Essay Draft Three
Sherry Yan
June 16, 2007
Draft Three
Profound Thoughts below That Absurd Grassland
The Grass-Eaters by Krishnan Varma, an Indian writer, is a short story written in 1985. Krishnan tends to focus on the life of the poorest in India of the contemporary time. In The Grass-Eaters, he narrates an amusing and absurd experience of Ajit Babu and his wife Swapna, a poor couple in the lowest social caste, who shifts from place to place in order to look for somewhere inhabitable. When telling the story, Krishnan adopts a genre of black humor in depicting the dire life of the poorest. His accomplished mastering of black humor as well as words and phrases maximizes the integral artistic effect, arousing great amounts of laughter, which afterwards leaves so deep an impression on the readers.
However, despite the fact that the well-elaborated absurd descriptions really bring intense amusement to the readers, the reason why The Grass-Eaters is so profound and impressive is that the black humor in the story evokes much reflection between the lines rather than mere laughter. Amused at the preposterous scenes highlighted with black humor, readers are apt to imagine the macabre living status of the couple and reflect on the real life of the impecunious. Such black humor also begets much pathos, driving the readers to try analyzing the feelings of the couple through placing themselves in the milieu around the poorest. Furthermore, it arouses much contemplation upon the morbid society and propels readers to inquire about the very crux that hides behind the ostensible absurdity. Along with the unfolding of the story, the black humor evokes more and more thoughts, gradually guiding readers into the world of the poorest in India in the middle twentieth century.
Through the whole story, one of the most conspicuous feelings that readers may experience is that much employment of black humor in the story can easily arouse plentiful imagination of the ridiculous scenes it displays, while to a large extent such imagination do match the real dire life of the poorest. Rather than straightly describe the horrible life of the poorest, Krishnan carries it out in a humorous way through dialogues and psychological activities. Through imagining those tableaux, readers may sketch the miserable life of the poorest themselves and become deeply impressed by the appalling misery behind amusement.
Much reality of the housing of the poorest is conveyed in this way to the readers, revealing their horrendous living status and economic predicament. Babu once proposes for Swapna several suggestions of somewhere to live, all consisting of such places: "the railway station platform" (57), "a little-used overbridge" (57) and "a water tank that had fallen down and was empty." (57) Laughter is easily aroused by these almost ridiculous suggestions. Imagining all these places, most common readers nowadays might find them incredible as abodes. However, besides laughter, readers may also catch the implication that these seemingly incredible loci might be some quite nice lodges for the couple; otherwise Babu will not list them as some suggestions for Swapna. If there really exists some advantage in the absurd living places, then what can be easily concluded is likely to fall on the common ground of them—free of charge. Such imagination and reflection leads the readers deep into the miserable life of the poor. Since the poorest Indians are so penniless that they cannot afford the rent of almost anywhere livable, they have no choice but look for some comparatively habitable places that are free of charge. The couple in the story perfectly typifies those poorest in the most severe predicament.
There're also many amusing descriptions about the clothing of the couple, which evokes abundant imagination and reflection. Babu narrates that in order to wear something, he makes do "with a loin cloth" (58) and Swapna covers herself "with a piece slightly wider" (58). Amusing words sketch an absurd scene in front of readers, evoking much laughter. However, afterwards, the reason why they wear so little arouses a lot of lament: "I can spare little from my pension for new clothes." (58) Readers may naturally imagine a ridiculous scene in which a couple dress themselves like Adam and Eve, while the very reason why the couple dress so little is nothing but their poverty. Such imagination and pondering may thus engrave a horrible living status on readers' mind.
In the following plot lies one detail that calls up even more imagination. Dressed so meagerly, Swapna finds it very embarrassing to face Babu in daytime, thus she "contrives to keep her back turned to me." (58) Since the couple are too destitute to keep adequate clothing on them, such woeful farce ensues. Possibly readers may even imagine themselves as Babu and may wonder what they may feel if they have to face wife's back everyday in the daytime merely because being too poor to buy some clothes. Lots of imagination like this not only reveals to the readers the extreme shortage in economy of the couple that they really cannot afford enough clothing except a strip of cloth, but also exposes a real life of the poorest, soaked with impoverishment and misery.
Besides housing and clothing, the well-maneuvered black humor also relates to the Babus' diet implicitly. Though Swapna keeps her back to Babu unswervingly in the daytime, however, after nightfall, "she relents: we are both nightblind." (58) Readers are easily amused at such a turning point after so intense a stalemate, since they may have never thought of such a solution as "being nightblind". After amusement, curiosity naturally grasps them. Is "nightblind" merely an exaggerative expression of Krishnan, or is it indeed the fact? Associating with all the miserable scenes imagined above, readers may prefer the latter. It's highly likely that the couple are indeed nightblind, and the etiology might be the malnutrition caused by too little food, which then results in the lack of vitamin A, the pathological cause of nightblindness. Readers may thus involuntarily acknowledge such a possibility that despite the superficial optimism of Babu, the health of him and Swapna has already declined, causing much inconvenience in their daily life. However, they have to struggle to live on regardless of all these handicaps. Arousing much deep contemplation, imagination around these issues impresses readers much more intensely than mere laughter.
The shortage of food is emphasized through a similar thought-provoking turning point in the following paragraphs, where the title of the article, "The Grass-Eaters", is tactfully elucidated. Babu refers to grass as their staple food, creating such a recipe: "a mound of green grass boiled with green peppers and salt, and a few ladles of very thin rice gruel." (58) Laughing through this narration, some complicated feeling arises in readers when they imagine the couple chewing grass day by day. What unfolds in front of the readers is the woeful fact that the couple can afford almost no food because of poverty that they have to turn to wild meadows which are gratuitous. Now all the imaginary scenes piece together and compose a real and dire life: they live where is generally deemed uninhabitable, dress themselves in strips of cloth generally regarded as unwearable and feed on bits of grass that common people consider inedible. Readers may feel amused at such absurdity, but it is the imagination and contemplation that leads them to the true freakish life of the couple and other poorest.
Actually the life of the poorest in India of that time is just like what is speculated above. They are hardly provided with any resources, no matter in food, clothing, housing or in anything else. Their lives are so horrible that many people may take it for granted that such living standard cannot be better described other than "absurd". Keenly Krishnan captures the sort of equivalence between the true lives of the poorest and ridicule. Via black humor he weaves them together skillfully, embroidering a glaring monogram of "Absurdity" and "Desolation".
In addition to the evocation of imagining the real dire life, some of the humorous characterizations that describe the incredibly absurd words and deeds of the couple further attract readers to try analyzing the feeling of them as well as the posture they takes up. Such reflection and analyses induce readers to stand in the shoes of the couple to experience their miserable contentedness, thus arouse intense compassion and sorrow among readers, enhancing the appeal of the whole story.
What provokes quite plenty of analyses is the couple's attitude toward their dwelling places, since it connotes much of their true feelings. In the story the couple shifts several times from one place to another to look for a residence. Once the couple discovers an abandoned-looking freight wagon. Directly they become so exultant over the thought of a whole wagon to themselves, a place "with doors which could be opened and shut" (57), the ecstasy propelling the couple to do nothing but "open and shut them for a full hour…" (57) Reading through the humorous description, readers may burst out laughing at such absurd behavior: a man and a woman keep opening and shutting the gate of a wagon for a whole day, brilliant grin shining from ear to ear. However, readers may come up with some doubts besides amusement: why are the couple in such lunatic exuberance when they find this deserted wagon? Merely for it has six facets and can be shut? Don't they feel it too shabby a place to live in?
While many people today take an abandoned-looking freight wagon for an extremely strange and uninhabitable abode, the couple seem to have a crush on it at the very first sight and regard it as the most invaluable treasure. On the issue of a living place, it is apparent that what ordinary people consider most common is deemed as most precious by the couple. Such strong contradiction and sharp contrast are surely more than mere laughing stock that they render readers eager to try analyzing what lies below these superficial amusements. Actually, there really exists some reasonable answer to such discrepancy, that is: the couple may have hardly ever inhabited somewhere with a real door and rarely has the chance to live in an abode with "four walls, a roof and door" (57). Standing in the shoes of the couple, readers may gradually understand their ecstasy at the sight of a deserted wagon through reflection and analyses. Furthermore, they may experience an intense feeling of helplessness hidden below the superficial exhilaration, which is more striking than the amusement aroused by the absurdity.
The misery of effervescing at a new living place repeats several times in the whole story. When finally Babu decides to live on a roof, he accomplishes the new lodge that it has "far more light and ventilation" (58), and they don't often "get nibbled by rats and mice and rodents" (58). Furthermore, he is pleasant that their son, Prodeep, "has far more room to play than the children below." (58) Reading through these humorous mental descriptions, readers may experience a mixed feeling of amusement first, lamentation following. They may further reflect on the reason why the couple take up such a low standard in terms of a lodge—it is their adoption to the dire living status that leads to the misery. Their living environment being so severe and hostile, in order to live on, the helpless couple have no choice but adjust themselves to it and appear content for self-consolation.Readers may feel a subdued sense of helplessness hidden behind the woeful content. Such depressive mood can leave an extremely deep impression on them, since they do not acquire it through reading the descriptions of misery, but through analyzing the absurdity. This process of analysis is just like working on a problem. It's undoubtedly more impressive if you work the answer out than merely read through the key provided. All these analyses and reflections contribute to readers' understanding on the true feeling of the couple veiled by amusements, thereby induce intense compassion.
Approximate to the end of the story lies a most striking part that arouses a lot of reflection and sympathy. The tenant below Babu comes out with a theory that if one reduces one's food by five grams everyday, one will not sense the diminution and some day later, one can live without consuming any food. Babu witnesses the tenant practicing the theory. Finally he can still get around, though tottering badly, because he has two legs, but Babu has "only one" (58) and he loses the other "after a fall from the roof of a tram." (58). After nightblindness, another handicap, mutilation, is revealed in this paragraph. Serving the same function as an absurd and dramatic turning point as that of "nightblindness", it meanwhile largely enhances the readers' the compassion for the couple. Such strong resonance reaches the climax in the posture that Babu takes upon being disabled. He claims that he doesn't mind his handicap at all, since he needs to "wear only one sandal" (58) and thereby "save on footwear." (58). It is through analyzing their woefully freakish content that readers feel chokingly besieged by intense lamentation and deep sympathy. Just like Babu's former claim that he doesn't feel living on a roof quite bad, here his sorrow has been transformed into a desperate optimism enveloping a soul of despair, all of which can never be experienced by merely laughing at the absurd scenes, but can only be understood by analyzing and reflecting on all the desperate absurdity.
In the whole story, Krishnan did not directly narrate the awful living status of the poorest, but the analyses and reflection evoked by the black humor attains the same effect of straight narration, and probably, they effect more intensely than direct narration. Convulsion interlaced with amusement drives readers to analyze, which then gradually guide them down the stairs flight by flight and finally deep into the innermost feeling of the poorest of that time, calling up great compassion as well as lamentation.
Having better understood the life and the perception of the poorest through imagination and trying analyzing and experiencing, readers may become more sensitive to many well-elaborated expressions modified with black humor that scatter around in this story, which then easily arouse much association of the social environment in their mind. Such association helps readers to further approach the status quo ante of the poorest as well as the panorama of the social background, which thereby guides readers to reflect on the morbidity of the contemporary society and the very crux that give rise to all the absurdity.
Actually such invitation to association has been elaborately arranged from the very beginning of the story, implying the sharp contrasts between different castes of the time. In the first several paragraphs, Babu recalls a tutoring experience several years ago. The student is "a spherical boy" (56) with his father portrayed as an "ovoid father" and his mother described as a "cuboid" (56) woman. Laconic as the humorous description is, it not only successfully creates an amusing atmosphere, but also vividly embodies the characters of the family members, imposing a deep impression on the readers. However something more impressive may loom in readers' mind when they continue reading. In the following paragraphs, Babu introduces his first abode, which is a footpath crammed with refugees and locals. On a cold evening, he wakes up only to find that the one lies beside him is not his wife Swapna but an elderly lady as gaunt as "a bag of bones" (56). Associating "a bag of bones" with the above mentioned "spherical", "ovoid" and "cuboid" quite naturally, readers might feel extremely amused at the sharp contrast between the geometrical profiles of these characters and "a bag of bones". What's more, readers may come up with some reflection at the meanwhile of laughing.
When carefully staring up and down the hyperbolic figures of the family members and the old lady, readers may wonder involuntarily why the figures of the former seem so convex, plump and huge, while that of the latter appears so concave, skeletony and diminutive? Associate the question with the context, it is easy to find that the family is quite better-off that they can afford employing a tutor, possibly representing the bourgeoisie, while the old lady is an inhabitant of the crowded footpath, which is typical of the poorest in India. Thinking of this, readers may easily realize a more important reason why Krishnan described the figures in such sharp contrast. Aren't their figures characteristic of their classes, which simultaneously embody their living status? Middle class live a well-off life, enjoying abundant food and spacious housing, which may be the primary reason why they appear in plump figure. The poorest assuming such a haggard appearance, it may be even beyond imagination what a horrible life they have to live. What emerges in front of the readers is the sharp contrast between different castes, displaying the severe social disequilibrium in India in the middle of the twentieth century.
The guidance of associating and reflecting on the society of that time is stressed by the following paragraphs. Occasionally, the couple comes upon a cement concrete pipe left over from long-age repairs to underground mains. "Unbelievably, it was not occupied" (58) and "with no prompting" (58) from Babu, Swapna creeps into it. The couple's astonishment at discovering the pipe unoccupied may arouse quite much contemplation in addition to amusement. The word "unbelievably" clearly indicates that such a pipe should have already been resided in by someone else, implying that the deserted pipe is quite an appealing domicile for many poor. Readers may find such idea ridiculous at first, but after laughter, they may find themselves sunk in deeper thoughts. Isn't it a horrible society if people live so miserable a life that they can't favor a pipe more as an ideal home? Krishnan never exclaims these exclamations out directly in his writing, instead he successfully displays them through his exaggerative description spiced by black humor, evoking oppressive associations and meditations.
The end of the story elevates to the highest level the speculation on the society of that age as well as the absurdity in the life of the poorest then. The existence of the grass-eaters is summarized as the following:
"And now, we have no fears or anxieties. We have a home made of coal tar drums. We eat two square meals of grass every day. We don't need to wear clothes. We have a son to do our funeral rites when we die. We live very quietly, content to look at the passing scene: a tram burning, a man stabbing another man, a woman dropping her baby in a garbage bin." (59)
Readers may laugh at the conclusion, but what strikes more is the reflection it evokes. It is the reflection, the realization of the despair of the poorest that engraves the story of the grass-eaters on their mind. Such reflections come from the many doubts and associations that naturally arise around this summary of life: Do the couple really have no fears or anxieties? Do they really live very quietly? Do they really feel content when they witness the miserable passing scenes? What kind of society might be if arson, murder and abandonment are so flooding that people witness them so frequently? And most importantly, what on earth results in the morbid society as well as the dire and absurd life of the poorest? Boundary between truth and exaggeration becomes especially blurred here and maybe it is Krishnan's very intention to induce such bewilderment. What the answers turn out to be does not matter much now, while what matters more is the process of reflection itself. At least in contemplation, readers can gradually understand what on earth this kind of equability and content means and what the dumbness to life caused by despair really is. No matter what actually causes such horrible life of the poorest, at least one viewpoint can be asserted: something has been seriously wrong with this society and it urges remedy. Up till now, the readers have already stepped into the world of the poorest under the guide of Krishnan through their own inquiring, pondering and association, whereas mere amusement or laughter can never lead people deep in that world.
All through the story, Krishnan arouses tides of reflections via his excellent mastering of black humor, guiding readers into the real life of the poorest. Maybe the attraction of The Grass-Eaters can be expounded in this way: the black humor brings much amusement and laughter to the reader, which appeals to them at first; while it is the reflection it evokes that elucidates the real despair of the poorest besides the direness of their lives, which gradually reveal the profound content of the humorous story on the morbidity of the India society at that time. Furthermore, it also provokes some conscience in the multitudes in caring for the lowest class and in exploring the sticking point of the dire social environment. All above finally compose the verve of this short but really incisive story, leaving an indelible impression on those who read and reflect all through this work.
Work cited
Krishnan, Varma. "The Grass-Eaters" 1985. Rpt. in The International Story: An Anthology with Guidelines for Reading and Writing about Fiction. Ruth Spack. New York: St. Martin's, 1994. 6-8.