So they sat in that room, reading poems by Longfellow or Tennyson, or short stories by Saki, Binoy the least interested among them, for his favourite subjects were arithmetic and art, and his favourite pastime, football. But it said something about their affection for this man, who sat studying their answers, that even Binoy had begun to show signs of interest in the English lesson. Interrupting the tuition at one point, my aunt took me into the room and introduced me to the tutor. He had a very Bengali face, with short, slightly wavy hair, a forehead of medium breadth, spectacles that belonged to his face as much as his eyes did, deep lines around his mouth, and teeth that jutted out from under his lip, making his face belong to the pre-orthodontal days. His teeth were tobacco-stained; I was to find that he, like most Bengali men, smoked constantly. Having now lived in England for several years, where not many men smoke, my memory of him taking a long puff on a cigarette is associated with the anachronistic, old-world atmosphere of Calcutta, with its small dreams and ambitions. I don’t know why I recall his face in such detail, except that there are some faces, especially those of men belonging to his generation, that have stayed in my mind, perhaps because the world that produced them is now inconceivable. He was not at all handsome, but I see that he might have been attractive to his wife when he was a young man. It would have been an attractiveness that is different from that of the young men of my generation; one has only to see old Bengali films to realise that men were slighter and smaller in those days, but with a proportionate elegance and agility.