White Teeth

that door with nothing and be exactly the same as everybody else in there. It could be 1989 outside, or 1999, or 2009, and you could still be sitting at the counter in the V-neck you wore toyou

is hard to explain. If only there w

e Freud's grandson with his fort-da game, to the same miserable scenario. But time is what it comes down to. After you've spent a certain amount, invested so much of it in one place

r of the pinball machine where Samad first spilt civilian blood, with a hefty right hook to a racist drunk, 1980. Archie was downstairs the night he watched his fiftieth birthday float up through fathoms of whisky to meet him like an old shipwreck, 1977. And this is where they both came, Ne

s, if you can't understand how a balance can be struck between democratic secularism and religious belief within the same state, or you can't recall the circumstances in which Germany was divided, then it feels good no, it feels great to know at least one particular place, one partic

ve at Dover with thirty old pounds and their father's gold

l varieties; births of AbdulMickey, t

avian dry-cleaning outfit, All and his brothers have a small lump

serve food, make people happy, have some face to face conversations once in a while'. He buysthe disuse

ool house, All decides to keep the original Irish name. He paints all the fittings orange and green, hangs pictures of racehorses andregisters his business name as "An

O'ConnelTs ope

e stumble upon O'ConnelTs on thei

o carpet the walls t

wins fifteen bob

d the heart. Ali's remaining family decide his death is a result of

e pool tables are used: the "Death' table and the "Life' table. All those who want to play for money play on the "Death' table. All those who object

highest ever recorded scor

d brings it to O'ConnelTs. Samad asks to have his great-grandfather Mangal Pande'

31 October 1984 Archie wins 268 pounds 72 pence on the "Death' table. Buys beautiful new set of Pirelli tyres for clapped-out car.

n's not the fucking word of God, as it were, but it's still my opinion."Mickey attached a wire round the back of the cheap

und. He got out from behind the counter and took a look at the picture from this new angle. "What d'you think, Arch?""Good," said Archie solidly. "I think: good.""Please. I would consider it a great personal favour if you would allow it to stay."Mickey tilted his head to one side and then the other. "As I said, I don't mean no offence or nothing, I just thin

as ever, their only concession to New Year's Eve a few pieces of mangy tinsel hangin

this bloke Samad wants up? It's his grand

me face like a donkey's pumpum."Denzel and Clarence exploded into their dirty laughter. "Nuff to put my belly off its digesting,true sur!""There you are!" exclaimed Mickey, victorious, turning back to Samad. "Puts the clientele off their food that's what I said right off.""Assure me you are not going to listen to those t

?" demanded Samad, gestur

it's the majority wot counts, in nit On most other tings I defer, as it were, to your opinion. The lads call you "The Professor" and, fair dues, it's not without cause. I am a respecter of your judgement, six days out of every seven. But bottom line is: if you

in his ears, a current of anger worked its way through S

e. "I should never have asked ... it would be a dishonour, it would cast into ignominy the memory of Mangal Pande to

y touched Samad's shoulders with such affection that Samad thought he might weep. "I didn't realize it was such a bloody big deal for you. Let's start again. We'll leave the picture up for aweek and see how it goes, right?""Thank you, my friend." Samad pulled out a handkerchief and drew it over his forehead. "It

aver over nuffin' .. ."Samad looked deep into his great-grandfather's eyes. They had been through this battle many times, Samad and Pande,

ed hero A palav

nnell's and returned to the same debate, sometimes with new information gleaned from Samad's continual research into the matter but ever since Archie found out the 'truth' about Pande, circa 1953, there was no changing his min

utineer amongst the high-caste sepoys in the Bengal army.] i Any sepoy who revolted in the I

sts, it does not follow that it is a correct representation ofthe character of Mangal Pande. The first definition we agree on: my great-grandfather was a mutineer and I am proud to say this. I concede matters did not go quite according to plan. But traitor? Coward? The dictionary you show me is old these definitions are now out of currency. Pande was no traitor and no coward.""Ahhh, now, you see, we've been through this, and my thought is this: there's no smoke without fire," Archie would say, looking im

l right, Professor. Let's hear your version."Often you see old men in the corner of dark pubs, discussing and gesticulating, using beer mugs and salt-cellars to represent long-dead people and far-off places. At that moment they display a vitality missing in every other area of their lives. They light up. Unpacking a full story on to the table here is Churchill-fork, over there is Czechoslovakia-serviette, here we find the accumulation of German troops represented by a collection of cold peas they are reborn. But when Archie and Samad had these tabletop debates during the eighties, knives and forks were not enough. The w

acred to Hindus. It was an innocent mistake as far as anything is innocent on stolen land an infamous British blunder. But what a feverish turmoil must have engulfed the people on first hearing the news! Under the specious pretext of new weaponry, the English were intending to destroy their caste, their honour, their standing in the eyes of Gods and men everything, in short, that made life worth living. A rumour like this could not be kept secret; it spread like wildfirethrough the dry lands of India that summer, down the pro

derstand his sacrifi

ce you are apparently an expert in the doings of my family, please, enlighten me. Let us hear your version."Now, the average school student nowadays is aware of the complex forces, movements anddeep currents that motivate wars and spark revol

off with Cleopatra. Henry V triumphed at Agincourt because the French were too busy admiring their own outfits. And the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857 bega

t of the line of the 34th swaggers to and fro a Sepoy named Mangal Pande. He is half drunk with bhang, and wholly drunk with religious fanaticism. Chin in air, loaded musket in hand, he struts backwards and forwards, at a sort of half dance, shouting in shrill and nasal monotone, "Come out, you blackguards! Turn out, all of you! The English are upon us. Through biting thesecartri

Then he took out a large sword, a tulwar, and cowardly lunged whi

with his left foot. He missed. A few days later, Pande stood trial and was found guilty. From theother side of the country, on a chaise longue in Delhi, his execution was ordered by one General Henry Havelock (a man honoured, much to Samad's fury, by a statue just outside the Palace Restaurant, Trafalgar Square, to the right of Nelson), who added in a postscript to his written in

e whisper, Fitchett's intoxicated, incompetent Pande had passed down a line of subsequent historians, the truth mutating, bending, receding as the whisper continued. It didn't matter that bhang, a hemp drink taken in small doses for medicinal purposes, was extremely unlikely to cause intoxication of this kind or that Pande, a strict H

e usually came armed with a plastic bag full of Brent Library books, anti-Pande propaganda, mis

And here Samad would mime the final zipping up of his lips, the throwing away of a key. "True action. Not words. I tellyou, Archibald, Mangal Pande sacrificed his life in the

of his honourable death. But imagine it: there he sat." Samad pointed to Denzel, about to play his winning dom

ith respect, I don't believe that to be the case.""Well, you're wrong.""With respect, I believe I am right.""It's like this, Sam: imagine here' he gathered a pile of dirty plates that Mickey was about to put in the dishwasher 'are all the people who have written about your Pande in the last hundred-and-whatever years. Now: here's the ones that agree with me." He placed ten plates on his side of the table and pushed one over to Samad. "And that's the madman on your side.""A. S. Misra. Respected Indian civil servant. Not a madman.""Right. Well, it would take you at least another hundred-and whatever years to get as many plates as I have, even if you were going to make

t the morning drying off in a stuffy upstairs cafe, full of the right type of ladies having the right type of tea. Rajnu, ever the good listener, sat patiently as his uncle babbled wildly Oh, the importance of the discovery, Oh, how long he had waited for this moment nodding in all the right places and smiling sweetly as Samad brushed tears from the corners of his eyes. "It is a great book, isn't it, Rajnu?" as

Samad was asked to fill

(Delhi)Research project: TruthRajnu, tickled by this

o reach it but it was well worth the stretch. When Rajnu passed the book to his uncle, Samad felt his fingers tingle and, looking at its cover, shape and colour, saw that it

see first," said Rajnu, laying it down on a desk. The heavy thud of one side of the book hit

rs across the picture. "This is our blood, Rajnu. I never thought I would see .. . Whateyebrows! What a nose

an alien ruler, culminating in a mass-uprising with no parallel in world history. Though the effort failed in its immediate consequences, it succeeded in laying the foundations of the Independence to be won in 1947. For his

. Now you're telling me that wi

d gran dad there'd be

iously asking us' Archie clapped an uninterested Clarence and Den

!" said Clarence, havi

ained in the use of muskets.""OK. So: why does he miss? Why?""It is my belief that the only possible explanation is that the gun was faulty.""Yes .. . there is that. But, maybe, maybe something else. Maybe he was being bullied intogoing out there and making a row, you know, goaded, by the other guys. And he didn't want to killanyone in the first place, you know. So he pretended to be drunk, so the boys in the barracks roomwould believe he missed the shot.""That is quite the stupidest theory I have ever heard," sighed Samad, as the second hand ofMickey's egg-stained clock started the thirty-second countdown to midnight. "The kind only youcould come up with. It's absurd.""Why?""Why? Archibald, these Englishmen, these Captain Hearsays, Havelocks and the rest, wereevery Indian's mortal enemy. Why should he spare lives he despised?""Maybe he just couldn

EAR!"bellowedMickey.fr

use and effect, could it be that the hidden throb I stole fr