with rum and lamented her family’s horrible luck—namely, their having too many daughters. She had fourteen when her husband died; Mr Biswas and Shama’s two would “have to live with their Fate. Mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law. Idle husbands. Wife-beaters.” She proclaimed that she had “lived long enough to know that can’t expect anything from anybody” and instead expected those who spat on her to keep asking her for more. “When you have a soft heart,” she lamented,” you have a soft heart.”

Mrs Tulsi and Shama both cried as Shama massaged her mother with more rum. Seth entered and asked Mrs Tulsi how she was feeling, failing to acknowledge Mr Biswas and Shama out of impatience. Soon, Mr Biswas realized “that the scene had been arranged,” the stage was set for decisions, and Shama’s tears both relieved some of Mr Biswas’s embarrassment and reflected her pain at the “husband she had been given by Fate.”

Mr Biswas told Seth that the store was on “a bad site” and explained that his debtors would never pay him. Seth remembered the Mungroo case and proposed that their only option was to “insure-and-burn,” which would give Mr Biswas good money. He asked whether Mr Biswas was “still too proud to get your hands dirty in the fields” and proposed he work as an estate driver in Green Vale, which Shama begged him to try. Mr Biswas explained that he knew nothing about estate work while Mrs Tulsi and Seth mentioned Owad’s success in college.

Mr Biswas asked whether he would be in charge of “this insuranburning,” leading everyone to laugh. Seth proposes that Mr Biswas tell the police that Mungroo threatened to kill him, which means they would blame him for any fire. He could burn down the shop a few weeks later, Seth explained, and Mr Biswas asked if this was “why all those motorcars burning up every day in this place? And all those houses?”