CHARACTERS OF FREDDY AND BEHRAM

FAREEDON JUNGLEWALA
Faredoon Junglewalla, nicknamed as Freddy, was a strikingly
handsome man with a voice soft and pleasant to be heart.
He had a longish, nobly-contoured, firm-chinned face. His slender
nose was slightly bumped below the bridge, and large and heavy-
lidded, his hazel eyes contained a veiled mystic quality that
touched people’s hearts. His complexion was light and glowing.
Freddy had so few moral or ethical considerations that he not
only succeeded in having a comfortable place for himself but also
earned the respect and gratitude of his entire community. When
he died at sixty-five he attained the distinction of being listed in
the ‘Zarathusti Calendar of Great Men and Women’.
At important Parsi ceremonies, like thanksgivings and death
anniversaries, names of the great departed Parsis are invoked
with gratitude. Faredoon Junglewalla’s name is invoked in all
major ceremonies performed in the Punjab and Sindh.
Freddy embarked on his travels towards the end of the
nineteenth century. Twenty-three years old, strong and
pioneering, he saw no future for himself in his ancestral village,
tucked away in the forests of Central India, and resolved to seek
his fortune in the hallowed pastures of the Punjab.
Loading his belongings, which included a widowed mother-in-
law eleven years older than himself, a pregnant wife six years
younger, and his infant daughter, Hutoxi, on to a bullock-cart, he
set off for the North.
Faredoon is by nature a person of manly bearing. He is gifted
with soft-spoken manners and a voice sweet to hear. These
qualities soon give him way to the hearts of Punjabis.
Freddy does not believe in ethical values. For him the sweetest
thing in the world was one’s need. It must be the first and
foremost priority for everyone to satisfy his or her needs. Once
one is able to satisfy one’s needs, one can do everything one
wishes to do.
….’Need makes a flatterer of a bully and persuades a cruel man to
kindness. Call it circumstances—call it self-interest—call it what
you will, it still remains your need. All the good in this world
comes from serving our own ends. What makes you tolerate
someone you’d rather spit in the eye? What subdues that great big
“I”, that monstrous ego in a person? Need, I tell you—will force
you to love your enemy as a brother!’
Freddy quotes his own experiences in this regard and tells that
he donated towards the construction of an orphanage and a
hospital and installed a water pump with a stone plaque
dedicating it to his friend, Mr. Charles P. Allen.
But any good thing Freddy ever did was not without a purpose.
If he had dedicated the pump to his friend Allen, it was because
Allen held a junior position in the Indian Civil Service and that
position was strategic to his business. He shows this tendency
very clearly when he says:
I’ve made friends—love them—for what could be called “ulterior
motives.
Freddy has social and somewhat political outlooks. But these
are strictly limited to his community and to his relations with the
ruling English. He believes in the affinity with the feeding hand—
the rulers and considers it to be his duty to remain at good terms
with them.
We are the greatest toadies of the British Empire! These are not
ugly words, mind you. They are the sweet dictates of our delicious
need to exist, to live and prosper in peace.
After the reading The Crow Eaters it would not be wrong if we
call Freddy a man of high intellect. Regarding the household
affairs he has a strong sense of compromise in general and
authority in particular. He gently governs and completely controls
his wife with the aid of three maxims.
If she did or wanted to do something that he considered
intolerable and disastrous, he would take a stern and unshakeable
stand. Putli soon learnt to recognise and respect his decisions on
such occasions. If she did, or planned something he considered
stupid and wasteful, but not really harmful, he would voice his
objections and immediately humour her with his benevolent
sanction. In all other matters she had a free hand.
Freddy has a strong belief in astrologers, mystics and fortune-
tellers. Whenever he is worried and depressed, he goes to seek
help from some astrologer or mystic. His visits to the tenement
fakir and later in the story to Gopal Krishan are ample examples
of his belief in these things.
When Freddy failed to stop the deterioration of his self and his
business, he decided to consult a Mystic.
An interesting thing about Freddy’s personality is his quoting
scraps of English to relieve his feelings and to have a sense of
pride in him. He is shown in the novel to have memorised a
number of proverbs.
Faredoon Junglewalla is never at a loss for words, or, for that
matter, does he lack ideas, nefarious though they may be. Freddy
is an engaging rogue, handsome, dulcet-voiced, and consumed
with absurd vanities.
The greatest thorn in his flesh is Jerbanoo, his mother-in-law,
who has been unwillingly brought thousands of miles
to Lahore from a Tower of Silence where a devout Parsi must be
buried. She is a wily tyrant who is up to Freddy’s tricks, but she is
asleep when he sets fire to the premises that are both home and
business. When the fire breaks out Freddy makes such a clamour
that Jerbanoo is rescued, and her fears are temporarily allayed.
Freddy makes a successful claim on the insurance company
and never looks back. He becomes a power in the community and
is consulted on all sides. The proceeds from many small villainies
swell Freddy’s riches.
As the fire of Freddy’s life flickers he is yet stirred by the
imminence of Independence from British rule from which he has
so handsomely profited. Realistic to the last, Freddy tells his
family, ‘We will stay where we are … let Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs,
or whoever, rule. What does it matter? The sun will continue to
rise—and the sun continue to set—in their arses.’

BEHRAM JUNGLEWALLA
Behram Junglewalla, Billy for short, was a taciturn,
monosyllabic, parsimonious and tenacious little man. Billy was an
ugly child. His mother, looking at the dark, large-nosed, squalling
infant, remarked, ‘I can hardly believe he is mine. He is so
different from the others. Look at the funny amount of hair he
has!’
His tight-lipped, shrewd-eyed countenance instantly aroused
mistrust—precisely because he was so trustworthy. Unlike his
father, Faredoon Junglewalla, Billy’s was an uncomplicated
character. You knew right away where you stood with him, and his
values, once you grasped the one-track bent of his mind, were
straightforward. He was suspicious, and he exposed this aspect of
his personality at once in any transaction. He was avaricious. His
dealers knew exactly where they stood with him, and their faith in
his cunning was seldom misplaced. Billy had a simple vocation in
life. MONEY!
He existed to make, multiply and hoard it. He was notoriously
and devoutly penny-pinching. His one extravagance was a
weakness for radishes—and much later, for wine.
Billy is a traditionalist. After marriage he settles in a somewhat
modern colony goes to the mixed parties. But
he urges and argues with Tanya, not to reveal her midriff so
glaringly or to look boldly and mix freely with other men, as the
intentions are misconstrued. Even in the relationships between
man and woman, Faredoon and later his son Behram adopt
double standards. Behram especially wants Tanya to appear
Westernized and talk English.
However at home, he wants his wife to be servile and domestic,
always at his beck and call.
Billy is a miserly man. He cannot allow the money go easily
form his hands. When he takes the charge of business, he is
shown to march in the flat to turn off the lights. No one is allowed
to get late for a few minutes. He is tyrant who needs to have the
full control of his house. But he is an emotional man as well. He
can not stand for tears in someone’s eyes. Earlier in the novel we
see that despite her repeated requests, he does not return the ring
of his sister Yasmin. But when she weeps, he at once returns the
ring. Again he falls in love with Tanya in first meeting and loses
his heart to her. He is once again emotional when he meets Yazdi
at the beach and empties his purse on his hands to make him
ready to visit them. Whenever Tanya is shown weeping, Billy is
shown melting before her tears. Hence Billy is a simple character
who is tender by heart and miser by nature and is seen governed
by his nature most of the time.