Progressive Derangement: Hannah’s Translation

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Progressive Derangement: Hannah’s Translation
“An angel counseled me, a fantasy governed me:
Bliss descends on the derangers of reason and intellect.”

What we’re seeing is progressive derangement. God-fearing, land-starved, profit-seeking Welsh and English and Scottish and Irish second sons, jilted by primogeniture, sexually repressed, passion denying, furtively engaging the favors of native women, girls and boys, all unfolding in the midst of septic heat, rain, disease, squalor and savage beasts, while being waited on, cooked for, fanned, massaged by servants a thousand times more loyal, submissive and poorly paid than any in the world, in the middle of the biggest real estate boom, jewel auction and drug emporium of the past five hundred years. No wonder they went a little mad.


The lure of the unknown is a strong force. At times, the mysterious; the exotic; the alien; the foreign captures and transforms a most unlikely subject into a most unimagined identity. It’s strange how life unravels sometimes. In the case of Hannah Easton in Bharati Muhkerjee’s The Holder of the World, life was a formidable experience and, consequently, a formidable tale. These “second sons” of Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland didn’t seclusively feel the effects of India’s attractive offerings of comfort, indulgence, servitude, and prosperity. Hannah Easton was equally enchanted by this strange and alluring land, so much that her entire identity and understanding of herself became reformed through her experience there. With each encounter Hannah began to mature, evolve, and transcribe her new identity.
Hannah continuously noticed and focused on the different beauties of India. “Septic heat, rain, disease, squalor and savage beasts” is a negative description of the atmosphere of India. Hannah never saw this country in that light. From the moment she set foot off the Fortune’s deck (the boat she traveled t...