The above title is the title of a chapter in Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday (first published 1954), a continuation to the Cannery Row (1945); also pointed to as life then in the towns of ‘Monterey’ and ‘Cannery Row’ in California.
In Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, I make a parallel observation, hoping for another parallel, from this chapter 13 of this novel. I hope, the characters - ‘Doc’ and ‘Wide Ida’ are the same kinds we think of in our own perceptions. In verbatim, I re-write here:
As the dawn crept over the bay he decided to go for a very long walk, perhaps to follow the shoreline all the way around to Carmel. He arose, and since it was still dusky in the laboratory he turned on the lights to make his coffee.
Wide Ida, from the entrance of La Ida, saw his lights come on. She put an unlabeled pint bottle of brown liquor in a paper bag and crossed the street to Western Biological.
“Doc,” she said, “would you work this stuff over?”
“What is it?”
“They say it’s whisky. I just want to know if it’ll kill anybody. I got a pretty good buy. They make it up in Pine Canyon.”
“That’s against the law,” said Doc.
“Killing people is against the law too,” said Wide Ida.
Doc was torn between bootlegging and murder. He thought sadly that he was always involved in something like this-not good or bad but bad and less bad. He made a fairly quick analysis. “It’s not poison,” he said, “but it won’t build good healthy stomachs. There’s some fusel oil in it. But I guess it’s no worse than Old Tennis Shoes.”
No comments:
Post a Comment