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One January day in the year 1784, an Indian set sail for England. There were other Indians who had perhaps preceded him, but he was different. He would write what would turn out to be the first book in English by an Indian. And he would also give the English-speaking world – and those who have been colonies of that world – a word for a common toilet article, a word which originally came from Hindustani, but meant massage rather than the hair cleaner that the word connotes today.
   Sake Dean Mahomet – for that was how he spelled his name – was an inhabitant of Patna, who, thanks to his British patron, visited Ireland and England where he set up a bath house offering oriental massage and ended up giving the world a name for a hair cleaner.
   Dean Mahomet describes his lineage in The Travels of Dean Mahomet, A Native of Patna in Bengal, Through Several Parts of India, While in the Service of The Honourable The East India Company Written by Himself, In a series of Letters to a Friend – a suitably long title in the fashion of the age.
   I was born in the year 1769, in Patna, a famous city on the north [south] side of the Ganges, about 400 miles from Calcutta, the capital of Bengal and seat of the English Government in that country. I was too young when my father died, to learn any great account of his family; all I have been able to know respecting him, is that he was descended from the same race as the Nabobs of Moorshadabad [Murshidabad].
   According to Dean Mahomet, when he was about eleven years old, his father, a Subadar under the English, lost his life in battle. A few months after his father’s death, the young boy and his mother went to Patna where the number of military officers whom he saw ‘excited the ambition’ that he already had of ‘entering a military life.’
   With a husband lost and an elder son promoted to the post the father had vacated by his death, the mother was only too reluctant to lose another child. But, despite her reluctance and vigilance, the young boy managed to escape and get service with a Mr Baker, his ‘new master,’ as he calls him.
   Dean Mahomet accompanied Mr Baker in his travels through Benares, Allahabad, ‘Lecknow,’ Delhi. The detailed account of his Indian travels is followed by a brief account of his journey to England. Dean Mahomet’s subsequent history in England is narrated by Michael Fisher in his book The Travels of Dean Mahomet.
   Dean Mahomet’s description of Dhaka, which he visited with Mr Baker, bears witness to the riches that this city enjoyed in the 18th century.
   Dacca is considered the first manufactory in India, and produces the richest embroideries in gold, silver, and silk. It also receives considerable advantages from its cottons, of which the finest striped and worked muslins, callicoes, and dimities are made, much superior to these finished in other parts of the country. The best kind, manufactured for the immediate use of the Great Moghul and his Zannanahs, are of exquisite workmanship, and greater value than any permitted to be sold to the natives or foreigners.
   Dean Mahomet is charmed by the embroidery which he says ‘surpass all description. And greatly exceed anything of the kind done in Europe.’ What was surprising about this embroidery was that it was all done by men. Dean Mahomet also talks of the lavishness of the ‘grand nabob’ whom he compares to ‘the Doge of Venice on the Adriatic.’
   Also of great interest in Dean Mahomet’ s account are the descriptions of the different rituals: circumcision, the observance of ‘Ramzaun’ and Muharram. In his description of Muharram – which he refers to as ‘The celebration of the festival of the two supposed saints, whom the Mahometans call Hassan, Hussen’ – Dean Mahomet describes how during this time the Mahometans ceased the pursuit of business and spent their time ‘repeating their prayers, singing canticles, and other marks of devotion, emphatically expressed by thwacking the bosom, extending the arms, upturning the eyes...’ He notes that on the ninth day ‘a kind of edifice made of stained paper’ [tazia] was carried through the town in a procession and on the tenth ‘carried to the burial ground of their supposed saints or holy men, and thrown into a large tank’ at the conclusion of the ceremony.
   ‘Having passed through a variety of scenes in India,’ Dean Mahomet and Mr Baker set sail from Calcutta in January 1784 on board a Danish East Indiaman. After a voyage of nine months, Dean Mahomet reached England in September 1784.
   Michael Fisher notes that Dean Mahomet reached England via Ireland. And that it was Cork, in Ireland, where Dean Mahomet initially stayed for some time with his patron who helped him to learn English. Two years later Baker died, and the twenty-seven-year-old married a young woman by the name of Jane Daly.
   In March 1793 Dean Mahomet took out a series of newspaper advertisements proposing to publish Travels by subscription. This was a practice that Michael Fisher notes was common at the time. A total of 320 people gave him a deposit of 2 shillings 6 pence each in advance for the book. The epistolary form that Dean Mahomet chose for his book was at the time fashionable for fiction and travel literature according to Fisher. Fisher also points out that Mahomet’s Travels was based on other travel narratives, often to the extent of lifting passages from them – often putting what others presented unsympathe-tically in a favourable light.
   In 1799, Dean Mahomet met another Indian traveller, Abu Talib Khan, who recorded their meeting. Abu Talib felt himself superior to Dean Mahomet though he admitted that Dean Mahomet’s independent means suggested that at the time of their meeting he was not a servant.
   In 1807, Dean Mahomet left Ireland for England with his family, settling down in London where he helped Basil Cochrane set up a ‘vapour bath.’ He also helped in shampooing (therapeutic massage from the Hindostani word champi). In late 1809 Dean Mahomet opened the ‘Hindostani Coffee House’ where people could enjoy the ‘hoakha, with real Chilm tobacco, and Indian dishes, in the highest perfection and allowed by the greatest epicures to be unequalled to any curries ever made in England...’
   In March 1812, however, Mahomet had to declare bankruptcy. Two years later, in 1814, Mahomet and his family moved to Brighton where he set up as a ‘Shampooing Surgeon,’ publishing a book on the medicinal properties of shampooing: Cases Cured by Sake Deen Mahomed, Shampooing Surgeon, And Inventor of the Indian Medicated Vapour and Sea-Water Baths... (1820). Afterwards he would claim that he had started shampooing in England in 1784. Despite some untoward incidents – one man undergoing a massage at the bath had a bone broken, another died of shock – Dean Mahomet’s baths flourished. Perhaps the highest point in his career came when he was appointed royal ‘Shampooing Surgeon’ to King George IV and King William IV. His official court costume during these sessions was based on the Mughal court dress.
   Dean Mahomet lived to a ripe age of eighty years. The last years of his life, however, were passed in what Fisher terms ‘inglorious retirement.’ Mahomed’s Baths was sold at public auction, his ‘Indian Vapour Bath’ was displaced by the Turkish Bath, and shampooing became a name for hair wash.
   The East Indian Dean Mahomet was not only one of the earliest Indian immigrants to Britain, but also the first Indian to write in English. In today’s world where religious divisions have once more raised their head, one might also say he was the first Muslim Indian to write in English. He seems more familiar with Muslim customs, describing, for example, a Muslim boy’s circumcision as well as the Muslim observances of Muharram and Ramzan. However, some of his descriptions and phraseology casts a shadow of doubt as to whether the Travels was holy his creation. He compares Ramzan to a ‘a strict lent,’ a very Catholic term and not one with which an ordinary Muslim would be familiar. He also refers to fasts as being kept for thirty-two days, and notes that ‘Mahometans’ do not sleep on a bed during this time and live only on rice and vegetables. Nor perhaps would a Muslim refer to circumcision as the ‘fourth baptism.’ He makes no reference to the division of the Sunnis and the Shias in the observance of Muharram. All Muslims do not observe Muharram in the same way. If Dean Mahomet were a Shia – being of the family of Murshidabad – he would not refer to Hasan and Hussein as ‘supposed saints.’ If a Sunni, he would not prescribe the observances as being for all ‘Mohammedans.’ Furthermore, his referring to the tazia as Gouwarrah and the marsias as canticles as much as his quoting English and Latin verse – remember that the Travels was published in 1793, only nine years after he had arrived in Ireland – suggests an other hand in the writing.
   Nevertheless, without Dean Mahomet there would have been no Travels nor perhaps that common English word we use every time we wash our hair.
   Michael H Fisher has edited with an introduction and biographical essay The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth Century Journey through India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). Professor Kaiser Haq very kindly lent me his copy of the book.

Saul Bellow, who passed away on April 5 this year, was one of the leading post-war American writers. Winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Literature, Bellow was a contemporary neo-transcendentalist who captured the spiritual crises of modern men in his writing. However, did Bellow also focus on women in his writings?
   Some critics have found Bellow’s works ‘singularly lacking in real or vivid female characters.’ However, Ada Aharoni explains Bellow’s apparent failure in sketching women as ‘convincing, real and vivid.’ She argues, ‘Bellow’s artistic technique imposes some limitations on his portrayal of women characters, as we perceive them through the minds of his male protagonists who often overshadow them.’ Nevertheless, she views Bellow’s works as rich and vast in depicting women of all kinds.
   In Bellow’s first novel, Dangling Man (1944), Iva, the central female character, appears mostly in her husband’s observations. By taking the major financial responsibility of the family, Iva supports Joseph’s attempt to be a writer. Iva’s outlook is unconventional as she also gives Joseph liberty, ‘to read and to do all the delightful things.’ But while Iva leaves space for Joseph, he tries to change her which she resists. He is soon able to see: ‘Iva was formed at fifteen, when I met her, with likes and dislikes of her own which (because, for some strange reasons, I opposed them)... she, in brave, shaky, new defiance, started to enjoy her independence.’ This realisation leads him to distance himself from Iva and he soon renews his search for freedom. He starts visiting Kitty, ‘the lively, plump, high colored, scented, gross girl behind the talk.’ Kitty may not have any intellectual interest, but she possesses a sort of freedom expressed by her obsession with the things she buys on a Caribbean tour mapped by Joseph.
   Iva remains loyal to Joseph all through. She arranges to celebrate their wedding anniversary; ‘she was determined that this was not to be just another evening.’ Cheated by Kitty, Joseph returns to Iva. Bellow thus shows reconciliation between the husband and wife. In Dangling Man, Joseph is not on good terms even with the minor female characters. He describes his mother-in-law as one ‘forever on the watch for new packs and face lotion.’ He calls her “vain and stupid”. Although Etta is his niece and younger than him, he does not hesitate to spank the girl. The problem that Joseph faces in his relationship with most women of the novel may be the result of his childhood loneliness.
   In The Adventures of Augie March (1953) women appear one after another in the course of Augie’s adventure-filled life. His mother is a meek, fragile, and submissive woman. Augie notes: ‘Mama was Winnie’s servant, as she was Grandma Lausch’s.’ Grandma Lausch, an old Russian boarder in Augie’s house, is materialistic and power hungry. Another woman, Anna Coblin, is a mother figure whom Augie resents when she tries to treat him as her son. In addition to these mother figures, Mrs Renling appears in this novel as another domineering woman who tries to adopt Augie as her son. These women are from different social backgrounds: Anna Coblin represents middle class, half-literate women, Grandma Lausch appears to be ‘male-biased,’ while Mrs Renling is a domineering, modern upper class European woman.
   Modern, bold and free women play vital roles as Augie’s friends, lovers, and mates. Mimi Villar enters Augie’s life simply as a friend. Mimi is a rebellious voice as she criticizes women who lack self-judgment. Unlike Mimi, Sophie Geratis is passive, cozy and submissive. She passes time with Augie for a short while. Thea Fenchel is reckless and treats her relationship with Augie as a part of her adventurous life. Stella is an actress who aspires to become famous. She too lacks commitment to an emotional bond and counts more on success. These women preserve their freedom and shape their lives in their own ways.
   In Herzog (1964), Herzog’s ex-wife Madeleine is drawn vividly. When Madeleine finds that she has to lead a loveless married life, she discards Herzog and starts living with another man. Daisy is Herzog’s first wife who, unlike Madeleine, provides him with every support that he needs. But Herzog treats Daisy poorly. Still another woman, Sono Oguki, is Herzog’s Japanese mistress. Like Daisy she is also dedicated to Herzog. Herzog treats them shabbily while he receives the same treatment from Madeleine. Ramona, appears as a ‘great comfort.’ She is unique in her beliefs and perceptions. Herzog can be regarded as Bellow’s masterpiece, at least in part because of its vivid presentation of women and its detailed description of their psychology, social positions, struggles, dreams, passions, failures, and achievements.
   In Humboldt’s Gift (1973), Kathleen appears to be meek and obliging at the outset but finally manages to free herself and get back her freedom. Only when she successfully breaks down the ‘spell’ cast on by her husband does she come into her own. Denise in the novel is, in contrast, a haughty, class-conscious woman. Her unscrupulous attitude spoils her marriage with Citrine. Citrine describes her as one of ‘petty bourgeois, husband killers, social climbers, hysterics, and etcetera.’ Citrine’s girlfriend Demmie is melancholic, exuberant, intelligent, educated, religious, and at times juvenile. She has a strong belief in the integrity of mind and body. Renata is a contrast to Demmie. She unscrupulously uses her beauty to attract men. She is deceitful as she maintains a relationship with both Flonzaley and Citrine at the same time.
   Even in the small canvases of stories, Bellow’s women have a lively presence. Gonzaga writes his love poems for Countess del Camino in ‘The Gonzaga Manuscripts’ (1954). ‘A Father-To-Be’ (1955) describes the story of a young research chemist who suffers because of his fiancée’s unscrupulous behaviour. Joan is an inconsiderate and extravagant woman who annoys Rogin. Rogin wonders, ‘A pair of spirits, practically alike, so why shouldn’t there also be equality? I can’t always be the strong one’ (Mosby’s Memoirs and other stories). In ‘Leaving The Yellow House’ (1957), Hattie is presented as a self-reliant and courageous woman. Despite being a lonely, old woman, Hattie never loses her capacity to fight adversity. In November, 1976, in an interview with Jo Brans, Bellow himself recognizes Hattie as the only woman protagonist in his fictions till then: ‘The only thing I ever wrote about a woman directly was a story called ‘Leaving The Yellow House.’ About Hattie. I loved her... She’s an old lady.’ ‘What Kind of Day Did You have?’ (1974) records the story of Katrina, who remains an object of a man’s desire for a long time but finally asserts herself.
   Bellow’s women are realistic and genuine as he sees them in relation to their surrounding circumstances. True, as Ada Aharoni comments, ‘He [Bellow] has built a world of women, mostly as seen by men and it illuminates a whole region of the relationship between men and women.’ Critics who find Bellovian women either unconvincing or portrayed negatively, have judged them unfairly. Bellow shows his women in complex, diverse relationships with men. Neither a misogynist nor a feminist, Bellow depicts various types of women in his fiction. Saul Bellow thus contributes to the exploration of women’s lives in America in the second half of the 20th century.
   Jaharat Ara is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Development Alternative

Andrea Levy has won the Best Book Award 2005 for Small Island. Earlier she had also won the Orange Prize for Fiction 2004 for this novel.
   Andrea Levy, who lives and works in London, was born in England to Jamaican parents. She is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels, poet and literary critic. Professor Daniel Massa, chairperson of the five-person pan-Commonwealth judging panel, said on behalf of the jury:
   This book brilliantly juxtaposes the problems of cultural locations that are inextricably enmeshed in the history and politics of the colonial and post-colonial experiences of the West Indies, England and even India. Andrea Levy's novel skilfully depicts the politics and stresses of race relations in a global environment of shrinking borders and developing cultural identities. However, the excellence of Small Island lies not only with its thematic issues that are represented with insight and sensitivity, but also in Andrea Levy's consummate narrative skills in blending multiple voices in a framework resonant with humour, irony, understanding and a lot of fun.
   Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who is from Nigeria, has won the First Best Book award for Purple Hibiscus. The Best Book Award is worth £10,000, and the First Best Book Prize £3,000.
   The Commonwealth Writes' Prize, established in 1987, is one of the most important literary prizes in the world. To be eligible, the authors must be citizens of one of the Commonwealth's 53 member countries. It is financed and sponsored by the Commonwealth Foundation.