The Village by the Sea (A Puffin Book)

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Hari thinks about the options in his life—go to Bombay, get a wage job, or work on a boat—and starts to worry. Hari thinks about what Ramu told him while he works in the fields. He cuts his toe and notices a snake; he wonders whether he will be able to get a job at the factory, since he did not finish school. He can read and write but he never took an exam and has no degree. Does he even need a degree to get a factory job? He can work hard—surely that’s all that a man needs. Lila comes with their dog Pinto to bring Hari chapatis (Indian flatbread) for lunch; she is annoyed that Hari doesn’t seem to be working very hard. Lila asks Hari what they should do, and almost cries as she recounts that their father still hasn’t woken up and will only go drink himself to death at the liquor (“toddy”) store at night. Hari thinks they can look after themselves, but Lila reminds him they don’t go to school anymore and soon they will have no more money to buy books and uniforms for their younger sisters, and that their mother needs money for medicine. Hari says he is doing the best he can; Lila says they must do more. The de Silvas arrive in their white car from Bombay. Their house is called Mon Repos, and when they come, the village has a little bit more life as there is more things to do and more employment opportunities to be had. The de Silvas have brought a lot of luggage with them, and the children wonder if they have come to the village to stay permanently.

Lila as a hard working young girl who has to do all the house work plus cooking and getting her younger sisters ready for school. The story revolves around their life in the village until one day they find out about the new contruction project going to happen which would destroy their village. Some villagers join in a protest that they were going to take the Bombay governor. Hari tired of the same old work with nothing changing for the better decides to run away to Bombay a big city to find work, by joining the protest. Another massive storm breaks out in Bombay and there is chaos in the streets. There are only a few customers in the restaurant so the boys get to listen to the radio. To Hari’s distress, he hears reports of fisherman from Alibagh lost in the storm. He is desperately worried and cannot stem the tide of his memories. He longs for his family and his people and his home. The book begins incredibly slowly, the excitement does not seep in until after the halfway mark, when Bombay comes into picture and changes things. The narrative though, is very vivid. Desai makes it so beautiful that we can smell the salty tang in the air, feel the sea breeze on our faces, and also feel the pain of the hunger and poverty and the hope and dispair of a little family in the village. Desai brings the scene alive in our minds and engages us with little responsible Lila who wears her special pink saree to the village market and of small determind Hari who wants to go to Bombay so his family will have good lives. It is this speciality of the author that makes the book work for me. I have read many books that were claimed literary masterpieces but I feel this book is better than some of them.It is incredibly hard to write a book about such deep topics as poverty and the hope of life, especially with children as main characters. Village By The Sea is an amazing read for many reasons, but mainly for the perfect blend of description and narrative that it manages to be. The subject matter itself is quite normal. A small family of six lives in a little village called Thul a few kilometers from Bombay. Lila and Hari are aged 13 and 12 respectively but the burden of looking after the household is placed on their tender shoulders because their father is a drunkard and their mother is seriously ill. Their fortunes might turn when there is a huge factory being built in the village. But things take a different turn and soon, the frustrated Hari decides to seek his fortune in the city of Bombay to lift his family up from poverty. The Village by the Sea is a young adult novel written by Indian writer Anita Desai. The novel was first published in London in 1982, while the U.S. version of the book was released in 1984. The book tells the story of two Indian siblings, Lila and Hari, as they try to improve life for their impoverished family. The novel won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, a British book award, in 1983. The old man has a comfortable little home and is improving in health. Everyone in his area loves him and they have been taking care of him. Explanation of Rating: The Village By The Sea is the story of the evolution of Lila and Hari into adults as they face their family’s predicaments. The story has a gentle voice of the author and it is an impressive book. I have realized again that there are people who have a tougher life than me. Moreover, it made me embarassed that I have thought I am poor at times. I love the book because it tells about a life style and love of a poor family who live in Thul, which is fourteen kilometers away from Bombay.

Even though Shahani writes mostly of Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988) , The Village by the Sea can be viewed in a similar light. She says, “Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay is neither Baumgartner's Bombay nor Desai's; in fact, the Eliotian nihilism of the Unreal City finds its hollow echo in Desai's rendition of Bombay, even more than in her earlier novel, Voices in the City, set in Calcutta. Her novels are peopled with ‘isolated singular figures’ says Rushdie referring to the protagonists in Fire on the Mountain and Clear Light of Day [Rushdie 1988-91:71]. Baumgartner, an exiled Jew, epitomises the exiled psyche at its most lonesome. The city in Desai's novel becomes a metascape that projects the inner climate of the mind. For Baumgartner, the crowds and the clamour of Colaba Causeway represent the ‘mainstream,’ ‘leaving so little space for him.’” Again, though she is talking about Baumgartner, it is not a stretch to see Hari in this description of “an isolated singular figure.” The first build phase will consist of a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom Georgian-style homes. Prices will range from �120k-�400k, with apartments aside Admiralty House itself priced up to �500k. Each property will be finished to the highest quality. Hari spends more time watching the construction of the new boat than fishing or working in the fields. The wood smells different and good. Biju brags that it will have a deep freezer and a diesel engine, to keep the fish “fresh” until they can be sold in Bombay. Ramu and Hari don’t know whether to believe Biju or not. Ramu thinks that the boat is just a boat, and will not survive the monsoon season or bring a profit to Biju, who is spending a tremendous amount of money on it. Ramu would rather have a job with daily wages than gamble on a fancy boat that may or may not succeed. The celebrations are delightful and heartwarming for the family. Hari slips away for a moment during the preparations to see the man at the Mon Repos. He talks with him briefly about bird watching and suddenly realizes that he is Sayyid Ali, the impassioned speaker from Bombay. Ali is kindly like Mr. Panwallah but expresses sadness about the changes coming to Alibagh. Hari tells him what he is doing and Ali perks up, admiring Hari’s will to adapt.p. 214: … Hari said, ‘Mr. Panwallah, you celebrate Coconut Day and Diwali and yet you are not a Hindu, are you? I thought you are a Parsee that celebrate only the Parsee festivals.’ ‘Oh no, no, no, boy,’ cried Mr. Panwallah comically. ‘What would be the fun of that? And why should I miss the fun of all the Hindu and Muslim festivals? No, no, I believe in sharing everything, enjoying everything. That is why I have so much fun, eh? No gloom for me, eh?” Hari asks him, curious, if he is celebrating the Hindu festivals because he thought he was a Parsee. Mr. Panwallah replies that he is Parsee but he believes in sharing and enjoying everything. Despite Desai’s dissatisfaction with how she altered or embellished the real-life experiences of the family, the novel doesn’t avoid or dramatically mitigate the suffering the children feel and endure. She wants to show the changes occurring in India and how real people are affected, especially children. She explains what suffering is like in India to provide context for her literary aims: “Life is extremely brutal in India as it is in most countries. But most countries are very much better at obscuring the brutality, at veiling it so that one is only intermittently aware of the horrors. I think what's so overpowering about India is that all the human experiences which we surely share wherever we live, all over the world are all on the surface. Nothing screens them from your view. You feel exhausted and battered by all that India throws at you. At the same time it's extremely honest, it's extremely open, and it's extremely basic. If brutality and harshness are so obvious in India, so are affection and family ties and friendships. They're heightened, too, in India. They're also very much more open and vivid. And I suppose they're what makes life wonderfully livable there: the warmth and the color and the exuberance one misses elsewhere.” The portrayal of a poor family with an ailing mother, having many siblings who are still very young, a drunkard father is quite accurate and I can say there are families in my locality and neighbourhood similarly. Hari visits his mother in the hospital and is thrilled to see that the years of illness have fallen away. His father also seems pleased to see him in his own gruff way. Hari and his father are able to take Mother home for Diwali.

Desai's subject matter may be stereotypical, but her treatment and sensitive prose give depth to the story, Every minute detail and image... assumes meaning and fits into the intricate, multi-layered pattern of the novel." [3] Adaptation [ edit ]

Shahani continues, “Desai's Bombay contains depictions of the stark squalour of the city's pavement dwellers, but they are hazy shadows—symbols rather than actual people. It is as if, by suggesting a sensitive awareness of these deprived sections of the community, the writers seem to offer a rueful apology for their helplessness to give voice to this silenced minority.” This observation can be easily extended to Jagu and his family, as well as the poor boys working in the Eating House, the derelict customers, the rundown people perambulating in the park, etc. The pace is uneven. The book would have worked better if the pace were faster in the crucial first few chapters Lila visits the hospital weekly and is happy her father has quit drinking. The visits are hard but she is grateful to see her mother’s progress. During the monsoon season, things are tough in Thul as well. Try as they might, the girls cannot keep water out of the hut. Fires are smoky and the huts are damp. There is no fish for the village.