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household of tenants were all watching, as the whole first floor of the house is let out except for this room. Ramesh is embarrassed. He refuses to go down to the room. His mother pleads. He becomes very angry and says he'll leave the house and never come back. Even though this is the day the priests have fixed, his mother relents for she knows he means what he says. Later on the roof at night Ramesh goes to his wife and apologises for the embarrassment. Two days later the marriage is consummated. His wife stays for fifteen days and is sent back to her village. Ramesh takes up his studies for his M.A. exams which have been repeatedly postponed because of intermittent strikes at the university. Ramesh took up English only because it was the only course open to him at the time for getting entrance to college. The study of British Literature: Wordsworth, Keats, etc. emphasis is put on the Victorian romanticist period. Joyce is left out. The course is a hangover from British imperialism. Each poem of the course is examined minutely, usually there is an Indian book published on each one of these poems giving a word by word description of what the poem is supposed to mean. Ramesh has no real feeling or love for English lit, it is a super-imposed thing. The course, its content has no relevance to contemporary Indian life. It is merely a means of getting a degree. So Ramesh has been trapped like the rest, an early marriage, to a wife he is so far unsympathetic to, an education of sorts based on the worst pretexts, a family putting constant pressure on him to conform, to be like them, because he is the eldest son (his only younger brother I suspect is mentally retarded) he alone will be responsible for the support of his parents when his father gets too old to work. The tight grip that Indian society puts around its youth suffocates almost any deviation from its norm

Sept 8, 70

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Chaudhuri in a magazine interview when asked what is the first thing he would do to change Indian society said: he would give India a western diet. That when he himself changed to a western diet, with meat, fruit, etc. he gained 10 times the amount of energy he had before. That the present diet of Indians only allows them to exist at a subsistence level without the energy needed to transform themselves and their country. I personally have found food to be the most difficult problem to face in India. You just cannot buy the right foods if you want to (at least in Benares). And lack of proper food cuts down your ability and energy to work.

"So it is always true to say that form and content are the same thing, and always true to say they are different things." p 9 Ezra Pound Selected Poems from intro by T.S. Eliot

Boy sitting in the lane. On either side of this forehead on the temples are white spots. I ask what it is. He points to his eyes. I later find out it is medicine for relief of eye pain, a mixture of honey and lime is dabbed on each side of the head. At first when I saw it I assumed it had some religious significance. As Indians are always painting their foreheads in various ways depending on the sect they follow and for instance, a baby besides the tilak (the dot on the center of the forehead) another black dot is put off center to one side or the other of the forehead. It is just a dab sometimes looking more like a smudge. This is to ward off evil spirits and protect the child. In India one can easily be misled by appearance and assume certain things that are untrue. In a highly charged religious atmosphere, one is prone sometimes to make assumptions that certain acts are made from religious motives when they have nothing to do with worship.

Sept 9, 70