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had ruled, and the infinite and tender arrangements for leisure. And his common sense told him that in spite of the grumblings of other expats, they were still well-off, and life would still remain “good.” As for the Indians being cocky, Jack knew his Indians. Kuldip Chopra would always behave
decently with him, and a subtle superiority still clung to the expats as long as they had money. He convinced himself Calcutta society inherently knew an injustice had been done to him. How could he face the idea of Kuldip Chopra being the better choice?

    When the Stracheys’ son, Martin, came back to Calcutta with his bride, the first floor tenant, Proshanto Mojumdar, snatched at the excuse to indulge in his favorite pastime, hosting an entertainment. “We shall go to the theater!” he enthused. “And then to the 300!”
    Martin’s bride, Gwendolyn, was a scholar of European music, a subject far removed from his own. He was an academic too, specialized in nineteenth century British colonial history with Calcutta as his focus. Martin, who was more than normally promiscuous, had been Surjeet Shona’s lover for a while. But this affair had been too zippy and it had all but zipped out of his mind. Occasional visions of their intimacy sometimes came into his memory, but divested of feeling. Gwendolyn had knocked Surjeet Shona and everyone else off his mind, and he was too lost in the blinding meeting of bodies to worry about minds. She was just the intellectual yet passionate bluestocking he had always wanted to marry. However, a shortcoming Martin hadn’t anticipated was her antagonism to India. The signs were visible on the drive in from the airport. Gwendolyn was a petite blonde, her long hair plaited and wound around her head, a delicate renaissance painting, but churlish. As they headed for the city, her lips clamped together tighter and tighter, till they became a thin sealed line. Martin did his best to distract her with hurried chatter. But he couldn’t block her view of a naked boy selling newspapers on the roadside. He groaned when Gwen unstuck her lips and hysterically stopped the car. Before he could think, he found himself helping her buy a cheap set of clothes at a nearby stall. She raced back flushed with her deed and presented the clothes to the astonished boy. A crowd immediately collected. Gwen, reeling with shock when she saw a pair of young men blithely holding hands, plunged back into the car. The young men peered through the car windows and planted their fingerprints on the panes, scattering when the chauffeur shooed them away. When one of them scratched his private parts, Gwen shivered, already sick with mental malaria. Martin’s lips were tightly clamped now,
but to dam up the laughter. He said nothing when the shirt was hauled off the little boy to the amusement of the victim. Just as he didn’t point out that being naked, even because of poverty, was more pleasant in the heat than being burdened with sticky clothes. Or that the young hand-holding men weren’t homosexuals. Or that in India, when you itched you scratched. What was the use, he groaned, of trying to remind her of their jointly mocking at white missionaries for clothing, civilizing, and Christianizing “naked savages.” “They are savages!” hissed Gwendolyn, startling him.
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    Proshanto Mojumdar asked Martin to make a choice of entertainment, a regrettable move, he felt, because Martin lighted on Neel Dorpon , a historic and controversial play, unflattering to the British. He suggested safer alternatives. “Your wife is new to this country,” he pleaded, “she may find it embarrassing.”
    â€œWhy? It’s history . . . ”
    â€œBut nevertheless, do you not think we should try something lighter, The Pirates of Penzanc e at the New Empire, for instance?”
    â€œ The Pirates of Penz . . . !” Martin was outraged. “ The Pirates of Penzance !