Coolie

In a novel of nearly 300 pages, Munoo is happy for exactly four pages.

Thus, there is a sadness to the novel’s sunny brief opening chapter: The reader understands something young Munoo cannot.

In the first chapter, Anand establishes the vibrancy and raw energy of the coolie class, the people society dismisses as subhuman. Munoo relishes the natural splendor of the Kangra Valley: “Some fruit or other was always in season/ Ripe yellow mangos dropped by dozens in the spring […] Purple and red jamans and long green mulberries fell in sickly profusion during the summer” (3). In his innocence, he cavorts with his friends, playing amid the lazy buffalo and exotic birds: “The blood of little Munoo ran to the tune of all this lavish beauty” (4). Nature, without the interference of humanity with its greed and intolerance, its hate and its violence, enlivens Munoo. A poor orphan, he does not perceive his vulnerability or his lack of expectations. He knows he must leave tomorrow to begin earning his living, but for him that journey brings only hope: “[H]e was going to live in town, where there were beautiful things to eat, beautiful clothes to wear and beautiful toys to play with” (4). For the moment, Munoo loves mangos, buffalo, and friends. He must be taught what it means to be a coolie in India.

That education is quick. Within a day of arriving at the home of the accountant where he is to be an indentured servant, Munoo understands in his limited way that something has been lost. He is at turn sad and angry largely because no one explains to him exactly what he has lost, much less why. What he must learn are two realities that define India’s socioeconomic system at the time: 1) the rigid logic of the centuries-old caste system that deems the working class poor, known by the derogatory term “coolies,” are fit only for manual labor and are not regarded as people; and 2) that India is an occupied country where a foreign government, the British, directs all the systems of production, and hence indigenous Indians are compelled to play up to the British occupiers by denying the integrity of their identity as natives. His brief stay in Sham Nagar teaches Munoo that he is little more than a domesticated animal and that Indians, even the apparently well-off accountant, must kowtow to the British, evidenced when the family hosts the British bank official for tea. The man is clearly uncomfortable in the home of his underling. He dislikes their music, their food, and their every attempt at hospitality. The Babu feels the sting of the humiliation and, in turn, takes it out on Munoo when Munoo clumsily dumps a tea tray while he is serving the guest.

Munoo struggles to understand why Bibiji treats him with mistrust and disgust. He must learn his place. His innocent inclination to trust others and his confidence in himself put him at risk of punishment. He is restricted to certain rooms in the home. He cannot eat although he prepares food all day and watches as the family wastes much of it. He sleeps on the floor. When he engages the family, he is vaguely aware that they are treating him like some remarkable pet that seems to understand words. He oversteps boundaries when he befriends Sheila. He plays with Sheila, miming a monkey, a dance that dehumanizes him and feeds into the perception of the coolies as animals. Munoo just enjoys making Sheila and her friends laugh. When he carries his act too far, acting like the animal that the family treats him as, he is beaten and kicked.

As a desperate and scared Munoo runs away, the novel sets up the dynamic that will come to define the young boy. He cannot help but hope that life is better somewhere else. His heart is not ready to accept the blankness of his expectation. He believes somewhere there is a place for him where money is limitless, where people respect each other, and where work brings dignity and purpose. As he leaps out the window of the house, Munoo runs from something, not toward anything. He feels “intensely alone,” but he is shaken by a “delirium,” an energy, an “easier rhythm.” As he steals on board a train full of coolies, now going somewhere, anywhere other than Sham Nagar, Munoo relishes how, as the train begins to move, the fetid breeze of other people’s breath is cut by the “fresh breeze coming in from the fields” (61). The breeze recalls the gentle breeze that animated his carefree days back in Kangra.

Munoo’s journey will ultimately strip this hope from him. Munoo is still penniless. He has no friends, no family, no expectation of employment, no marketable skills, and not even the merest perception of the dilemma he is in. He is a coolie in a culture that regards coolies as disposable commodities. The reader understands what Munoo does not: the utter bleakness of his young life.