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The Tulsis’ massive “alien white fortress” in the town of Arwacas, which has a partially visible statue of “the benevolent monkey-god Hanuman” on the roof. The house has three parts: the Tulsi Store downstairs, the new upstairs wing above the Store, and the crumbling, two-story old house behind the new building and connected to it by an upstairs bridge.
Hanuman House Quotes in A House for Mr Biswas
The A House for Mr Biswas quotes below are all either spoken by Hanuman House or refer to Hanuman House. For each quote, you can also see the other terms 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 3
Quotes
How often did Mr Biswas regret his weakness, his inarticulateness, that evening! How often did he try to make events appear grander, more planned and less absurd than they were!
And the most absurd feature of that evening was to come. When he had left Hanuman House and was cycling back to Pagotes, he actually felt elated! In the large, musty hall with the sooty kitchen at one end, the furniture-choked landing on one side, and the dark, cobwebbed loft on the other, he had been overpowered and frightened by Seth and Mrs Tulsi and all the Tulsi women and children; they were strange and had appeared too strong; he wanted nothing so much then as to be free of that house. But now the elation he felt was not that of relief. He felt he had been involved in large events. He felt he had achieved status.
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Part 2, Chapter 2
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Mr Biswas had never thought of Tulsi property as belonging to any particular person. Everything, the land at Green Vale, the shop at The Chase, belonged simply to the House. But the lorries were Seth’s.
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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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Part 2, Chapter 5
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[Mr Biswas] turned the long room into an office. In this room, where the lotuses still bloomed on the wall, he had lived with Shama. Through the Demerara window he had tried to spit on Owad and flung the plateful of food on him. In this room he had been beaten by Govind, had kicked Bell’s Standard Elocutionist and given it the dent on the cover. Here, claimed by no one, he had reflected on the unreality of his life, and had wished to make a mark on the wall as proof of his existence. Now he needed no such proof. Relationships had been created where none existed; he stood at their centre. In that very unreality had lain freedom. Now he was encumbered, and it was at Hanuman House that he tried to forget the encumbrance: the children, the scattered furniture, the dark tenement room, and Shama, as helpless as he was and now, what he had longed for, dependent on him.
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Get the entire A House for Mr Biswas LitChart as a printable PDF.
Hanuman House Term Timeline in A House for Mr Biswas
The timeline below shows where the term Hanuman House appears in A House for Mr Biswas. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1, Chapter 2: Before the Tulsis
...yearned “for the world to yield its sweetness and romance,” and first saw Shama at Hanuman House in Arwacas “in this mood of expectation.”
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Part 1, Chapter 3: The Tulsis
“ Hanuman House stood like an alien white fortress” in Arwacas, with the Tulsi Store downstairs and a...
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When Mr Biswas left Hanuman House , he realized that marriage would create enormous problems for him: where he and his...
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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...
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...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...
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Tara insisted on going to Hanuman House and soon returned with the news that he would be running a shop for the...
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...like every other man in that place.” And a few days later, he returned to Hanuman House .
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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...
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Part 1, Chapter 5: Green Vale
...see; one day, his towel slipped and he became furious at Shama, who went to Hanuman House with Anand.
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...like listening to him talk about the house and spent most of her time at Hanuman House , which was very close to Green Vale. Mr Biswas began cooking for himself and...
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...agreed. The next week, Mr Biswas bought Anand a miniature car and took it to Hanuman House , where Savi greeted him in tears: “They break it up.” The dollhouse was not...
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...him argue with himself on their walks; they were both excited for her return to Hanuman House on Saturday, just in time for the first day of school on Monday.
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...future as he descended into perpetual fatigue and restlessness. He no longer wanted to visit Hanuman House —sometimes he turned back once he had already reached Arwacas—and “did everything as noisily as...
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At Hanuman House , a handful of the children married and moved out, including Shekhar, whose matching process...
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...try Ajodha, but found that he did not want to go, thought about going to Hanuman House , changed his mind back and forth, and took the bus to Pagotes.
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...and asked what this expenditure meant for the children; Mr Biswas figured that people in Hanuman House must have been worried about the possibility that he would take the children away from...
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...and Seth proposed that Mr Biswas buy cheap galvanized iron from their old brick-factory behind Hanuman House . So he went there, only to see that the iron in question was rusted...
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...him afraid. Eventually, he decided he had to ignore it and decided to go to Hanuman House . Everyone he passed on his way filled him with panic, which was normal, already...
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...Anand screamed that he wanted to leave, and Mr Biswas promised to take him to Hanuman House the next day. Filled with anxiety at the prospect of isolation, he was trying to...
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...Anand would have to return the colored pencils if he wanted to go back to Hanuman House ; the boy did not want them, and Mr Biswas tried unsuccessfully to convince him...
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Part 2, Chapter 1: “Amazing Scenes”
Mr Biswas ended up in Port of Spain entirely by accident; after leaving Hanuman House in the early morning, he was mostly worried about finding somewhere to sleep that night....
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...living “less organized” lives. “Women ruled men” and children were much less esteemed than in Hanuman House ; here, children wore clothes on their bottom halves, the opposite of in the country,...
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Soon thereafter, Mr Biswas visited Arwacas, marching into Hanuman House to a grand welcome: “You are the Scarlet Pimpernel and I claim the Sentinel prize!”...
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...her; it was the pundit, of course, and Shama mentioned that Mr Biswas was in Hanuman House for Kamla’s birth before abruptly stopping her sentence. Mr Biswas held Kamla, and Shama took...
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...space. Since they also felt responsible for his reconciliation with the Tulsis, Dehuti effectively joined Hanuman House , helping out before special occasions and attending events with the Tulsi sisters.
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...and the children in holidays, although they became increasingly distant from the other children in Hanuman House , learning to stick together until they got home and resumed fighting. They loved Mr...
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Part 2, Chapter 3: The Shorthills Adventure
...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...
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...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...
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Part 2, Chapter 5: The Void
...One of his assignments was running a “‘leadership’ course” in Arwacas, where he stayed at Hanuman House with its sole inhabitant, a widow Seth never found out about. In fact, “Seth had...
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With Hanuman House silent and decaying, Mr Biswas made an office out of his old room and remembered...
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