A House for Mr Biswas: Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

The Tulsis never thought of themselves as settled in Trinidad, which was merely “a stage in the journey that had begun when Pundit Tulsi left India.” They talked about going elsewhere or returning, but Mr Biswas could not imagine them doing so. However, when Shama went to Hanuman House to report what Seth had done in Port of Spain, in fact the Tulsis “had decided to move on” to a new estate in the mountains of Trinidad’s north at Shorthills. Christmas shopping was stunted by the war and Seth was already at war with the family, having decided to stay in Arwacas, although Mr Biswas could not figure out precisely why. The families’ children did not speak, and only Padma ever visited Hanuman House. Two of the Tulsis’ cane fields burned, and the family thought Seth might be trying to orchestrate a takeover.

People talked most of all about the new estate: its glorious house, facilities, trees, and surroundings. Mr Biswas was skeptical, especially of the talk about horses and sheep, and his children were apprehensive about moving to Shorthills. Shama was incredibly morose about the whole conflict, defining their Christmas with her insistence on acting exactly as Mrs Tulsi always did. Sisters passed through their house, and when she occasionally visited Shorthills, she would do nothing but cry upon her return.

Mrs Tulsi was much better, no longer sick and now engrossed in her task of coordinating the family’s relocation. She even tried to convince Mr Biswas to move with them, and eventually he agreed to at least visit the estate. She promised that the buses were always on time—theirs was late and empty—and, deep into the hills, a valley opened, dotted with occasional houses and huts. From the last bus stop they walked along a gulley, and Mr Biswas began to notice the beautiful flowers and cocoa trees he was promised. They came to the house, which was hidden behind an enormous saman tree on “Christopher Columbus Road.”

Despite all Shama’s descriptions, the house still astonished Mr Biswas: it was a two-story construction partway up a hill, surrounded by lush plant life and flanked by a cricket field and swimming pool, both out of use. He and Mrs Tulsi walked up the driveway and the steps that made him “feel regal,” ascending to the painted timber house. The whole scene “was an enchantment,” but Mr Biswas decided it was “time to go home.” Mrs Tulsi replied, “Isn’t this your home now?”

The Tulsis moved out of Arwacas, renting out their land and store, selling one of their rental tenements in Port of Spain and raising the rent on the house Mr Biswas and Shama were living in. Shorthills’s people were of mixed race, “a closed, distinctive community” that spoke a mixture of English and French and enjoyed wandering around the Tulsis’ estate until they moved in.

When Mr Biswas moved to Shorthills, he felt there were more Tulsis than ever before. He and Shama moved into one of the six rooms upstairs, and across the hall lived a new brother-in-law who immediately found Mr Biswas distasteful—when his son bragged to Anand about his books, which were all by W.C. Tuttle, Mr Biswas called them “trash,” and Anand agreed. A few days later, the man (whom Mr Biswas later began to refer to as W.C. Tuttle) confronted him.

Waiting for the promised fixes and improvements to the house, everybody started dismantling trees and building temples, and Anand decided to convince the kids to start scraping off the house’s paint in an effort to get the Tulsis to buy a fresh coat. Mr Biswas barely cared about these improvements, since his job gave him some distance from the Tulsis, and he was busy plundering fruit from the estate’s trees to sell to vendors in Port of Spain.

Soon, the pool was filled in, and a tent for wedding guests was built on top, as “a whole wave of Shama’s nieces was to be married off.” Everyone immediately turned their attention to the seven weddings, after which seven fewer women lived in the house, and everyone resumed waiting for the needed repairs.

“Scraggy, bare, bewildered sheep” wandered onto the estate, which became increasingly overgrown and “began to look abandoned” now that Mrs Tulsi was too busy being ill to direct things. Govind destroyed the cricket pavilion to build a shed for cows (including one owned, of all people, by Shama). Occupied entirely with beating these cows, he mostly withdrew from family life. Along with “the reader of W.C. Tuttle,” he started cutting down the trees and sending the fruit to Port of Spain. The children helped pick fruit and pull weeds. Without plumbing, “some lesser husbands” constructed a latrine outside and others planted new seedlings.

“The man Mr Biswas now thought of as W.C. Tuttle” cut open a pumpkin, dismantled the old electricity plant and decided to build a furniture factory in its place. To build the furniture, he hired a blacksmith from his home village, “a Negro called Théophile,” who built misshapen and flawed benches, tables, and other furniture pieces, which W.C. Tuttle promised would look well-constructed with varnish. When they moved some of his furniture in and realized it was unusable, “Théophile was dismissed to his village, and there was no further talk about the furniture factory.”

W.C. Tuttle’s next project was buying a lorry and hiring it to the American army, which wanted to build a post in the mountains. The widows thought to build a shack and try to sell them Coca Cola and snacks, and then got a liquor license and hoped to sell them rum, but nobody ever stopped (although one lorry did crash into the shack).

Despite this all, Mr Biswas remained detached, happy that he was paying nothing for rent or food, and could see his savings increase with every paycheck. “He continued to plunder” amidst the house’s chaos. It turned out that W.C. Tuttle was selling whole trees and Govind whole lorry loads of fruit, and Mr Biswas felt ridiculous for his pride at selling a half dozen oranges at a time. They only found out about the missing trees because the estate’s overseer—who came with the estate and had nothing to do—finally mentioned it.

Finally, the villagers decided to fight the Tulsis, filling up the morning bus to Port of Spain before their children had a chance. They simply did not go to school for awhile, but W.C. Tuttle finally decided to take them himself, although they needed to get to school by 5:30 in the morning so he could have the lorry to the Americans by 6:00. They arrived before dawn and played around until the caretaker let them into the school at 6:00. They ate their lunches hours early and, again because of the Americans, could never get home before 8:00 in the evening unless they left just after lunch for the Shorthills bus.

Mostly, the children just walked in the direction of Shorthills, singing songs at Mrs Tulsi’s suggestion, until they encountered a bus with space for them. Eventually, one of the men bought a car, which was prone to breakdowns and often did not even make it. After awhile, the Tulsis abandoned the car, preferring to let the children play on it in the yard. Then, “another car was bought” to replace the first. With these difficulties getting to school, poorly defined sleeping arrangements, and yard work on weekends, the children had a horrible time living at Shorthills and began fighting amongst themselves during the week.

Anand disliked his “weak” sisters. Myna had “a bad bladder,” and the young Kamla started sleepwalking. Savi became a source of humiliation for the family after botching a singing performance at school and trying to teach other children how to draw maps. Due to his sense of satire, “Anand was among the strong,” although his satire led him to hatred, of others and himself. One morning, he laughed when Savi’s hand got stuck in the car door, and Mr Biswas decided he was done with Shorthills.

But first, “a number of deaths occurred.” First was Sharma, the son-in-law who drove the kids to school; he fell off a branch, and his widow wailed for days. However everyone forgot him after W.C. Tuttle took over driving. Later, Anand found Hari and his wife sitting gloomily at the dining table and recited a poem about a dead soldier to try and cheer them up; Hari died soon thereafter and it turned out that he knew he was sick for some time. W.C. Tuttle took over his funeral rites, too, but nobody could fully replace Hari’s role as the household pundit, and a number of the men ended up sharing puja duty. News of Padma’s death in Arwacas came a couple weeks later, and this frightened everyone in the house, especially because she died so far away. All the sisters set off to Arwacas for the funeral ceremony.

When the women returned from Arwacas, they revealed that Seth’s new property was an enormous grocery store, and they feared that he planned to use the revenue from it to buy Hanuman House. So many people dreamt of Padma that night that they decided her spirit must have visited Shorthills. More stories of Padma sightings followed, with the Tulsis finding various messages in her appearances, most of which alleged that Seth killed her and led the sisters to curse him. Meanwhile, Mrs Tulsi still did not leave her room. Two of the sheep died, too, and the gully began eroding away.

Govind and W.C. Tuttle pursued other business opportunities: taxi-driving and opening a quarry, respectively. The widows started a chicken farm and planted maize to feed the animals, but ended up eating it themselves after the chickens either ran away or got eaten by predators. From her room, Mrs Tulsi directed everyone to start eating bamboo shoots (nobody could figure out which part of bamboo was the shoot), then to drink homemade bush leaf infusion instead of tea, “find vegetable substitutes,” and finally try eating bird nests. The widows started eating some of the cakes W.C. Tuttle had hidden for the cows, and the family invented various other new kinds of food.

Mrs Tulsi coordinated the manufacture of various products, from cups and plates to mattresses and cushions. The women who were lucky enough to have husbands fed their children in secret; in the meantime, the widows’ children roasted a sheep in the woods, which infuriated W.C. Tuttle. He and Mr Biswas made their wives cook separately from the rest; Mr Biswas decided that gospo juice must be some sort of remedy and made his kids drink it every morning until the tree collapsed. Following this tree, the rest of the cricket field eroded away in the rains and the bushes continued to creep up on the house. The widows worked tirelessly, withstanding hateful messages from Seth and doing their best to build a bridge across the gully that was now a gorge. But Mr Biswas could not convince Shama to move, even though she was alienated from her sisters.

Later, Chinta declared that eighty dollars were missing from her room, and both the theft and the degree of her wealth surprised everyone. She spent days searching for the thief, cursing people and ultimately holding a “Bible-and-key-trial” that proved everyone but Mr Biswas innocent. All the sisters became immediately suspicious of him and his family, and his daughters pleaded for them to move away.

Mr Biswas found a spot that was “isolated, unused and full of possibilities,” hidden behind a bush on a hill near the estate. In less than a month, he had exactly the house he wanted to build in Green Vale: two bedrooms, a drawingroom, and a verandah, mounted on cement pillars, with a corrugated iron roof and glass windows. He spent almost all his savings, but “his ambition had remained steady,” although it appeared “idyllic and absurd” now. Transport was exceedingly difficult, and he spent the last of his money on a Slumberking bed. The unpainted house appeared not “to invite habitation so much as decay.”

Shama did not want to move and hoped the house would not be finished—so did the children, who would have preferred to return to Port of Spain. They felt imprisoned in the middle of nowhere, with no source of enjoyment and a dark, dangerous landscape around them.

One night, Anand discovered Savi’s birth certificate—listing her real name, Basso, and Mr Biswas’s name for her, Lakshmi—alongside various photographs of the Tulsis and his mother’s terse letters from a George V. in England. He gazed out on the sunset; when Shama realized that he had looked through the door later, she announced that a thief had come in their house.

Mr Biswas sent for Bipti to visit. Her feelings about the new house were unclear, and since his children had lost their ability to speak Hindi, they could barely communicate with her. To Mr Biswas’s surprise, Shama treated Bipti respectfully, and he never forgot the image of his mother helping to clear the brush. The children were excited to burn the land to make a path to the road. Mr Biswas prepared the land in a way he thought strategic, by building “nests” in various places around the house, and then lit each nest without paying attention to his children’s cries about the heat. Only one of the nests actually caught on fire, and the flame proceeded meekly from there. “Do it yourself,” he told the children. They doused the leaves and set them all alight, stopped the fire at night and retreated inside to do their homework.

Anand dreamed that he was in the bus to school and his sisters were standing above him, shaking him—which they were, because the fire had grown to encircle the house. Mr Biswas told the children to beat the fire back, and they walked to the road. Anand and Savi left the crying Myna and Kamla and repeated “Rama Rama” as they walked down the road through the darkness, finally reaching the Tulsis’ rudimentary bridge across the gorge and still “alert for the smell of snakes.”

Savi and Anand “heard a heavy breathing,” which turned out to be a mule following them, and walked up the stairs to try and get inside, but nobody heard their calls—which were much quieter than they thought. Mrs Tulsi finally found them, believing them to be Hari and Padma’s departed spirits, and when they informed the family of the fire, everyone was overjoyed.

The Tulsis marched over to Mr Biswas’s house and worked together to beat the fire back, which “became a celebration.” Mr Biswas insisted that “everything under control”; they found burnt eggs and a dead snake, and in the morning, the house was “in a charred and smoking desolation.” Villagers flocked to the house, and Mr Biswas offered them charcoal; the ash that blew throughout the village was, he insisted, “best thing for the land […] best sort of fertilizer.”