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“Tommy,” short for Tommy Atkins, was a slang term for a common soldier in the British army, originating in England during World War I. In the novel, Bakha and his friends frequently describe all British people as “Tommies”; they also use the word more broadly, relying on it as a shorthand for the English clothing and lifestyle they so admire.
Tommy Quotes in Untouchable
The Untouchable quotes below are all either spoken by Tommy or refer to Tommy. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Pages 3–43
Quotes
[Bakha] had had glimpses, during his sojourn there, of the life the Tommies lived, sleeping on strange, low canvas beds covered tightly with blankets, eating eggs, drinking tea and wine in tin mugs, going to parade and then walking down to the bazaar with cigarettes in their mouths and small silver-mounted canes in their hands. And he had soon become possessed with an overwhelming desire to live their life. He had been told they were sahibs, superior people. He had felt that to put on their clothes made one a sahib too. So he tried to copy them in everything, to copy them as well as he could in the exigencies of his peculiarly Indian circumstances.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 43–73
Quotes
Men get used to a place, become familiar with it, and then comes a stage when the fascination of the unknown, the exotic, dominates them. It is the impulse which tries to create a new harmony, frowning upon the familiar which has grown stale and dreary with too much use. The mind which has once peeped into the wonderland of the new, contemplated various aspects of it with longing and desire, is shocked and disappointed when living reality pulls in the reins of the wild horse of fancy. But how pleasant men find it to look at the world with the open, hopeful, astonished eyes of the child! The vagaries of Bakha’s naive taste can be both explained and excused. He didn’t like his home, his street, his town, because he had been to work at the Tommies’ barracks, and obtained glimpses of another world, strange and beautiful.
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Tommy Term Timeline in Untouchable
The timeline below shows where the term Tommy appears in Untouchable. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 3–43
...working as a servant in the British barracks, Bakha has gotten used to the glamourous “Tommie” lifestyle. And because the Tommies treated him with kindness, Bakha now feels superior to his...
(full context)
...when his father Lakha scolds him. Bakha has received some English items as charity from Tommies and sepoys, but the rest of the English clothes and objects he covets he can...
(full context)
...Indian custom, Bakha rushes through his tea, burning his tongue because that is what the Tommies do.
(full context)
Pages 43–73
...terrified by this idea. Instead, he dreams of working in the barracks—the glimpse of the Tommies’ world has filled him both with a sense of childlike wonder and a hatred for...
(full context)
...to even wash his hands. Bakha tastes a damp morsel, but then he pictures the Tommies washing their hands over the food that his family now devours. Suddenly too disgusted to...
(full context)
