Scenes from Early Life: A Novel. Philip Hensher
Philip Hensher
Language: English
Pages: 310
ISBN: 0007450109
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
'Scenes from Early Life' is the story of one upper-middle-class Bengali family, told in the form of a memoir. It is an autobiography, a novel and, in part, a history of one of the most ferocious of 20th-century civil wars.
Without a thought; the women went between houses all day long. This was even true of the president of the country, Sheikh Mujib, whose house was four away from Khandekar-nana’s house. My mother used to tell the story of going to visit Mujib’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina, at her father’s house, to find her in a terrible rage. She had been expecting a certain number of bags of chilli to be sent up from their estate in the country; the bags had arrived, but there were two short. ‘There should be two.
Khandekar. Sheikh Mujib came to these parties when he could; he said it made him glad to hear the songs of the Bengali. He made no particular fuss when he entered a room as a guest; still, he was who he was, and the room was drawn towards his big glossy hair, his plump, humorous look. The room stood up at his entrance: he would force a friend, perhaps a distinguished poet, to sit down again, before him. A special place was made for him, and perhaps for his daughter, Hasina, too. He would accept.
Lived, in the 1950s, in a house in Rankin Street. It was a handsome, two-storey house, with plenty of room for them, their son and their four daughters. There was space, too, for other relations to come and live from time to time, for months or even years. The longest-term resident was, of course, my father. My father had come to Dacca to study economics, and it was sensible for him to stay with his uncle, my Nana. Nana took it for granted that my father would live in a bedroom-cum-study for the.
Laughing under their breath. It was a favourite place to visit on a Sunday, which was then the day of rest and pleasure in Dacca, as Friday is now. My mother and father, before their marriage, regularly met at the Joy House on a Sunday evening. They would walk around the park, talking in the sort of privacy you can only have on the street or in crowds in Dacca. Both of them were highly punctual people, and when they agreed to meet at the Joy House at six, both of them would be there at six. My.
Pretty?’ ‘I wouldn’t say she was pretty,’ my father said. ‘Not pretty, exactly. But there is something quite agreeable about her face.’ There was a long pause; the whole table sat waiting for my father to continue, but he just went on eating. That seemed to be all he had observed about Laddu’s wife. ‘And is she sensible, or is she a fool?’ Nani said finally. ‘How could she marry Laddu in such a hole-and-corner way?’ ‘I don’t know,’ my father said. ‘We didn’t go into all that.’ ‘I suppose we.