But somehow, when she woke up in the morning, she felt she had to flee to the beach...
Lila is only thirteen but she has the cares of a woman much older than her. She is responsible for taking care of her parents and her siblings, and rarely has any time to herself. Her morning ritual of going down to the shore—tellingly, she uses the word "flee" to suggest that she is deliberately escaping from somewhere awful—and indulging in a few moments of smelling the salt air, watching the birds and admiring the flora and fauna, and listening to the sound of waves and wind is deeply important to her. This is her time and her place; she can forget about her worries and simply be. Everyone needs a space like this where they feel safe and at home, and this is Lila's.
Everything belonged here, everything blended together—except for himself.
Poor Hari is a relatable character for anyone who has felt they don't belong. Here in his village, he is deeply embarrassed by his father, concerned that he has no skills and cannot find work, and generally worried about the future. He doesn't share his friends' unfettered enthusiasm for the factory, he doesn't know if he can get a job with Biju, and he is entranced by the thought of Bombay but isn't sure how to get there. At this moment, he is on a precipice of sorts, and his depression is very understandable. Interestingly, he will feel the same way once he is alone in Bombay, but through hard work, good relationships, and a greater understanding of who he is and what he wants, Hari is able to realize that Thul truly is his home.
It frightened her to see the ferocity with which they had destroyed the little thing.
Kamal bears witness to one of the more horrifying moments in the text, in which a group of men and dogs viciously pursue and kill a mongoose, providing a rather flimsy justification for doing so. This interlude is perhaps perplexing to the young reader because it has more symbolic weight than anything else. The gleeful destruction of the mongoose by the careless and rapacious men mirrors the coming destruction of the village by the factory and its concomitant changes of its infrastructure, industry, and population growth. The little mongoose might have some literal and figurative teeth, but he is nothing against the power of the men and dogs.
Hari and the other Alibagh villagers stood open-mouthed in amazement: they had not brought along a single woman with them, had not thought it necessary, had been sure that they, the menfolk, could manage it all on their own and the women would only be a nuisance.
In this quote, the typical gendered prejudice against women rears its ugly head. In their patriarchal society, not yet affected by strains of modernity that might suggest women are equal beings, the men of Thul cannot comprehend women out in the street, protesting and making their voices and demands heard. The women of Thul have clear roles and are not considered to be part of the public sphere in this manner. Hari's world is turned upside-down when he sees this, and though he does not become a raging feminist or anything approaching the like, he is young and open-minded enough to probe some of his assumptions, and, when he returns home, he tells Lila he wants her and Mother to be a part of his decision-making.
"It was taken away when the British left -the people of Bombay did not want to see a foreign ruler after independence, not even a stone one."
The paragraph about Black Horse is the clearest allusion to India's colonial era. In the mid-19th century, the British government consolidated their rule over India after the prior century saw company control over the region. The British Raj (crown rule/direct rule) lasted from 1858 until 1947. The colony was so lucrative for the British that it was referred to as "the jewel in the crown." The statue that the man in the novel is talking about is the Kala Ghoda, which means "Black Horse," and referred to a black stone statue of King Edward VII, Prince of Wales, mounted on a horse and on display in this crescent-shaped district. It was removed in 1965; now a statue of a horse without a rider is there. The character's comment succinctly references the Indian people's desire to rid themselves of even the symbolic vestiges of colonialism.
Hari was shocked by the story but he did not like to be thought of as another orphan in Jagu's care. He did have parents after all—even if one was a drunkard and the other an invalid—and a home, a proper home, not just a place on a railway platform.
There are two ways to interpret this reaction on the part of Hari. In the first, we can see Hari as proud and, whether he wants to admit it or not, mildly contemptuous of those who do not have what he has. He has a home. He has parents. He is not an orphan with no future, and he doesn't want to be grouped in with these silent, sad boys. The other interpretation is that Hari feels badly for the boys and realizes that despite his own problems, he still has it better off than others do. He does not want to take away things from others who might need them, and he feels guilty even at the thought of doing so.
Hari went to her and said, "Let me get the medicine for you. Let me hold the baby." She looked at him in surprise, then shook her head, saying, "No, no—I can do that," and he turned away, knowing he could not help her.
This is an exquisite and moving encounter between two people who simultaneously have something and nothing in common—two people who should have never met but are here in this squalid place for a moment in time. Jagu's wife was frustrated the night before with Hari's presence at first because they did not have extras to feed him, but after Jagu went out to get drunk, she and Hari had a touching and bittersweet moment when they commiserated over the men in their lives—her husband, his father—getting drunk and leaving them. In this quote here, Hari tries to reach out to this other human being to help and it is as if she cannot fathom what this kindness is. All she can do is decline it, and Hari in turn realizes that her despair and weariness are on a completely different level than his own. As readers we wish perhaps that she would have consented to let Hari help and the moment could have become sweet, but this would not be true to the circumstances that shape these characters' lives.
"Leave it to the gods—that is all we can do, leave it to the gods."
Though Desai does not display an irreligious attitude, this small exchange between Hira-bai and the girls indicates that perhaps she is somewhat disdainful of people who use religion to blithely explain away things or to take away the burden of human responsibility for improving situations. Lila and her siblings can't simply "leave it to the gods" or they'd starve. Their encounter with the medicine man, a veritable charlatan, is deeply frustrating. The family's situation only improves because other humans help them out. Mr. Panwallah mentors Hari in Bombay. The de Silvas in Thul get Mother the help she needs, which in turn pushes Father to his own decision to quit drinking. Furthermore, Hari and Lila and, to a lesser extent Kamal and Bela, work extremely hard and make many sacrifices. There is no explicit divine intervention here—just the courage, tenacity, and resolve of human beings.
"The wheel turns and turns and turns: it never stops and stands still."
This lovely and simple metaphor is evoked a couple of times in the text to suggest the essential lesson for young Hari (and, ironically, the elderly Sayyid Ali): we cannot stop change from happening, and even though we might be reluctant to embrace all of it, we must do so in order to keep living life. There is value in learning and adapting as people have done for centuries before us. Change is, in fact, the one constant.
"I thought you were a Parsee and 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?"
Mr. Panwallah is truly a lovable and remarkable man. His kindness to Hari quite literally saves the boy, and through his mentorship he gives Hari the physical and mental tools he needs to succeed in life. In this quote, he also demonstrates the sort of worldview that Desai seems to espouse: though of a particular religion, he does not condemn others or not find value in them. He is no fundamentalist, instead believing that the traditions of all India's religions are beautiful, important, and meaningful to the individual and collective lives of the people. If we were all a little more like Mr. Panwallah, the world might truly be a more open, generous, and empathetic place.
