Harry’s drinking problem

Harry’s drinking problem is both a source of volatility and part of a painful family bond: alcohol makes him difficult to manage, yet the brother who drinks is also the brother who once supported his mother and sister and taught Connie to sing and dance. His drunken intrusion into Shankar’s room reveals how abruptly his public comic persona can give way to menace, while Connie’s recollections show the care and improvised authority through which she tries to bring him back to himself.

The Drunken Intrusion

Late at night, Harry follows Shankar to his room with a bottle in his hand and enters without waiting for an invitation. The man who, only a short while before, had made three hundred and fifty Calcutta residents laugh seems to have vanished: Shankar sees frightening eyes where the comic performer had been. The contrast makes the drinking problem visible not just as intoxication, but as a change in Harry’s presence and conduct.

Harry says he has been waiting for Shankar, then warns him not to invite anyone to sit on Connie’s lap again, threatening trouble if he does. His possessive warning arrives without explanation that Shankar can follow, and the narrator wonders whether Harry is completely drunk. The bottle, the threat, and the bewildered reception establish an encounter shaped by alcohol and agitation rather than a coherent conversation.

Harry then declares the people of Calcutta animals and dances while singing a song that likens the city’s hotels to brothels. When Shankar points out how late it is and says he is tired from the day’s work, Harry dismisses the objection: the hotel, he insists, is hardly so chaste that everyone goes to bed at nine. He leaps onto Shankar’s bed and dances there. The episode turns a private room into an unwilling stage, extending Harry’s comic performance into an intrusion that Shankar experiences as exhausting and unsettling.

How the Drinking Took Hold

Connie’s account supplies the history missing from the outburst. Harry had worked at a restaurant, but he was too short to reach the tables, so he was put at the entrance to welcome customers and open the swinging doors. Customers found him amusing and left tips. That work made him the provider for his widowed mother and his sister. His drinking therefore belongs to a life in which he had once performed a practical, sustaining role for his family, not merely the role of a comic entertainer.

As Harry grew older, Connie says, he became difficult and began to drink. Their mother alone could control him to some degree, going out at night to bring him back from bars. The pattern had consequences at home as well: Harry asked Connie for money, spent it getting drunk, and returned afterward. Yet he still feared his mother’s judgment. He would take her hand, apologize through sobs, and promise not to disobey her again. Drinking repeatedly carried him away from family obligations, but shame and attachment made his return possible.

Connie’s Authority and Care

Harry’s drinking is closely bound to Connie’s own history. She had not attended school, but learned singing from her brother when he was in a good mood; he also showed her how girls danced in restaurants. Other people laughed at Harry’s eccentricities, but Connie and her mother did not. When Connie chose to become a dancer, she told him to stay home and keep their mother company. The arrangement shifted the family’s roles: Connie took up paid performance, while Harry was asked to remain at home, though he continued to drink and ask her for money.

After their mother died, her final request gave Connie a means of restraining him. She asked Harry to listen to Connie, and asked Connie to tell her if he disobeyed. Connie still invokes their mother when she can no longer control her brother; by her account, the reminder works like a spell and brings Harry back to reality. The effect is not lasting or simple. He becomes angry, stops speaking, and cries in bed, leaving Connie to go to him and embrace him until he settles.

A Cycle of Rupture and Reconciliation

Connie’s recollection does not present Harry as only a threatening drunk or only a lovable brother. His drunkenness can make him difficult and disruptive, as the scene in Shankar’s room demonstrates; at home, it also produces a recurring cycle of drinking, remorse, estrangement, and reconciliation. His mother once fetched him from bars, and after her death Connie inherits the work of trying to reach him. The remembered promise to obey their mother gives that effort its authority, while the tenderness between siblings gives it its emotional force.

When Harry withdraws after Connie invokes their mother, she comforts him by reminding him that she is his younger sister and that he, too, can correct her when she is wrong. He responds by returning to the affectionate, protective language of their sibling bond and urging her to go to bed; she refuses to do so until he does. The scene ends with him laughing and falling asleep. It offers a brief domestic resolution, not evidence that the drinking has stopped: the family’s affection can settle the immediate crisis, but the account leaves the underlying pattern in place.