Latest / A Passage to India / Ch 10 - A Passage to India

Transcript

Ch 10 - A Passage to India · A Passage to India

• 0:00
  Chapter ten. The heat had leaped forward in the last hour. The street
• 0:08
  was deserted, as if a catastrophe had cleaned off humanity during the inconclusive talk.
• 0:16
  Opposite Aziz Bungalow stood a large unfinished house belonging to two brothers astrologers,
• 0:25
  and a squirrel hung head downwards on it, pressing its belly against burning scaffolding
• 0:33
  and twitching a mangy tail. It seemed the only occupant of the house,
• 0:40
  and the squeals it gave were in tune with the infinite, no doubt,
• 0:46
  but not attractive except to other squirrels. More noises came from a dusty tree,
• 0:54
  where brown birds creaked and floundered about looking for insects. Another bird,
• 1:02
  the Invisible Coppersmith, had started his punk punk. It matters so little to
• 1:11
  the majority of living beings what the minority that calls itself human desires or decides.
• 1:21
  Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed.
• 1:26
  Nor are the lower animals of England concerned about England. But in the tropics
• 1:33
  the indifference is more prominent. The inarticulate world is closer at hand and readier
• 1:41
  to resume control as soon as men are tired. When the seven gentlemen who
• 1:47
  had held such various opinions inside the bungalow came out of it, they were
• 1:53
  aware of a common burden, of a threat, which they called the bad
• 1:59
  weather coming. They felt that they could not do their work or would not
• 2:06
  be paid enough for doing it. The space between them and their carriages,
• 2:13
  instead of being empty, was clogged with a medium that pressed against their flesh.
• 2:20
  The carriage cushions scalded their trousers, their eyes pricked. Domes of hot
• 2:27
  water accumulated under their headgear and poured down their cheeks Salaaming feebly, they dispersed
• 2:36
  for the interior of other bungalows to recover their self esteem and the qualities that
• 2:43
  distinguished them from each other. All over the city and over much of India,
• 2:51
  the same retreat on the part of humanity was beginning in two cellars up
• 2:58
  hills under trees. April, herald of horrors is at hand. The Sun
• 3:07
  was returning to his kingdom with power, but without beauty. That was the
• 3:13
  sinister feature. If only there had been beauty, his cruelty would have been
• 3:19
  tolerable. Then, through excess of light he failed to triumph. He also,
• 3:28
  in his yellowy white overflow, not only matter, but brightness itself lay
• 3:36
  drowned. He was not the unattainable friend, either of men or birds or
• 3:43
  other sons. He was not the eternal promise, the never withdrawn suggestion that
• 3:50
  haunts our consciousness. He was merely a creature like the rest, and so
• 3:58
  debarred from glory. End of Chapter ten