A comic-erotic romp

T’Ta Professor
Manohar Shyam Joshi
Translated from
Hindi by
Ira Pande
Penguin
140 pages
Rs299

Manohar Shyam Joshi’s novel T’ta Professor comes in the guise of a breezy tale ostensibly about a school teacher in a remote Kumaoni village. He is in awe of the English language and mockingly reffered to as “T’ta Professor”. This character always carries a notebook to jot down English words that he hears for the first time, acknowledging a word as acceptable only after he has consulted the Oxford English Dictionary. While this professor with his comic antics and “dubbul MA” may well form one long amusing thread that runs through the book, it is by no means the only one.

This story is as much about the narrator of this novel — Joshi’s Joshi who wants to write something “classical and modern” at the same time, never manages to finish the stories he sets out to write, and is always jotting down reminiscences of T’ta’s life.  
Writes Joshi of T’ta, “I soon began to see potential of the comic “zero” in him because, despite being an international intellectual, I was also the local satirist and lampooner.”
Simple insights, sly humour and quirky characters pepper this read. You will discover a house full of lonely, eccentric widows, find that the value of degrees is questioned, encounter a duel over English vocabulary, observe the dynamics involved in the pursuit of a “village-blonde”, Kalawati Yen, by a couple of smitten men, and find references to Chekov and Steinbeck. All this, as Joshi tries to persuade T’ta to share tales of his life and sexual experiences to fuel Joshi’s own writings.

Well-imagined as this novel is, not everything manages to survive translation and the linguistic leap from one world into the other. The prose weighs heavily and feels ponderous in parts. Joshi writes “My hero was as ridiculous as he was lecherous and each time I thought of him, I would double up with silent laughter.” The trouble is we never end up doubling with that laughter, silent or noisy, despite the fact that we too have been introduced to T’ta, “a man who could turn any topic into a sexual problem.”

Furthermore, the line between the poignant and the crass have blurred on several occasions. For instance when T’ta reaches the “Main Point” with Prempyari and she promptly becomes pregnant, or when the pretty young cousin-in-law Boju noticing
T’ta’s gaze lingering on her enquires if he wants “to suckle?”

Still certain episodes in the book do keep you entertained. The pronunciation war is one example. Shoban Singh confronts T’ta with, “You say ‘mayyar’ for measure and ‘ood’ for wood. Your English has all the flaws of the Punjabis along with the common mistakes the Kumaonis make. You say ‘bhast’ for ‘vast’ and ‘t’ta’ for ‘ta-ta’”. To which T’ta responds, “Look there is no point arguing about this. All I know is that you are a mere BA and I am a dubbul MA.” This ongoing battle between the principal and T’ta is a source of continual amusement.

So if you’re a fan of the comic, erotic and scatological romp, can cope with some bits of humour being lost in translation and are able to take in your stride bawdy language and slapstick action, this one’s a light and easy read.

The writer is a freelance journalist.