Dalhousie Square

Dalhousie Square connects the narrator’s struggle to earn a living with the city’s hotel history. The narrator goes to an office there while trying to sell wastepaper baskets, and the square is also associated with Stephen House, a hotel whose founder is remembered for meeting a furious guest’s complaint with composure and a fresh teapot.

The Narrator’s Visit

The narrator reaches an office in Dalhousie Square after learning to bargain more shrewdly over the baskets: he has raised their price from one rupee to one rupee and twenty-five annas and offers a buyer an anna when pressed. His account of the visit is set against the punishing heat of May. The streets shimmer under the sun and are nearly deserted; the narrator is soaked with sweat and thirsty. The contrast between watering channels provided for horses and the lack of such provision for people sharpens the scene’s picture of a city in which an unemployed man must keep moving in hope of finding work.

After leaving Dalhousie Square, the narrator goes directly to Curzon Park in Chowringhee. There he sits beneath the trees among people who lack either a workplace to go to each morning or a secure place to sleep. The movement from the office district to the park gives the square a place in the narrator’s wider passage through the city: a site of hoped-for opportunity followed by a pause among those still excluded from it.

Stephen House and the Hotel Anecdote

Dalhousie Square is also the address of Stephen House. In a conversation about the art of managing a hotel, Stephen is described as the founder of Calcutta’s largest hotel, known beyond the city, and as a man who could succeed through persuasive talk. The anecdote attached to him makes that reputation concrete: a guest, furious at finding tea leaves in a teapot and a cockroach in the hot water, takes the pot to Stephen’s office.

Rather than lose his temper, Stephen courteously asks an employee to bring another teapot. The story presents the square not only as a place where the narrator seeks work, but also as part of the remembered commercial world of Calcutta’s hotels, where a manager’s composure and words can turn a complaint into an occasion to display professional skill.