The Householder by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

motor-scooter; and, as usual, when he was sad or thoughtful, he became philosophical. God has drawn a circle round each of us, he thought, and we cannot step over the line that He has drawn. It seemed to him a good thought, which he would like to have shared with his students.
    He was standing in front of his class, analysing a sentence for them into its component parts, and was regretfully aware that they were, as usual, bored. Probably they were thinking of what they were going to do in the evening. Prem wished he could have stopped talking about subject and predicate and discussed other, more important, matters with them. The bored look would disappear from their faces and they would lean forward in their seats and eagerly listen to him. He would tell them about how only a short time ago he too had been a student like them, but how now he was married and was about to have a son whom he would have to support and send to college. He was sure they would be sympathetic and interested. Though, in their pursuit of pleasure, they gave an impression both of frivolity and arrogance, he knew from the compositions they wrote for him that they were also capable of sentiment. He suspected that they too spent long hours lying on their backs with their arms clasped behind their heads, as he and Raj had done, to discuss or simply meditate on important aspects of life. It was on that level that he wished to appeal to them. He was sure that there he could establish a contact with them which as a teacher he had quite failed to do.
    It seemed to him that he was failing in everything—as a husband and as a teacher. His father had been so successful in both capacities. But Prem felt he had no vocation for either. He did not know what he did have a vocation for. The only thing he had done successfully so far was to have been a student who lived in his father’s house and went for walks with his friends. He still felt that that alone was his true condition, even though he had been married now and employed in Khanna Private College for some months. It was as if all the time he were waiting to go home to be looked after and cared for by his family.
    Yet he wanted very much to be a successful man. His father, both as a Principal and a father, had always impressed upon him the importance of being a successful man. ‘You must strive, strive and strive again!’ his father had said, looking very impressive as he said it, with his jaw set and his hand striking down emphatically upon the table. Prem had taken this as referring mainly to his examinations, and he had been glad to be able to pass them. But now he realized that that had after all not been the end of striving, and that something more was required of him.
    In the staffroom he listened to the other lecturers discussing Sunday’s tea-party, as they had been doing ever since the Principal had announced it. Mr. Chaddha, glancing up from his book for a moment, interposed, ‘I am looking forward to a pleasant afternoon. Mrs. Chaddha has also consented to be present.’ He cleared his throat, crossed his legs and again concentrated his attention with raised eyebrows on his book. Though he was so small and thin and birdlike, there was something very authoritative about him, and he radiated a confidence which Prem could not help wishing he possessed. He realized that he should be looking up to Mr. Chaddha and trying to emulate him; and he wondered why it was that he should feel more drawn towards Sohan Lal, who was manifestly unsuccessful and unconfident. He knew his father would have urged him towards Mr. Chaddha; and while not exactly turning him away from Sohan Lal, would nevertheless have brought it to his notice that there was really not much of a good example to be got from poor Sohan Lal, who found it hard to keep discipline among his students and was repressed and melancholy through the effort of supporting a large family on a small income.
    In his disappointment with