Mex Zhou
June 5, 2007
Draft Three

Why do Krishnan Varma use black humour?
The story “The Grass-Eaters” describes to the readers a story of a young couple, Ajit Babu and his wife, who lived in Calcutta and led a miserable life with incredible optimism. The author, Krishnan Varma depicted this unhappy story in a humourous way which simply makes the novel sounds much sadder. Black humour was deliberately chosen by the author to demonstrate the optimism of the couple, while even if keeping optimistic after so many pains, they could never get rid of that horrible life around them. The black humour created a sharp contradiction between Ajit Babu’s psycological condition and his physical situation, which arises a stronge sense of despair and irony.

The author did not start the story by Ajit Babu’s miserable life. Instead, some background information goes first. It begins with a conversation between Ajit Babu and a fat boy he was tutoring. Among the process of their conversation, an interesting detail could be noticed. The writer portrays the boy’s family members as a “spherical” boy, an “ovoid” father and a “cuboid” mother, with three different words of the same meaning. It seems funny to introduce people like that. While behind the author’s humour, readers could infer from these three prople’s outlook that their lives were easy. They were enjoying an abundant life quite different from Ajit Babu’s, thus they were amazed at the Ajit Babu’s acommondation in a pipe. Taking into consideration that the fat family were living in the same land as Ajit Babu did, they had totally no sense of their fellow’s living condition before they met Ajit Babu. At the opening of the story, the writer set an interesting conversation to inform the background of the story. One had already been indicated by those huomours words that the society was quite unbalanced and the couple’s life might be so hard among that time.

After that, the author started to tell Ajit Babu’s miserable stories in details. Amusing description would be found when dealing with Ajit babu’s living condition. According to the passage, Ajit Babu uses some exaggerating words to express his feeling when they had got an abandoned-looking freight wagon to live in:
A whole wagon to ourselves—a place with doors which could be opened and shut-we did nothing but open and shut them for a full hour-all the privacy a man and wife could want-no fear of waking up with a complete stranger in your arms…it was heaven. I felt I was God.(Page.57)
Funny as it was, to live in an abandoned wagon would make a man feel like God. No one might be able to accept such a poor room as a heaven for a young couple. However, Ajit Babu likes it. He is crazy about it. His statements confirm that the living situation at that time was so bad that even a mere private place with a door which could be open and shut will make him thank God. Although many exciting words were used to depict Ajit Babu and his wife’s rapture of owning a “house”, some deep sadness were conveyed to the readers about the poor life that this couple had.

It is not the end. The hero kept telling the reader his amusing experience with various humourous ways. He was satisfied with his wife’s being pregnant during their journey in spite of lacking a fixing house. He felt content to find a pipe as home and without any hesitation they crept into it. At last, with the help of his host family, he obtained a house roof to settle down. Ajit Babu took it with great satisfaction and he explained there were more light and ventilation, freedom from rats and mice and rodents, and what’s more, far less rent than other tenants paid. One might be able to regard it as acceptable that Ajit Babu should be happy with his new house. However, no rational reader can take such a “house” as granted. Ajit Babu’s happiness, or the writer’s humourous tone in the same way, make the story much more miserable.

The author did not stop to use his ironic tone at the second last paragraph, which seems to be the most direct time he reveals the reality of that society. Ajit Babu depict the readers a chaotic atmosphere where people “hold a protest meeting, denounce British imperialism, American neo-colonialism, the central government, capitalism and socialism, and set off crackers.”(Page. 59) No belief and no control exists. People there lost all their judgement about what is acceptable and what not. Whatever the hero’s optimism might be, it seems like a utopian dream in Calcutta.

The world was so bad. Ajit Babu and his wife could never possess a peaceful life in Calcutta as they wish. That is what the author hope to indicate from his black humour. Some readers might disagree with it as they noticed Ajit Babu’s words, at the last of the story, that he felt eventful and no fear or anxieties and content with the presence. But it is just the opposite. What makes he felt content is such a miserable scene of “a tram burning, a man stabbing another man, a woman dropping her baby in a garbage bin”. The ending of the story appears to be the biggest irony of the hero’s optimism and it expresses the author’s intention most strongly that it is the misery of the society and any single person’s optimism could only be a form of despair.