The Village By The Sea

My first year in IIUMC dealt a lot with the language classes. I started my english course with level 1. The lowest level. The beginner. But it was an opportunity that I treasure most. One of my lecturer in my first semester was Miss Naomi Lane. A sixty-something English woman who taught us reading comprehension. The text that we were required to read comprehensively was a book by Anita Desai, The Village by The Sea. The way Miss Lane handle the class made the lesson very interesting. The synopsis below taken from wikipedia.

The Village by the Sea is set in a small village called Thul, which is 14 kilometres from Bombay. Lila, the eldest child among four siblings, is thirteen years old, yet she already has the maturity of an adult. Her brother Hari, twelve, is the only person with whom she can share her troubles. Their mother is ill and needs constant care and nursing. Nobody knows exactly what she suffers from but she grows weaker and weaker with each passing day. Their father, who has been out of work for months, is in a permanent drunken stupor, from which he arises occasionally to shout at his family.

With two younger sisters to take care of as well as their mother, life for Lila and Hari is not easy. Their father is not very useful as he is often away at the local toddy shop, getting drunk. There is a constant need for money as the family is almost always in debt. Then one day, Hari decides he has had just about enough and leaves for Bombay– the Bombay where dreams come true and ambition yields.

Lila is left alone to manage her sisters Bela and Kamal, as well as her mother, and somehow keep the family strings together. Help comes from an unexpected source, the rich DeSilva's. Meanwhile, Hari is new in the great city of Bombay, and all alone. A kind restaurant proprietor, Jagu, takes pity on him and welcomes him to work in his restaurant, Sri Krishna Eating House. There, Hari builds a strong friendship with Mr. Panwallah, the lovable watch repairer whose shop is just beside Jagu’s.

This book gave some influences for some of us as it was our first English novel.