The Buddha of Suburbia

This chapter begins during the fall. The play is on hiatus, while the writer takes the actors’ character sketches and makes them into a coherent script. Karim and Eleanor work for Eva on the renovation of the London flat. They never discuss what happened during the sex party at the Pykes’. As they work they listen to the new music—the Clash, Charlie’s band, and the Pretenders. At night, they dress as punks and attend plays.

Once the flat is gutted, Karim goes to stay with Anwar and Jeeta and works in the shop. He discovers that Anwar has gone downhill fast; he is drinking alcohol every day. He no longer works at all in the shop. Jeeta has taken over. She modernizes the shop, and the customers return.

As he observes the family, he sees that Jeeta is deliberately starving Anwar of her companionship and affection. She constantly taunts Anwar, berating him for bringing the useless Changez to England and forcing their daughter to marry him. She takes great pleasure in his misery. Anwar, driven beyond his endurance, sees Changez on the street one day, walking with Shinko, his mistress. Anwar angrily attacks Changez, striking out at him with his cane, but Changez hits Anwar on the head, knocking him unconscious with an item from his shopping bag—a dildo.

Karim begs his father to go see Anwar in the hospital, but Haroon refuses. They are no longer speaking because of Haroon’s decision to leave his wife. Anwar has a heart attack while he’s in the hospital, and he dies. For a brief time, the police hold Changez on suspicion that he killed Anwar.

On the night of the funeral, Jamila announces that she wants to go live in a commune. She doesn’t want to live with Changez anymore and encourages him to go back to India. He refuses, saying he wants to go with her to the commune. In the end, Changez manipulates Jamila into allowing him to move with her.

Karim realizes that Jamila and Changez are his real family. He helps them move into their communal house. He likes the earnest vegetarians and their egalitarian views. He works on his character, Tariq, and waits for rehearsals to start again. 

Karim returns to rehearsals; his part is excellent. However, now aware of how manipulative and emotionally dangerous Pyke is, Karim knows that he has to be on his guard.

The company opens the play in preview outside of London. His character is a hit with the audiences: he plays a “wretched and comic character” who depicts the “sexual ambition and humiliation of an Indian in England” (220).

Karim visits the commune again to check on Changez; he worries that when the commune discovers how lazy and useless Changez is that they will kick him out. To his surprise, Changez is pulling his own weight and participating fully in community life. Changez’s only regret is that Jamila has begun an affair with another man in the commune.

Soon after the play opens for previews in London, Changez is attacked for being a “Paki” by members of the National Front—a far right group opposed to non-white immigration. Karim agrees to march with Jamila in protest, but he disappoints her by not showing up.

Karim cools on Eleanor’s friends, who have many gifts but accomplish very little His affair with Eleanor begins to taper off, and he suspects that she is seeing Pyke. He sits outside Pyke’s house and watches Eleanor arrive. When she leaves, he confronts her. She admits that she’s sleeping with Pyke and has no intention of stopping.

Karim is devastated to have his suspicions confirmed, and he decides that he is going to break up with Eleanor. He thinks about his position in England, as an Indian in a white world and about Eleanor as a representative of that world. He realizes that he pursued Eleanor as a way to be accepted by England. He feels kinship with Gene, Eleanor’s talented West Indian boyfriend who killed himself. He tries to let go of his bitterness and resentment that England will never accept him, recognizing that he stands as an Englishman but also stands proudly apart from England. He now understands that that duality of his life will never go away; the tension between his two identities can never be resolved.

The play is a huge success. This time, his father and Eva approve of his role, because it shows the flaws in English people’s views that they are tolerant and accepting of racial difference. Terry is so angry and jealous of Karim that he insists that Karim ask Pyke and Eleanor for donations to his socialist party.

Changez tells Karim that Jamila is having a baby; the father is a member of the commune named Simon. Changez is elated.