Word: hatterr
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...burden, like Kipling, or deplored the excesses of imperialism, like E. M. Forster, they were usually outsiders observing from a distance. In recent years, the Indians have been raising novelists of their own, such as G. V. (for Govindas Vishnoodas) Desani, author of the high-comic All About H. Hatterr (TIME, June 18, 1951). Now comes R. K. (for Rasi-puram Krishnaswami) Narayan, a gently satirical fellow and a writer of substance. At 45, Narayan has published half a dozen novels and scores of stories, forming a miniature comedie humaine of modern India...
Swamis with Sidelines. H. Hatterr, Desani's comic hero, is a born stooge and fall guy. Born illegitimate, "a love-brat, a mixed Oriental-Occidental sinfant," Hero Hatterr endures a series of misadventures which keep him low man on life's totem pole...
...comfort the reading classes." But the swami's brand of wisdom is P. T. Barnum's. "Canst thou," he inquires soulfully, "spare me thy trousers, thy jacket, thy shirt, thy shoes, thy cufflinks, thy watch, every accessory thou hast on thy person?" Only too happy to oblige, Hatterr is sent packing back to town in a dirty towel and is promptly fired. He finds out later that the swami is working on the side for a secondhand clothing outfit...
...Libido. Hatterr decides to get into the swami racket himself. But just as he and his partner are about to put on their big show for the gullible, he learns what his own billing is to be: that of a saintly eunuch who has surgically rendered "his id and libido null and void." Much attached to his id and libido, Hatterr scoots off into the brush...
...with a beefsteak on his chest and let a lion eat the steak. A dress rehearsal and one performance cool his ardor for the impresario's wife. It turns out that the impresario uses her as a regular decoy to line up human steak platters. Between catastrophes, H. Hatterr asks himself the perennial questions of philosophy, some piffling, some reaching toward profundity: "Why is an evening paper published in the afternoon?" "Is there anything in this here 'Kismet' notion? If Destiny should commit a feller to the wrong woman, can anything prevent it happening...