Which is perhaps why, as the city was about to fall to the Japanese during World war II in 1942, Singaporeans made their “last stand” at the ‘Raffles’, not to fight, for they had already surrendered, but to sing the strains of “there shall always be an England, and England shall be free”. In Singapore, British colonialism was spread more by the pen, rather than by the sword. This was much like in the tea gardens in our parts, in Sylhet or in Darjeeling, which also inspired a contemporary Indian, Mulk Raj Anand, perhaps India’s first prominent English novelist. Often, they had deeply flawed human character, a treat for the observant writer. These men and women lived in rubber plantations of the Malay Straits, and had impeccable manners, afternoon teas, and evening cocktails of gin and tonic and the ‘Singapore Sling’. He sat beneath a fragrant frangipani tree in the hotel’s’ Palm Court’ and crafted stories from tidbits of gossip overheard while dining with the local gentry. He lived at the ‘Raffles Hotel’ which is still a landmark in the island Republic. He kept on coming back for four decades till a few years before his death (he died in 1965). This is a moment in the unfolding of a tale that one character, oftentimes the hero or heroine suddenly recognizes another as being different from how he or she was initially perceived. A key one was ‘Anagnorisis’, a Greek word which translated into English means “recognition”. Like many of his ilk in his time in Victorian and Edwardian England, he reached back to classical Greece for some of his techniques. It was in the form of the incessant rain that continued to pour down with relentless force, unlike the light English drizzle ,as the story unfolds, symbolizing a pathetic fallacy that foreshadows a tragedy (the missionary’s suicide).
Maugham added a touch of the exotic oriental mystique as a backdrop to this tale of a white missionary’s fallibility. In stories such as the “Rain” he comes through as an incisive allegorical critique of the white man’s colonial impulses. Unlike his fellow Englishman, Rudyard Kipling, he held no brief for England’s imperial aspirations. He said: “I have never been anything but a story- teller It has amused me to tell stories, and I have told a good many”. In a very English fashion he understates his own profundity.
It was one of resigned atheism and certain skepticism about the extent of man’s innate goodness and intelligence. His philosophy in life was discernible in his “The summing Up’. Only paint a picture and leave it before you. He thought the writer should need to prove nothing. His characters have streaks of virtue and vice that interplay in the narrative. He introduced readers to ‘shades of grey’ in life. He used minimum of ornamentation in his prose, concentrating unflinchingly on the narrative line. His writings had the requisite elements of character, emotion, and often an interesting cultural milieu. The wry sense of humour was pervasive, tempered by astringent cynicism. They balanced one another and were balanced in themselves. He liked to describe at length, almost exasperatingly so, but later corrected himself. Maugham’s style was as ordered as his general plan. He declared that his prepossessions in the arts were on the side of law and order. Maugham thought Maupassant gave his stories a beginning, a middle and an end, a discipline that pleased him enormously. From the Frenchman, Maugham learnt not just to copy life in his tales, but also to dramatize, interest, excite and surprise the reader. Iftekhar Ahmed ChowdhuryHe admired Chekov’s markedly superior characteristics, but was more approving of Guy de Maupassant.
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