Essay Draft Three

The black humor in The Grass-Eaters

During the 1980s, the relationship between Hindus and Muslims experienced great tension, accompanied by occasional wars and conflicts, which resulted in the tremendous hardship for both sides. Many writers had tried to represent the original scene of the Indians, with Krishnan Varma being one of them. Being an Indian, Krishnan often shares his observations of the life of the poorest people in his country(56). In 1985 Krishnan wrote The Grass-Eaters, a story about an Indian refugee Ajit Babu and his wife Swapna who tried to find different dwelling places. During this process, they met various difficulties, suffered from the hard environment, but finally settled down on the roof of a building.

Despite the painful content, the readers would mostly find the story amusing, since Krishnan uses black humor to tell the story. Readers may wonder why Krishnan apply a humorous tone to a depressing or even desperate story. The answer is that by this means, Krishnan successfully help the readers experienced a more profoundly doleful feeling than the agony of suffering from life.

The living condition of Babu and his wife remains poor after their arrival in Calcutta. They used to inhabit the railway station platform, a little-used overbridge and a water tank, and have moved to places like a wagon, a cement concrete pipe and finally the roof of a building. Any of these places would be inadequate for people nowadays to live in. Hence, readers may imagine Babu as a man constantly frowning, complaining about the “houses”, and swearing “the damn unfair life”.

However, the case turns out to be the opposite. In the story, Babu feels anything but sad or agony. This absurd contrast between Babu’s satisfactory emotion to the presented situation and the readers’ predicted one puts the whole story a rather funny atmosphere.

When Babu and his wife discovered the wagon, they found great satisfaction opening and shutting its two doors for an entire hour. For the readers, a room with four walls and a door keeping others outside are simply, not worth mentioning, but Babu claimed: “It was heaven. I felt I was God”(57). As a result, this scene looks like an extreme joke.

Although funny, the ridiculous scene forced the readers to search for an appropriate reason, They soon discover that the wagon was already a great improvement compared to their previous living place, a footpath crowded with too many refugees. Compared to the footpath, the wagon is too good for Babu and Swapna to imagine! It has four walls and a door to shut outside all the strangers like those on the footpath, keeping Babu and his wife private and free inside but requiring no charge. Thus, the declaration of “It was heaven. I felt I was God”(57) is never an exaggeration but Babu’s most sincere thought.

The answer is so shocking that the readers stop laughing, immersing in a doleful emotion. Babu and his wife doesn’t laugh because their life is good, but because it is torturable indeed! Moreover, the contrast between the former laughter and the latter sadness put an even deeper sorrow on the readers.

Later on, Babu and his wife moved to the roof of the building belonging to Babu’s employer. They kept finding its advantages: The roof was flat, better than the gabled cement concrete (their former residence). Compared to the ordinary apartments below, the roof can provide more light and ventilation yet requirs less rent, hence the apartment room is completely defeated.

This time, readers may find the wining of the roof ridiculous. Babu actually stacked some “old empty coal tar drums”(58) in two rows and “put a tarpaulin over them”(58) to form a place to live. Nevertheless, he ignored all of these and compliment the roof intensively.

Here, Krishnan features Babu as an optimistic character. Readers doubt where does Babu’s encouraging spirit originated from. How can an open-air roof win over an apartment? Referring to the overall story, readers will finally realize that it is because Babu had suffered so much from the most terrible things in life that nothing could make him a little sadder. On the other hand, even the smallest improvement could add color to his miserable life and please him.

This appaling finding again airs a bitter mood on the readers. The misfortune of Babu and his wife change their unreasonable happiness into reasonable one. How severely Babu and his wife suffers!

When life turned out to be nothing but desperation, when there is nothing worse to happen or to lose, everything will seem content to Babu while his attitude will appear funny to the readers. Krishnan uses the black humor to suggests Babu’s absurd circumstance, where he could only struggle for nothing but had to adapt to everything and even discovered minute satisfactions that can support he and his wife to live through the miseries. Through the skillful using of black humor Krishnan creates the adverse impacts of amusing the readers at the first read, pushing them to searching for a reason in the story, and grieving them to extreme in the end. Consequently, the readers experienced a far bitter taste than just anguish over the torture of life.

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

1.6.07 02:48