The Village by the Sea (A Puffin Book)

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The writing. It’s so beautiful. It’s lyrical, gets a bit flowery at times. But it progresses as the story advances.

Working from the base of an excellent masterplan, we have developed an architectural approach that combines the latest environmental standards with new buildings that match their neighbours, by reflecting the essential Georgian elements of proportion, simplicity and close attention to detail.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.” 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 one thing I liked about is the description of the Village by the sea. It was a really pretty picture. One can actually travel to the seaside with that description. I think that's the only part I really loved in this book. I would have loved if the characters were more fleshed out. I didn't feel like I had full access to Hari or Lila's mindset. Maybe it was the writing but I felt like I was quite distanced from them. Obviously I sympathised with them but I think Anita Desai could have done a better job with making her characters more authentic. All of the characters felt very watered-down and that was disappointing. The Village By the Sea study guide contains a biography of Anita Desai, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community. Their situation changes a bit when the de Silva family comes into the village. They are a rich family who vacation at their seaside home several times a year, and they always employ the children. Lila and Hari start helping them and become their servants. After finding out about their situation, Mr. de Silva offers Hari a job in Bombay as a car washer. They return home to eat a mollusk and chili curry. Their father has gone to the toddy shop to drink all night with the other village drunkards. Later, their father comes home with the other drunk men, who waste the lantern oil and laugh loudly as they find their way home in the dark. All the dogs wake up and howl. The noise frightens Lila. Hari hopes their father steps on a viper and dies. Their father lurches into the hut and passes out in their mother’s room. The house is silent, “full of fear and anger and nightmares.” Chapter 2 During the time Hari is in Bombay, Lila finds succor from the de Silva family. When they come for their vacation, Lila works for them. She asks Mr. de Silva to take her mother to the hospital when she hears he is driving that way, and he immediately agrees and says he will take care of everything. When Lila’s father hears of this, he yells at her in a drunken rage, but he goes to the hospital and remains at his wife’s side. He also gives up drinking and is much more subdued. Lila visits every week, and her mother improves more and more.All of these hopes are dashed, however, when the factory man tells the villagers the truth about what is to happen. The factory will be one of many factories and there will be a railway line built; “People will come from all over to work in Thul” (63). The man says proudly and scornfully, “All your land will be bought up, factories will be built on it. Your rice will go” (93). Even more ominously, he tells the people, “your village will go. In its place, factories will come up, fertilizer will be made, gas will be produced, many jobs will be created. The government says so” (93). The waste from the factories will pollute the sea and will destroy the fish, the lifeblood of the village. As the young protestor Adarkar bleakly prophesies, even the promised jobs will not be great: “Jobs as sweepers, jobs as coolies—the worst jobs, the most ill-paid jobs” (95). Monsoon season is hard for both Hari in Bombay and the villagers by the sea. When Hari hears on the radio that fishing boats out of Alibagh were lost in a storm, he decides he must return home. He knows he belongs with his family by the sea. He decides to go at Diwali, and continues to learn the watchmaking trade from Mr. Panwallah in the interim.

Biju, a fisherman, is building a boat with an engine. Some of the villagers in Thul are upset that factories are being built on their land and decide to travel to Mumbai to complain to the government. Hari takes advantage of the opportunity to go with them to Mumbai. When he gets there, he looks for the DeSilvas but learns that they are away on vacation. Hira La, a servant in the DeSilvas’ house, helps Hari by introducing him to a man named Jagu,who offers him a job in his restaurant, the Sri Krishna Eating House, and pays him a rupee a day for his work. Hari sends a postcard to his sister to let her know where he is, and sends the money that he earns home to help the family. The main issue at play in the novel is the changes coming to the Alibagh district and what that might mean for the villagers. At first, Hari is somewhat optimistic about the factory that is to be built in Thul, and he is also optimistic about potentially getting work on Biju’s fancy new boat. Even though he tells himself, “He could not afford dreams, he must be practical and think out a scheme” (45), he is a bit “excited to think that life held so many possibilities” (48). Monsoon season is upon them, and Mr. Panwallah brings Hari to the Worli sea face to see the coming storms. Hari is pleased when Mr. Panwallah buys him a puffed rice cone because he feels like a child, not a worn and weary adult. 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 next night there seems to be some festivities at the de Silva house. There is confetti, and the de Silva children and adults are all making merry until late at night. When Lila comes to sweep the next day, she notices heaps of wrapping paper on the floor. We learn that it is Christmas, a holiday Lila is unfamiliar with, although her sisters have heard of it at school. The de Silva children bring some candy for Lila and her siblings, and she tries to give one to Pinto, who is tied to a tree because the de Silva family is afraid he will bite their fancy purebred dog. Hari is washing the de Silvas' car as they prepare to leave. 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. The village is angry. Hari goes to the market to search for ice to cool their mother’s forehead. Hari notices a large crowd outside the temple on his way. Boys, fishermen, farmers, women, and all sorts of diverse villagers have gathered to hear a young man speak. The man has come from the district capital of Alibagh. He is concerned about the string of fourteen villages that are threatened by the new factory development, telling them that the waste from the factory will be dumped into the sea and will kill the fish. What will they do without the sea?