Village by the sea

This book talks about the struggle of two young kids, Hari and Lila as they take the responsibility of taking care of the family. They have to take care of their younger siblings, Bela and Kamal, as well as their sickly mother and drunken father. This book is set in a small fishing village named Thul and the author focuses on the themes, poverty and wealth, urban and rural India, family, benefactors and change and adaptation.

The Dysfunctional Family

This book depicts a dysfunctional family in the relations of Hari’s and Lila’s family. In a normal family, the father is the head of the house and takes charge of taking care of the family. However, in Lila and Hari’s case, their father refuses to work and leaves all this responsibility to family, choosing to go out every night and drink toddy. This can be seen from “their father and the three brothers from the neighbouring farm who drank together every night” pg 32. He also gets the family into debt. “He had sold his boat to pay his debts.” Their mother was also “to ill and weak to get out of her bed” pg 3 and is unable to take care of her children and control her husband’s drinking habit. Because of this, Lila takes charge of her mother’s role, looking after the house and handling all the household chores like cooking, cleaning, washing and buying of groceries. She made a decision to quit school to take care of her mother and stay home to do the chores.

· Hari

Hari, just like Lila, has to grow up quickly in order to support his family. He is very important to his sisters as someone who takes care of them and earns money for the family. He is the head of the house and takes the responsibility of his father. During the monsoon season, the three sisters who were in their hut were praying for Hari’s return as they warmed themselves by the fire. Hari is very mature and is very eager to earn more money for his family. This can be seen from “He must have a job if he was to find his sisters a way out this dark gloomy house and the illness and drunkenness and hopelessness that surrounded them like the shadows of the night.” Pg 68. Hari has to adapt quickly in the story as he faces an environment totally foreign to him in Bombay. At first, he felt lost and unsure of what he should do in the city, but with the help of Jagu and Mr Panwallah, he managed to overcome this and even get a job in the Sri Krishna Eating House owned by Jagu. He is also helped by Mr Panwallah, the watch mender who thought him the skill of watch mending which benefitted him at the end of the story. Mr Panwallah also treated Hari like his son and made Hari feel like a kid again which he had always wanted to be. “It made it him feel like one of them, a child again- not a small, shrivelled adult keeping up with other adults in a hard world.” Hari, despite all his responsibilities, wants to be a child and be carefree like the other children and not having to handle so many problems. He has to make decisions in life like whether to work on Biju’s boat go to Bombay or wait for the factories to be built in the village. He is in a dilemma and has to make this very important in life as such a young age which may affect his future.

However, after facing so many problems in his life, Hari finally matures and learnt from Mr Panwallah that change is inevitable and the only way to counter it is to keep learning. “ Learn, learn, learn- so that you can grow and change.”