Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

It seemed to Alice that Indians were much ruder speaking American. They sounded more impatient. Naturally confrontational, these Indians now had a language to bolster that tendency and no longer had to rely on the subtleties of Hindi. The obliqueness of Indian English, with its goofy charm that created distance, was a thing of the past. The students were without doubt more familiar, even obnoxious in American. Can you please inform me, what is your good name, madam? had become So who am I talking to?

And she was the teacher, the cause of it all!

She had succeeded, because they needed to be direct, with a certain bossy control of language, as techies in the call center. They were effective on the phone only if they were listened to.

If you’d just let me finish was another rasping way of dominating a conversation that Alice had given them.

But Alice was regretful, for in acquiring the new language they had made a weird adaptation: they had become the sort of American that Alice thought she’d left behind back in the States. And Amitabh, the quickest learner, was the best of them, which was to say the worst—her personal creation, a big blorting babu with a salesman’s patter. He was full of gestures—the chopping hand, the wagging finger, even backslapping. In a country where people never touched each other in public, he was all hands—that also was part of speaking American.

“I gotta talk to you,” Amitabh said to Alice one day after the classroom drills. She winced at the way he said it, and she cringed when he tapped her on the shoulder.

The lesson that day was concerned with useful Americanisms for “I don’t understand.” She had drilled them with Sorry, I don’t follow you and You’ve lost me and Mind repeating that? and I’m still in the dark.

Amitabh she knew to be a fundamentally patient and polite young man, but in his American accent, using colloquialisms, he sounded blunt and impatient. Speaking Indian English, he allowed an evasion, but his American always sounded like a non-negotiable demand. It worked on the phone—well, that was the point—but in person it was just boorish.

Now Amitabh was saying, “How about it?”

Alice smiled at his effrontery, the liberty he was taking with her, his teacher; but inwardly she groaned, knowing that she was the one who had given him this language, this new personality.

She said, “It just occurred to me that I don’t think I’ve spent enough time on ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”

“Hey, whatever,” Amitabh said, flinging his cupped hands in the air.

“No, really, Amitabh. I’m pretty busy.”

She had hoped to stop and feed the elephant—she was sure the elephant was expecting her—but she was overdue at the ashram. She didn’t want anyone to notice her lateness. The devotees, with all the time in the world, were punctual—often pointlessly early, making the twiddling of their thumbs into a virtue, almost a yoga position, as though to abase themselves to Swami, to please him with the obedient surrender of their will.

“There’s one or two things I want to go over,” Amitabh said.

“And you want to do it now?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Amitabh said.

“Maybe someone else can help you.”

“Nope. I’m focusing on yourself.”

“Not ‘yourself.’ ‘I’m focusing on you. ’”

“I’m focusing on you.”

“Better. But I wish you wouldn’t.”

It seemed that whenever she was in a hurry or had a deadline in India, she encountered an obstruction: a traffic jam, or the sidewalk was mobbed and slowed her, or someone wanted money, or the office was closed. Or, like today, she wanted to feed the elephant and rush back to the ashram, and here was Amitabh, in her face with a question. But she had given him the convincing accent, and with it, an attitude.

“The thing is,” Amitabh said with the heavy-lidded gaze and torpid smile he affected at his most American, “you said you were kind of interested in seeing the gods at Mahabalipuram.”

He said kinda and gahds.

“Did I say that?”

“You mentioned the elephants on The Penance of Arjuna and the Ganesh temple.”

“I think I said Ganesh seemed the most dependable, maybe the most lovable. And the carvings of elephants there—”

Interrupting her, Amitabh said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Alice began to laugh. Had she taught him that? No, but as with other phrases he knew, she might have used it in conversation. He remembered everything.

Using her laughter as a chance to interrupt again, Amitabh said, “I know somebody who knows somebody who got me a couple of tickets on the so-called Super Express to Chennai. You haven’t been there, am I right?”

“Not yet.”

“I figured as much,” he said. “So this is your chance to see the whole thing.”

How did he know that? Perhaps she had mentioned the elephant carvings at Mahabalipuram during one of her classes. She and Stella had spoken about visiting the shrine. One of the attractions of the ashram in Bangalore was that it was half a day by train to Chennai and the coastal temple, the famous bas relief called The Penance of Arjuna , the temples called the Raths, one dedicated to Ganesh, all of it at the edge of the great hot Indian Ocean. That’s on the list , they had said. This was before Zack entered the picture.

“How about a trip there some weekend?”

Alice smiled at his presumption and squirmed away from his reaching hand.

“Sorry.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that I’m a teacher and you’re a student, and it’s against the rules.”

Wagging his finger and opening his mouth wide to speak, he said, “We’re both employees of InfoTech. I’m team leader, full time, and you’re an associate instructor, part time. Hey, you owe me—I got them to kick some work your way.”

“Listen, I got this job on my own merits, and don’t you forget it.”

“It’s not about that,” he said, and shrugged. “It’s about the tickets.”

“If I wanted to go to Chennai I’d pay my own way.”

She did want to go—he was reminding her of what she had planned to do. But she objected to big smiling Amitabh’s insisting that she go with him.

She said, “Find someone else, please. I’m pretty busy.”

When she got to the stable and indicated to the mahout that she had brought some cashews for the elephant, she could tell that he was preoccupied: he had already fed the elephant, was just humoring her by allowing her to give the animal some nuts. But the elephant at least was grateful—forgiving, glad to see her, still smiling.

She was so late arriving at the ashram that she replayed the whole delaying conversation with Amitabh and began to hate him for his insolence. How about a trip there some weekend? and Got them to kick some work your way infuriated her. He now seemed to her a monster of presumption, without any grace. That night she sat in her room, ignored by Priyanka and Prithi, hating herself.

Two days later at InfoTech, she went to Miss Ghosh to tell her how she felt. Not just her misgivings about the emphasis on the American accent, but her suspicion that with these fast learners, taking on so much language and accent, they were losing something important—some subtlety, an Indian obliqueness and charm, a fundamental courtesy.

Feeling that she was rambling, she then said, “I’m starting to wonder whether I’m any good at this.”

Miss Ghosh said, “I can sincerely offer assurance that you have been a resounding success.”

“I can see I’ve made a difference.”

“It is chalk and cheese, for which I am duly grateful.”