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PDEBALD TRłŚANKU : THE EURASIAN IN ANGLO-INDIAN FICTION 193

Rumer Godden ’s The Lady and the Unicom provides an equally evocative atalemcnt of the plight of the Eurasian, when the novelist ponders the thoughts of old Father Ghezzi on the subject:

‘For fifty-one years he had been dealing with these people, these facile Anglo-Indians... It was like digging in the sand, you could not get to the bottom of their contradictions, their cross-purposes. It was their blood, the contempt of one part for another; the contempt of the Brilisher for the nalive he rules, a contempt that runs like cold pure metal through the easy tissues of the native indolence and shiftlessness,... dishonesty and incosequence; and the resentment of the Indian under that domination, his fight for freedom that is alien to his element and culture if he could but find peace’... There could be no peace for these people who must always be against the winning side, no matter which side wins, carrying in themselves their certainty of defeat.²⁸

At another place, Father Ghezzi points out how the Eurasian man and the woman had each their own particular cross the bear:

‘I don’t know which it is that is worse to have in this country... boys or girls, sons or daughtcrs. With the sons it is one thing; they cannot get work, the Indians sąueeze them out from beneath, the English from above... Bcfore they begin they are failures. And with the girls it is another thing; they are so successful... There is always success for these girls, so smart, so nimbie, so empty-headed. They take even the jobs the boys might have.. and what happens? They get money, they get ideas, they are taken up by men in Calcutta society... And thcn when they are in trouble, they are flung back on their own people : on those boys whose place they have taken, boys for whom they have now no use and who could not marry them if they had.’^2Q

In Burmese Days, George Orwell illustrates two contrasting attitudes Europeans adopt to the Eurasian question. The orthodox attitude, which a vast majority held is well-illustrated in Elizabeth ’s description of the Eurasians as ‘awfully degenerate types... so thin and weedy and cringing; and they haven‘t got al all honest faces... I've heard that half-castes always inherit what’s worst in both races.’³⁰ Flory, on the other hand, is a spokesman for the minority, liberał vicw ; ‘ Most Eurasians aren ’t very good specimens, and it ’s hard to sce how they could be, with their upbringing. But our attitude towards them is rather beastly. We always talk of them as though they’d sprung up from the ground like mushrooms, with all their faults ready-made. But when all‘s said and done, we Te responsible for their existence.’³¹

How does the Eurasian in Anglo-Indian flction view himself? : mostly as one confused, frustrated and bilter; perpetually insecure and unsure of himself; and for ever cursed to carry a large-size chip on his half-white