I Go West

Author: D. F. Karaka
Publisher: Thacker & Co, Bombay (2nd edition) 1941

Karaka introduced himself and his small Parsi community in Bombay in “few words” at the beginning of the book.  I have condensed those “few words” even further in this note.

I am a parsee.  We have been separated from Persia for 1200 years.  We have our prophet Zarathustra and our bible Zend Avesta.  We have a Fire Temple where we pray and a Tower of Silence where we offer our dead to the vultures.  There is nothing profound about us.  We are a race of bank clerks and commercial travelers.  When the British Raj was strong and powerful, we were staunch and loyal to it.  Now with the rising tide of Congress opinion, and the growth of the Indian National Movement, we have suddenly awakened to the fact that our duty lies to the country which twelve hundred years ago found a home for us, when we were fleeing from Persia on an attempt to rescue the Sacred Fire from the onslaught of Islam and the Arabs.

I used to feel quite proud at one time that among my somewhat distant ancestors were Rustom and Sorab.  

The routine of the day was, for men their office, followed in the evening with a visit to the Gymkhana or the club and dinner either at home or with friends.  The women spent their mornings shopping at large English stores, when they dressed with particular care, for this was regarded somewhat as a social function.  If they went to a bazaar, good cloths were seldom worn for fear of contamination.  At lunch the topic of conversation was the morning’s shopping, the gossip of the smart set, new engagements, the babies that were shortly to be born.  Then came the short afternoon siesta to make up for the strain of the morning’s hard work.  Then Tea.  Then a fantastic discussion as to the particular saree that would be worn that evening.

We were not rich, but the poverty was inconceivable.  We were far too respectable to be poor.  Promiscuity was unknown in the little world of ours.  Nobody got any further than holding hands, and we only thought of women in terms of marriage.

One sentence that meant a lot to Karaka when he was at the University in Bombay was “the youth is the sword that is fretting in its sheath …” by the nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu. 

Some homes have been broken because of the conflict of ideals between parent and child.  But out of it come the India I know.  What Kipling wrote may have been very beautiful literature, but it is now preposterously out-of-date.  It is time one of us wrote about ourselves not in the orthodox style of a pompous Victorian monologue, but rather as a confession, not sparing our blushes.  We have reason to color in spite of our perpetually brazen complexions.

Karaka expresses his rude-awakening as he tries to mingle into the English society at Oxford. 

 

I have known what it feels like to be away from home, flung out into the world which cares little for your ancestry or the purity of the race or the unimpeachable record of your family, and where the only things that matter are your bank balance and your color.  Then I forget that I am a Parsee, or an Indian or anything else, and I realize that the most significant fact about myself is that I was born dark.

Every P. and O. liner brings more and more of those who like me stepped out of the smugness of our homes to be battered in our effort to acquire an English education.  I often wish that when we come to England for the first time we would not be so naive, so full of hope, so believing.  

Something within me has died in these seven years away from home.

He was elected to the library committee, later to the standing committee, became the secretary and eventually became the first Asian president of the Oxford Union.

This is an autobiography mixed with acute observations of the then Indian society, and radical changes that have been proposed to change Indian society in the 1930s.  He was a supporter of Gandhi, Nehru, and what the Congress stands for.  He rebelled in his own Parsi society and became a newspaper man against the wishes of his family.  

I came to know about Karaka and this book through one of the short stories of Martin Wickremasinghe (මාර්ටින් වික්‍රමසිංහ) in his book “Handa Sakki Keema” (හඳ සාක්කි කීම).  It was a fascinating to read about the rise of the Congress, how people venerated the leaders of the Congress, how powerful was the Congress, and how determined Nehru was to change the orthodoxy of the Indian society.  It is hard to believe what happened since he wrote this book.  The orthodoxy is still alive and well, and the Congress has almost disappeared from Indian politics.