Vice-Chancellor Character Analysis

In her last letter Asha had written, with her usual heartless blitheness, that she had persuaded Tara to try again. Tara’s husband was given a new posting, this time in Geneva, and Asha had persuaded her daughter to go with him, to give him another chance. There was the little problem of their child who was only just recovering from a near-fatal attack of typhoid, but Asha was sure they would find a way to deal with this minor problem. The main thing, she had trumpeted, was for Tara to rouse herself and make another try at being a successful diplomat’s wife. Surely Geneva would be an excellent place for such an effort. “Why, why shouldn’t she be happy?” Asha had written and Nanda Kaul had not replied, had been too disgusted to reply.

Getting up at last, she went slowly round to the back of the house and leant on the wooden railing on which the yellow rose creeper had blossomed so youthfully last month but was now reduced to an exhausted mass of grey creaks and groans again. She gazed down into the gorge with its gashes of red earth, its rocks and gullies and sharply spiked agaves […] and said Is it wrong? Have I not done enough and had enough? I want no more. I want nothing. Can I not be left with nothing? But there was no answer and of course she expected none.

Looking down, over all those years she had survived and borne, she saw them, not bare and shining as the plains below, but like the gorge, cluttered, choked and blackened with the heads of children and grandchildren, servants and guests, all restlessly surging, clamouring about her.

She had practised this stillness, this composure, for years, for an hour every afternoon: it was an art, not easily acquired. The most difficult had been those years in that busy house where doors were never shut […] She remembered how […] she had spent the sleepless hour making out the direction from which a shout came, or a burst of giggles, an ominous growling from the dogs, a contest of squirrels under the guavas in the orchard […]All was subdued, but nothing was ever still. […]

This would go on for an hour and she would keep her eyes tightly clenched, her hands folded on her chest […] determinedly not responding. The effort to not respond would grow longer by the minute, heavier, more unendurable, till at last it was sitting on her chest, grasping her by the neck. At four o’clock she would break out from under it with a gasp.

Walking faster and faster back and forth, back and forth over the lawn, she had stayed out till she heard the car […] turn in at the gate […] Lights off, silence, then the throwing open of the car door, and her husband had come out. He had been to drop some of the guests home—no, she corrected herself with asperity, one of the guests home. She watched him go up the veranda steps, puffing at his cigar […] She had not moved, not made a sound. She watched him cross the veranda, go into the drawing room, and waited till the light there went out and another came on in the bedroom that had been only a small dressing-room until she had had his bed put there. Then she paced the lawn again, slower and slower.

[…]

That was one time she had been alone: a moment of private triumph, cold and proud.

The care of others was a habit Nanda Kaul had mislaid. It had been a religious calling she had believed in till she found it fake. It had been a vocation that one day went dull and drought-struck as though its life-spring had dried up.

It had happened on her first day alone at Carignano. After her husband’s death, her sons and daughters had come to help her empty the Vice-Chancellor’s house, pack and crate their belongings and distribute them, then escort her to Kasauli. For a while, they had stood about, in Carignano, like too much furniture. She had wondered what to do with them.

Fortunately, they had gone away. Brought up by her to be busy and responsible, they all had families and employments to tend. None could stay with her. When they left, she paced the house, proprietorially, feeling the feel of each stone in the paving with bare feet.

But it gave her an increased sense of Raka’s dependence on her, Nanda Kaul. She was not sure if it was poignant, ironical or merely irritating that Raka herself remained totally unaware of her dependence, was indeed as independent and solitary as ever. Watching her wandering amongst the rocks and agaves of the ravine, tossing a horse chestnut rhythmically from hand to hand, Nanda Kaul wondered if she at all realized how solitary she was. She was the only child Nanda Kaul had ever known who preferred to stand apart and go off and disappear to being loved, cared for and made the center of attention. The children Nanda Kaul had known had wanted only to be such centres: Raka alone did not.

Now the pink lichees, the badminton games and piano tunes fled from Ila Das’s side, leaving behind a shriveled, shaking thing. Little by little, all those sweetnesses, those softnesses died or departed, leaving her every minute drier, dustier and more desperate.

Nanda Kaul knew: she had followed this despairing progress from not too great a distance. So Ila Das could turn to her with a harsh honesty that was as real as her memory-making had been, and Nanda Kaul knew how real each was in its turn, how they came together, one bitter, corroded edge joining the other, making up this wretched whole.

In her last letter Asha had written, with her usual heartless blitheness, that she had persuaded Tara to try again. Tara’s husband was given a new posting, this time in Geneva, and Asha had persuaded her daughter to go with him, to give him another chance. There was the little problem of their child who was only just recovering from a near-fatal attack of typhoid, but Asha was sure they would find a way to deal with this minor problem. The main thing, she had trumpeted, was for Tara to rouse herself and make another try at being a successful diplomat’s wife. Surely Geneva would be an excellent place for such an effort. “Why, why shouldn’t she be happy?” Asha had written and Nanda Kaul had not replied, had been too disgusted to reply.

Getting up at last, she went slowly round to the back of the house and leant on the wooden railing on which the yellow rose creeper had blossomed so youthfully last month but was now reduced to an exhausted mass of grey creaks and groans again. She gazed down into the gorge with its gashes of red earth, its rocks and gullies and sharply spiked agaves […] and said Is it wrong? Have I not done enough and had enough? I want no more. I want nothing. Can I not be left with nothing? But there was no answer and of course she expected none.

Looking down, over all those years she had survived and borne, she saw them, not bare and shining as the plains below, but like the gorge, cluttered, choked and blackened with the heads of children and grandchildren, servants and guests, all restlessly surging, clamouring about her.

She had practised this stillness, this composure, for years, for an hour every afternoon: it was an art, not easily acquired. The most difficult had been those years in that busy house where doors were never shut […] She remembered how […] she had spent the sleepless hour making out the direction from which a shout came, or a burst of giggles, an ominous growling from the dogs, a contest of squirrels under the guavas in the orchard […]All was subdued, but nothing was ever still. […]

This would go on for an hour and she would keep her eyes tightly clenched, her hands folded on her chest […] determinedly not responding. The effort to not respond would grow longer by the minute, heavier, more unendurable, till at last it was sitting on her chest, grasping her by the neck. At four o’clock she would break out from under it with a gasp.

Walking faster and faster back and forth, back and forth over the lawn, she had stayed out till she heard the car […] turn in at the gate […] Lights off, silence, then the throwing open of the car door, and her husband had come out. He had been to drop some of the guests home—no, she corrected herself with asperity, one of the guests home. She watched him go up the veranda steps, puffing at his cigar […] She had not moved, not made a sound. She watched him cross the veranda, go into the drawing room, and waited till the light there went out and another came on in the bedroom that had been only a small dressing-room until she had had his bed put there. Then she paced the lawn again, slower and slower.

[…]

That was one time she had been alone: a moment of private triumph, cold and proud.

The care of others was a habit Nanda Kaul had mislaid. It had been a religious calling she had believed in till she found it fake. It had been a vocation that one day went dull and drought-struck as though its life-spring had dried up.

It had happened on her first day alone at Carignano. After her husband’s death, her sons and daughters had come to help her empty the Vice-Chancellor’s house, pack and crate their belongings and distribute them, then escort her to Kasauli. For a while, they had stood about, in Carignano, like too much furniture. She had wondered what to do with them.

Fortunately, they had gone away. Brought up by her to be busy and responsible, they all had families and employments to tend. None could stay with her. When they left, she paced the house, proprietorially, feeling the feel of each stone in the paving with bare feet.

But it gave her an increased sense of Raka’s dependence on her, Nanda Kaul. She was not sure if it was poignant, ironical or merely irritating that Raka herself remained totally unaware of her dependence, was indeed as independent and solitary as ever. Watching her wandering amongst the rocks and agaves of the ravine, tossing a horse chestnut rhythmically from hand to hand, Nanda Kaul wondered if she at all realized how solitary she was. She was the only child Nanda Kaul had ever known who preferred to stand apart and go off and disappear to being loved, cared for and made the center of attention. The children Nanda Kaul had known had wanted only to be such centres: Raka alone did not.

Now the pink lichees, the badminton games and piano tunes fled from Ila Das’s side, leaving behind a shriveled, shaking thing. Little by little, all those sweetnesses, those softnesses died or departed, leaving her every minute drier, dustier and more desperate.

Nanda Kaul knew: she had followed this despairing progress from not too great a distance. So Ila Das could turn to her with a harsh honesty that was as real as her memory-making had been, and Nanda Kaul knew how real each was in its turn, how they came together, one bitter, corroded edge joining the other, making up this wretched whole.