The Sleeping Dictionary

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This book is for my father
Subir Kumar Banerjee

CAST OF CHARACTERS

(IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

Pom, Sarah, Pamela, Kamala:
a peasant girl called by many names

Rhumi and Jhumi:
Pom’s young twin sisters

Dadu and Thakurma:
Pom’s paternal grandfather and grandmother

Baba and Ma:
Pom’s father and mother

Bhai:
Pom’s newborn baby brother

Jamidar Pratap Mukherjee:
major landholder in Southeast Bengal. The jamidarni is his wife. His daughter is named Bidushi.

Dr. Andrews:
Scottish physician at the Keshiari Mission Hospital

Nurse Das:
nurse at the Keshiari Mission Hospital

Nurse Gopal:
nurse at the Keshiari Mission Hospital

Rowena Jamison:
British headmistress at Lockwood School

Abbas:
Muslim driver for Lockwood School. His wife is Hafeeza.

Miss Rachael:
Indian-Christian head of housekeeping for Lockwood School

Jyoti-ma:
a sweeper at Lockwood School

Claire Richmond:
British literature teacher at Lockwood School

Pankaj Bandopadhyay:
Calcutta lawyer and Bidushi’s fiancé

Nurse-matron:
nurse at Lockwood School

Rose Barker, also known as Mummy:
Anglo-Indian proprietress of Rose Villa, Kharagpur

Mummy’s Roses:
Bonnie, Lakshmi (also known as Lucky), Natty, Doris, Shila, Sakina

Chief Bobby Howard:
senior police official in Kharagpur

Dr. DeCruz:
physician

David Abernathy, also known as the Taster:
acting chief of Hijli Detention Camp

Bernie Mulkins:
Australian photographer

Jayshree and Tilak:
brothel owners

Lina:
oldest nonworking child at the brothel

Kabita, also known as Hazel and Zeenat:
an Anglo-Indian foundling

Simon Lewes:
Indian Civil Service officer, political sector

Mr. Lewes’s staff:
Shombhu, chief bearer; Manik, cook; Choton, cook’s assistant; Jatin, assistant bearer; Promod, gardener; Farouk, chauffeur, later replaced by Sarjit and then Ahmed

Wilbur Weatherington:
Mr. Lewes’s ICS colleague

Supriya Sen:
Bethune College student; her younger sister is Sonali and younger brother is Nishan. Her parents, Mr. Sen and Mrs. Sen, also known as Mashima, own Sen Bookbindery and Publishing on College Street.

Supriyas’s friends:
Ruksana Ali, a Muslim student from Calcutta, and Lata Menon, a Hindu student from Travancore and leader of the Chhatri Sangha student activist group

Arvind Israni:
friend of Pankaj and a political activist

Bijoy Ganguly:
friend of Pankaj and a political activist

Reverend John McRae:
Scottish Presbyterian minister

Historical Figures Who Appear in
The Sleeping Dictionary

Sarat Bose:
Bengal Congress Party leader and elder brother to Subhas, from a prominent Bengali Hindu family of lawyers and activists

Subhas Chandra Bose, also known as Netaji:
a former mayor of Calcutta, two-time Congress Party president, founder of Forward Bloc party, and commander in chief of Azad Hind Fauj government and Indian National Army

British governors of Bengal:
Sir John Arthur Herbert, a conservative who served from 1939 until his death in 1943; Richard Gardiner Casey, an Australian appointed for 1944–46; replaced by Sir Frederick Burrows, the final British governor of Bengal, 1946–47, who did not favor partition.

British viceroys of India:
Lord Victor Hope Linlithgow (the 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow) 1936–1943, a hard-liner against Indian independence; served the longest tenure of any viceroy in the Raj. Succeeded by Lord Wavell (Earl Archibald Wavell) 1943–47, who favored independence but was opposed by British prime ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. The last viceroy was Lord Louis Mountbatten, appointed in 1947 to oversee the transition to independence. Lord Mountbatten served as the first and only governor-general of the Independent Union of India (1947–48).

Mohandas Gandhi:
Hindu lawyer turned activist, who is better known abroad as Mahatma Gandhi and by Indian followers as Gandhiji. He was the founder of India’s best-known resistance movement based on nonviolent protest. Married to Kasturba.

Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin:
Muslim politician appointed as education, home, and chief minister of Bengal during British rule. He was also a former Muslim League head for East India and eventually because a prime minister of Pakistan.

Jawaharlal Nehru:
Hindu lawyer and politician also known as Panditji; left-wing Congress Party leader mentored by Mahatma Gandhi, eventually elected first prime minister of the Republic of India.

Husseyn Suhrawardy:
Muslim lawyer and politician who served as minister of labor and minister of civil supplies under Nazimuddin. During 1946, he was head of Bengal’s Muslim League party. He has been accused by some of inciting rioting on Direct Action Day, while others credit him with persuading the British government to bring army troops back to the city to put down the violence. Suhrawardy later became a president of Pakistan.

Rabindranath Tagore:
world-famous Bengali poet, novelist, playwright, artist, and musician, 1861–1941. Tagore, known by his admirers as Gurudeb, was the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize. A longtime independence activist, he repudiated his British knighthood in 1919 as a statement of his desire for Indian freedom.

HINDI/BENGALI/ENGLISH GLOSSARY

I have used regional Indian and British spellings whenever possible, especially of the time and place.

aadab—
a polite greeting made to and by Muslims

aey—
an exclamation, like “hey”

almirah—
a freestanding cabinet that locks

alpana—
colored rice flour designs used to brighten a doorstep to welcome guests

Ananda Bazar Patrika
—
Bengali-language newspaper owned by same Indian publishing company as
Amrita Bazar Patrika,
an English-language paper

Anglo-Indian—
a term that refers to persons with mixed Indian and British ancestry, and also to the British living long-term in India

anna—
a small change coin; at the time of the story, four paise made up one anna, and sixteen annas made one rupee.

ayah—
a female household servant to children or adults

baba—
term to address one’s father

babu—
a gentleman or professional

Baidya—
Bengali Hindu caste of doctors prescribing Indian medicine, the second highest caste in the province

baksheesh—
a tip or bribe

bearer—
a head male servant; similar to a butler

bed tea—
the first cup of tea of the day, usually served in the bedroom

Bengali—
also known as Bangla, the language widely spoken by people of the northeastern state the British named Bengal. Also, a person from this region is called a Bengali.

beti—
Hindi word for daughter

bhadralok—
Bengal’s upper and educated class, composed of Brahmin, Baidya, and Kayastha castes; people born from the top of Brahma’s body

bhai—
brother or male friend

bhisti—
a water-carrying servant

boudi—
term for eldest brother’s wife

Brahma—
the creator in Hindu theology

Brahmin—
the top priestly caste in Hinduism, believed to have sprung from Brahma’s head

bungalow—
an expansive house favored by British residents, often two-story

burka—
a long one-piece black cover-up worn by some Muslim women

burra-saheb—
big boss; female version is burra-memsaheb. (In parts of India outside of Bengal,
saheb
is spelled
sahib
.)

bustee—
slum neighborhood

cabin—
small, casual tea- or beer-drinking place