Raja Character Analysis

You must remember that when I left you, I promised I would always look after you, Bim. When Hyder Ali Sahib was ill and making out his will, Benazir herself spoke to him about the house and asked him to allow you to keep it at the same rent we used to pay him when father and mother were alive. He agreed—you know he never cared for money, only for friendship—and I want to assure you that now that he is dead and has left all his property to us, you may continue to have it at the same rent, I shall never think of raising it or of selling the house as long as you and Baba need it. If you have any worries, Bim, you have only to tell—Raja.

“I still keep it in my desk—to remind me. Whenever I begin to wish to see Raja again or wish he would come and see us, then I take out that letter and read it again. Oh, I can tell you, I could write him such an answer, he wouldn’t forget it for many years either!” She gave a short laugh and ended it with a kind of a choke, saying “You say I should come to Hyderabad with you for his daughter’s wedding. How can I? How can I enter his house—my landlord’s house? I, such a poor tenant? Because of me, he can’t raise the rent or sell the house and make a profit—imagine that. The sacrifice!”

Raja had studied Urdu in school in those days before the Partition when students had a choice between Hindi and Urdu. It was a natural enough choice to make for the son of a Delhi family: Urdu had been the court language in the days of the Muslim and Moghul rulers and had persisted as the language of the learned and the cultivated. Hindi was not then considered a language of great pedigree; it had little to show for itself in its modern, clipped, workaday form, and its literature was all in ancient, extinct dialects. Raja, who read much and had a good ear, was aware of such differences.

“This is no college for you. It is a Jamia Millia form.”

“That is where I want to study. I went there to get a form.”

“You can’t study there,” his father said, taking the cigar out of his mouth and spitting out a shred of tobacco. “It is a college for Muslim boys.”

“No, anyone can go there who wants to specialise in Islamic studies.”

She needed protection. She wanted help. She reached out for the hand that would help her, protect her …

… Here it was. Here, in this tall, slim coolness just by her hand, at the tips of her fingers. If she got her fingers around it, its slender pale glassiness, and then drew it closer, close to her mouth, she could close her lips about it and suck, suck little, little sips, with little, little juicy sounds, and it would be so sweet, so sweet again, just as when they were little babies, little babies for her to feed, herself a little baby sucking, sucking at the little trickle of juice that came hurrying in, sliding in …

And she sucked and laughed and sucked and cried.

“Now I understand why you do not wish to marry. You have dedicated your life to others—to your sick brother and your aged aunt and your little brother who will be dependent on you all his life. You have sacrificed your own life for them.”

“I have to go. Now I can go. I have to begin my life some time, don’t I? You don’t want me to spend all my life down in this hole, do you? You don’t think I can go on living just to keep my brother and sister company, do you?”

[…]

“Bim, I’ll come back,” he said. “I’m leaving all my books and papers with you. Look after them till I come back.”

“Why should you come back?” Bim asked stonily.

“Bim, don’t be so hard. You know I must come back—to look after you and Baba. I can’t leave you alone.”

They grew around her knees, stubby and strong, some as high as her waist, some rising to her shoulders. She felt their limbs, brown and knobby with muscle, hot with the life force. They crowded about her so that they formed a ring, a protective railing about her. Now no one could approach, no threat, no menace. Their arms were tight around her, keeping her for themselves. They owned her and yes, she wanted to be owned. She owned them too, and they needed to be owned. Their opposing needs seemed to mingle and meet at the very roots, inside the soil in which they grew.

The girls became infected with something of Raja’s restlessness. It made Bim more ambitious at school […] She was not quite sure where this would lead but she seemed to realize it was a way out. A way out of what? They still could not say, could not define the unsatisfactory atmosphere of their home. They did not realize now that this unsatisfactoriness was not based only on their parents’ continual absence, their seemingly total disinterest in their children, their absorption in each other. The secret, hopeless suffering of their mother was somehow at the root of this subdued greyness, this silent desperation that pervaded the house. Also the disappointment that Baba’s very life and existence were to them, his hopeless future, their anxiety over him. The children could only sense all this, they did not share it, except unwillingly.

She had always thought Bim so competent, so capable. Everyone had thought that—Aunt Mira, the teachers at school, even Raja. But Bim seemed to stampede through the house like a dishevelled storm, creating more havoc than order. […] Tara saw how little she had really observed—either as a child or as a grown woman. She had seen Bim through the lenses of her own self, as she had wanted to see her. And now, when she tried to be objective, when she was old enough, grown enough and removed enough to study her objectively, she found she could not—her vision was strewn, obscured and screened by too much of the past.

They had come like mosquitoes—Tara and Bakul, and behind them the Misras, and somewhere in the distance Raja and Benazir—only to torment her and, mosquito-like, sip her blood. All of them fed on her blood, at some time or the other had fed—it must have been good blood, sweet and nourishing. Now, when they were full, they rose in swarms, humming away, turning their backs on her.

All these years she had felt herself to be the centre—she had watched them all circling in the air, then returning, landing like birds, folding up their wings and letting down their legs till they touched solid ground. Solid ground. That was what the house had been—the lawn, the rose walk, the guava trees, the veranda: Bim’s domain.

She had not known she was going to say that till she had said it. She had only walked in to talk to Baba—cut down his defence and demand some kind of a response from him, some kind of justification from him for herself, her own life, her ways and attitudes, like a blessing from Baba. She had not known she would be led into making such a threat, or blackmailing Baba. She was still hardly aware of what she had said, only something seemed to slam inside her head, painfully, when she looked at Baba.

Although it was shadowy and dark, Bim could see as well as by the clear light of day that she felt only love and yearning for them all, and if there were hurts, these gashes and wounds in her side that bled, then it was only because her love was imperfect and did not encompass them thoroughly enough, and because it had flaws and inadequacies and did not extend to all equally.

“Shall I tell Raja—?”

“Yes,” Bim urged, her voice flying, buoyant. “Tell him how we’re not used to it—Baba and I. Tell him we never travel any more. Tell him we couldn’t come—but he should come. Bring him back with you, Tara—or tell him to come in the winter. All of them. And he can see Sharma about the firm—and settle things. And see to Hyder Ali’s old house—and repair it. Tell him I’m—I’m waiting for him—I want him to come—I want to see him.”

As if frightened by this breakdown in Bim’s innermost self, this crumbling of a great block of stone and concrete, a dam, to release a flood of roaring water, Tara unexpectedly let go Bim’s hand and fell forwards into the car.

You must remember that when I left you, I promised I would always look after you, Bim. When Hyder Ali Sahib was ill and making out his will, Benazir herself spoke to him about the house and asked him to allow you to keep it at the same rent we used to pay him when father and mother were alive. He agreed—you know he never cared for money, only for friendship—and I want to assure you that now that he is dead and has left all his property to us, you may continue to have it at the same rent, I shall never think of raising it or of selling the house as long as you and Baba need it. If you have any worries, Bim, you have only to tell—Raja.

“I still keep it in my desk—to remind me. Whenever I begin to wish to see Raja again or wish he would come and see us, then I take out that letter and read it again. Oh, I can tell you, I could write him such an answer, he wouldn’t forget it for many years either!” She gave a short laugh and ended it with a kind of a choke, saying “You say I should come to Hyderabad with you for his daughter’s wedding. How can I? How can I enter his house—my landlord’s house? I, such a poor tenant? Because of me, he can’t raise the rent or sell the house and make a profit—imagine that. The sacrifice!”

Raja had studied Urdu in school in those days before the Partition when students had a choice between Hindi and Urdu. It was a natural enough choice to make for the son of a Delhi family: Urdu had been the court language in the days of the Muslim and Moghul rulers and had persisted as the language of the learned and the cultivated. Hindi was not then considered a language of great pedigree; it had little to show for itself in its modern, clipped, workaday form, and its literature was all in ancient, extinct dialects. Raja, who read much and had a good ear, was aware of such differences.

“This is no college for you. It is a Jamia Millia form.”

“That is where I want to study. I went there to get a form.”

“You can’t study there,” his father said, taking the cigar out of his mouth and spitting out a shred of tobacco. “It is a college for Muslim boys.”

“No, anyone can go there who wants to specialise in Islamic studies.”

She needed protection. She wanted help. She reached out for the hand that would help her, protect her …

… Here it was. Here, in this tall, slim coolness just by her hand, at the tips of her fingers. If she got her fingers around it, its slender pale glassiness, and then drew it closer, close to her mouth, she could close her lips about it and suck, suck little, little sips, with little, little juicy sounds, and it would be so sweet, so sweet again, just as when they were little babies, little babies for her to feed, herself a little baby sucking, sucking at the little trickle of juice that came hurrying in, sliding in …

And she sucked and laughed and sucked and cried.

“Now I understand why you do not wish to marry. You have dedicated your life to others—to your sick brother and your aged aunt and your little brother who will be dependent on you all his life. You have sacrificed your own life for them.”

“I have to go. Now I can go. I have to begin my life some time, don’t I? You don’t want me to spend all my life down in this hole, do you? You don’t think I can go on living just to keep my brother and sister company, do you?”

[…]

“Bim, I’ll come back,” he said. “I’m leaving all my books and papers with you. Look after them till I come back.”

“Why should you come back?” Bim asked stonily.

“Bim, don’t be so hard. You know I must come back—to look after you and Baba. I can’t leave you alone.”

They grew around her knees, stubby and strong, some as high as her waist, some rising to her shoulders. She felt their limbs, brown and knobby with muscle, hot with the life force. They crowded about her so that they formed a ring, a protective railing about her. Now no one could approach, no threat, no menace. Their arms were tight around her, keeping her for themselves. They owned her and yes, she wanted to be owned. She owned them too, and they needed to be owned. Their opposing needs seemed to mingle and meet at the very roots, inside the soil in which they grew.

The girls became infected with something of Raja’s restlessness. It made Bim more ambitious at school […] She was not quite sure where this would lead but she seemed to realize it was a way out. A way out of what? They still could not say, could not define the unsatisfactory atmosphere of their home. They did not realize now that this unsatisfactoriness was not based only on their parents’ continual absence, their seemingly total disinterest in their children, their absorption in each other. The secret, hopeless suffering of their mother was somehow at the root of this subdued greyness, this silent desperation that pervaded the house. Also the disappointment that Baba’s very life and existence were to them, his hopeless future, their anxiety over him. The children could only sense all this, they did not share it, except unwillingly.

She had always thought Bim so competent, so capable. Everyone had thought that—Aunt Mira, the teachers at school, even Raja. But Bim seemed to stampede through the house like a dishevelled storm, creating more havoc than order. […] Tara saw how little she had really observed—either as a child or as a grown woman. She had seen Bim through the lenses of her own self, as she had wanted to see her. And now, when she tried to be objective, when she was old enough, grown enough and removed enough to study her objectively, she found she could not—her vision was strewn, obscured and screened by too much of the past.

They had come like mosquitoes—Tara and Bakul, and behind them the Misras, and somewhere in the distance Raja and Benazir—only to torment her and, mosquito-like, sip her blood. All of them fed on her blood, at some time or the other had fed—it must have been good blood, sweet and nourishing. Now, when they were full, they rose in swarms, humming away, turning their backs on her.

All these years she had felt herself to be the centre—she had watched them all circling in the air, then returning, landing like birds, folding up their wings and letting down their legs till they touched solid ground. Solid ground. That was what the house had been—the lawn, the rose walk, the guava trees, the veranda: Bim’s domain.

She had not known she was going to say that till she had said it. She had only walked in to talk to Baba—cut down his defence and demand some kind of a response from him, some kind of justification from him for herself, her own life, her ways and attitudes, like a blessing from Baba. She had not known she would be led into making such a threat, or blackmailing Baba. She was still hardly aware of what she had said, only something seemed to slam inside her head, painfully, when she looked at Baba.

Although it was shadowy and dark, Bim could see as well as by the clear light of day that she felt only love and yearning for them all, and if there were hurts, these gashes and wounds in her side that bled, then it was only because her love was imperfect and did not encompass them thoroughly enough, and because it had flaws and inadequacies and did not extend to all equally.

“Shall I tell Raja—?”

“Yes,” Bim urged, her voice flying, buoyant. “Tell him how we’re not used to it—Baba and I. Tell him we never travel any more. Tell him we couldn’t come—but he should come. Bring him back with you, Tara—or tell him to come in the winter. All of them. And he can see Sharma about the firm—and settle things. And see to Hyder Ali’s old house—and repair it. Tell him I’m—I’m waiting for him—I want him to come—I want to see him.”

As if frightened by this breakdown in Bim’s innermost self, this crumbling of a great block of stone and concrete, a dam, to release a flood of roaring water, Tara unexpectedly let go Bim’s hand and fell forwards into the car.