c. 1936: iran
brother against brother
My father and uncle were twins. They re
sembled each other exactly in figure, face, and
disposition, and even their voices were identi
cal. so it was no easy matter to tell them apart.
Moreover, there existed between them a mental
bond or sympathy as a result of which, to take
an example, if one of them fell ill, the other
would fall ill also. in the common phrase, they
were like two halves of the one apple.
in due course they both decided to go
into commerce, and when they reached the age
of twenty, they went off to india, where they
opened up a business in Rey wares, including
textiles of various kinds—shot silk, flowered
stuffs, cotton piecegoods, jubbahs, shawls, nee
dles, earthenware, fuller’s earth, and pencase
covers. My father settled in benares and used
to send my uncle on business trips to the other
cities of india. after some time, my father fell
in love with a girl called bugam dasi, a dancer
in a lingam temple. besides performing ritual
dances before the great lingam idol she served
as a temple attendant. she was a hotblooded,
oliveskinned girl, with lemonshaped breasts,
great, slanting eyes, and slender eyebrows which
met in the middle. on her forehead she wore a
streak of red paint.
luptuous gestures, the consecrated movements
of the temple dance, bugam dasi unfolds like
the petals of a flower. a tremor passes across
her shoulders and arms, she bends forward and
again shrinks back. each movement has its own
precise meaning and speaks a language that is
not of words. What an effect all this must have
had upon my father! above all, the voluptuous
significance of the spectacle was intensified by
the acrid, peppery smell of her sweat mingling
with the perfume of champac and sandalwood
oil, perfumes redolent of the essences of exotic
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.
—George Eliot, 1859
trees and arousing sensations that slumbered
hitherto in the depths of the consciousness. i
imagine these perfumes as resembling the smell
of the drug box, of the drugs which used to be
kept in the nursery and which, we were told,
came from india—unknown oils from a land of
mystery, of ancient civilization. i feel sure that
the medicines i used to take had that smell.
all these things revived distant, dead mem
ories in my father’s mind. He fell in love with
bugam dasi, so deeply in love that he embraced
the dancinggirl’s religion, the lingam cult.
after some time the girl became pregnant
and was discharged from the service of the tem
ple. shortly after i was born, my uncle returned
to benares from one of his trips. apparently, in
the matter of women as in all others, his reac
tions were identical with my father’s. He fell
passionately in love with my mother, and in the
end he satisfied his desire, which, because of his
physical and mental resemblance to my father,
was not difficult for him to do. as soon as she
learned the truth, my mother said that she would
never again have anything to do with either of
them unless they agreed to undergo “trial by co
bra.” in that case she would belong to whichever
of the two came through alive.
The “trial” consisted of the following. My
father and my uncle would be enclosed together
in a dark room like a dungeon in which a cobra
