Summary
Chapter 1
Lila, a young Indian girl, visits the beach in the early morning during low tide. The beach is empty except for local seabirds and beautiful blooming flowers, and Lila relishes the peaceful silence. She wades out into the water to pray at a sacred rock shrine daubed in powder, and as she does so, the sun breaks out and warms her while she stands in the cold water. She can see fishing vessels in the distance.
Lila’s father used to be a fisherman, and her mother used to come pray at the sea-shrine, but her father has sold the boat to pay off his debts, and her mother is now ill. Lila feels this moment—standing in the waves watching the sun rise—is her only happy moment in each day. She returns home, walking past seaside bungalows owned by rich Bombay families that are closed until the holidays. The birdsong is beautiful; it seems to tell Lila that everything will be alright.
Lila arrives at her family’s hut, broken and crumbling in the village of Thul. Her sisters, Bela and Kamal, are brushing their teeth with twigs, and are not ready for school yet. Lila begins to get them ready, making a fire to boil milk tea for her sisters and parents. She berates herself for not doing her chores before she went to the beach, but also knows that going to the sea first thing in the morning is a special ritual for her; she feels that as soon as she rises she must “flee” her house.
Lila’s brother Hari arrives with a small pot of milk—all they can afford. Lila’s family is poor: they have no buffalo, so they must buy milk every morning. Hari goes to the fields to work and takes his sisters to school. Lila brings tea to her sick mother; she does not know what is wrong with her mother, who gets weaker and weaker every day even though she feels no pain. Lila’s father sleeps in the corner, a stinking alcoholic who disgusts his children and provides no support for the family. Lila’s mother wakens and asks Lila if Hari, Bela, and Kamal have gone to work and school respectively. Lila confirms, and notes her responsibilities of cleaning and cooking and going to the market. She gave up on her education a long time ago.
Bela, Kamal, and Hari walk down the road, which is dusty but has nicer buildings that are made from brick (the houses like the ones they live in are by the shore, and have thatched roofs). They pass the post office, and the girls ask Hari to buy them sweets. He refuses, as he has no money, and the girls head to school in disappointment. Hari does not go to school anymore because he must work in the fields to support his family now that his father doesn’t even pretend to contribute.
He notices a new tin shack, and is curious about it because the village doesn’t often get new things. He hails a village boy, a friend of his named Ramu, and asks who is building the new shack. Ramu informs him that the Government is going to build a big factory in the village—in fact, many factories! The shack will become the hut of the factory watchman. Ramu says the village hill with its temple will be flattened to make way for the bulldozers and earth movers that will clear the land for the factory. Hari can’t imagine the change, and doesn’t believe Ramu. Ramu jumps on his bicycle and pedals off, assuring Hari that soon they will have new jobs, presumably at the new factories.
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.
Hari surprises himself by telling her that when the de Silvas come to the village from Bombay he will ask them for work, or that he will try to find work on a fishing boat. Lila is relieved to hear this, and feels grateful that Hari will soon be able to work and bring home income, even though he is not a man yet.
Hari can’t work after their conversation. Even if he did clear the field, the vegetables he would grow would not be enough. He walks down to the sea and sits in the shade of a tree grove. Ramu comes along on his bike with two boys, Bhola and Mahesh. The four of them used to play on the beach with their dogs and go to school. Bhola and Mahesh don’t go to school now, but for a different reason than Hari: they find it boring even though they have money for books and school fees. They don’t want to follow in their fathers’ footsteps and be fishermen; they want to go work in Bombay, and wait around for an opportunity to arise that will bring money and “a good time.”
The four boys talk about money and jobs. Ramu, Bhola, and Mahesh are excited about the prospect of factory jobs, but Hari is still dubious, skeptical that they know enough about factories to be hired given their educational background. Hari sees his sisters going to the beach after school to collect mollusks for dinner. The women chat and gossip with each other as they pry the slimy mollusks out of their barnacle shells with special knives (koytas). They notice two well-dressed people, a woman and her daughter, and jealously discuss how they are the dependents of a rich fisherman named Biju who sells his extra fish and shrimp at a high price in Bombay. The women envy the gold bracelets of the wealthy fisherman’s wife; the women in Thul love bangles. Another woman says that Biju will be buying another boat, bigger and faster, so they can go farther out to sea and catch more fish. Bela and Kamal silently feel that the other women are lucky, even if their men don’t bring back much fish, because at least the men in their families are bringing back something. Their father does nothing, and Hari cannot catch very much with only his hand-net.
Hari is the only boy in the village with no boat and no fishing job. The fishing fleet comes in, and the women wait on the shore anxiously, carrying baskets; the fishermen begin to loudly auction off the fish. A large woman wins the auction and takes a large basket of fish. A tonga-driver comes, and there is another auction to see who will get to ride with him.
Bela and Kamal are playing. Hari scolds them because their clothes are dusty and Lila must wash them. He has caught nothing, which the girls notice. Pinto the dog comes running down the path. Pinto was named after the man who had given him to the children. This man did “business,” and had scammed their father and many others after collecting money for the bus fare to Goa and then vanishing without ever delivering the job offers he had promised to the village men. Lila, Kamal, and Bela love Pinto, but the dog reminds Hari of his father’s stupidity.
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
Lila decides to go to the market with the little money they have, and wears her best sari. She feels younger and happier, and sets off alongside a few other women. There is a temple at the end of the village lane, and there she sees her friend Mina, who tells her that actors have arrived and they will be performing a play. Lila is envious that Mina can watch the show from her house because she lives in the village center instead of by the shore. Mina invites her to watch, but Lila refuses because she cannot leave her sisters at home alone at night. Mina accompanies Lila to the market to buy rice and sugar.
At the market they learn that the timber in the truck was for building Biju’s new boat. Mina says that Biju has made his fortune through smuggling, which Lila isn’t surprised to hear. The friends part ways, and Mina tells Lila to come see the play. Lila says maybe, even though she knows she will not.
Biju’s boat is being built. The village children like to come and watch. Biju has hired workmen from Alibagh, the district capital, even though the Thul men have been building boats all their lives. Biju likes to sit in a chair and watch the progress. His fat wife comes to watch sometimes as well, but gets tired easily and retreats to their fancy house with its many displays of wealth. Biju’s wife knows the village gossips about her, and she doesn’t like it. The villagers feel strangely proud that their tiny village is producing such a fancy new boat even if they dislike Biju and envy him. The children taunt Biju about the smuggling rumors, but he is too old and fat to catch them and scold them.
Hari suggests that he’ll get a job on Biju’s new boat and get rich, which alarms the girls; they tell him that he will be put in jail for becoming a smuggler. Hari confirms his desire to go to Bombay, a “rich city,” and bring back dazzling treasures for his sisters, but dismisses the plan as a dream.
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.
Hari thinks about the options in his life—go to Bombay, get a wage job, or work on a boat—and starts to worry.
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.
Hari helps the de Silvas with their bags and Mrs. de Silva, scantily clad in a fake villager’s outfit, gives him money to buy milk and eggs for them every morning. For the next few days, Hari is busy buying the de Silva family soda, milk, eggs, fish, and various other things. The de Silvas have a cook and an ayah, who watches their small children. The Thul children think it is strange that the Bombay family swims in the sea; to them, the sea is a place of work, not leisure. The cook is overworked and Hari helps him prepare fish. The ayah has Lila help her sweep and clean the house, which is full of sand because it was left empty for so long. The de Silva children admire Lila’s bracelets and Lila asks her sisters to make them some flower garlands, which they bring home to Mrs. de Silva.
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.
Mr. de Silva offers Hari’s father a job as a watchman for the house, but the father is too drunk and dirty and Mr. de Silva retracts the offer and drives off with his family after patronizingly telling Hari he will give him a job as a car-washer if he ever comes to Bombay. Hari is upset with his father’s behavior and Mr. de Silva’s condescension. He goes to check on the construction of the new factory, but the tin hut is locked and there are only a few pipes on the ground. No progress seems to have been made.
Chapter 3
In the morning when Lila tried to wake her mother, she didn’t respond and was burning with fever. Lila sends Bela and Kamal to their neighbors, the Khanekars, to ask for Hira-bai to come. Kamal wonders if the neighbors will be drunk like her father, but the two girls go off. They see a discarded snake skin on their way, which momentarily scares them.
The Khanekars’ property is littered with rubbish, neglected and shabby; the brothers who owned the land sold their crop groves and other assets to pay for toddy. Their wives all left them, and only their mother (Hira-bai) is left to care for them.
She thinks they are coming for money for toddy, but Bela and Kamal shyly tell her that their mother is sick and needs a doctor. Hira-bai tells them that she saw the local medicine man this morning and that she will find him and send him to them.
They wait for the medicine man to come. Bela and Kamal skip school and play outside while Lila anxiously tends to the household chores. Finally they hear the drum and the trumpet of the medicine man. The medicine man comes with a cow decorated with tassels and beads; local people feed the cow grass, which is supposed to make their prayers come true. The medicine man has a reputation for magic, which makes the girls nervous, but they welcome him. Lila explains that her mother has been ill for a long time, and asks for medicine. The man demands water and grass for his cow, and the girls oblige. Lila makes him tea and tells him the story of her mother’s illness, and how she is much worse now. The man makes a fire and throws packets of flowers on it which make smoke; he chants in Sanskrit, and then when the fire is out he makes a paste of the ash and puts it on their mother’s tongue, claiming it will purify her and drive away the demons making her sick. He then makes the girls gather up the rest of the ash and ties it in a sack, telling them to put it under their mother’s pillow. Then he demands payment. Lila gives him her mother’s precious silver ring, which has been kept in hiding. The three girls are left staring at the bag of ash, feeling slightly duped.
Later that afternoon, the girls are resting when they are awoken by Pinto’s barking. The girls run out to see what the fuss is about, and see a band of men and boys in the shrubs by the creek. The men are trampling down the plants, and the girls wonder if there is something evil hiding in the shrubs. The men find what they’re looking for and start beating it with sticks, yelling and screaming. The dogs attack the carcass, and the men tie it onto a stick like a trophy. It’s a mongoose, which drinks out of coconuts and leaves them dry. Kamal feels pity for the mongoose, and feels badly that it was brutally killed for a mistake, for doing what nature intended.
That evening, their mother is still sick. One of the drunk brothers from the neighboring hut stumbles in. Lila is scared. The man asks for their “rascal father,” and threatens to drag him out of the house even though Lila tells him their father has gone out. Lila screams and pushes her sisters behind her, and tells the man not to come in because their mother is ill. He asks where they keep their money because their father owes him money for drinks. Lila tells him frantically that they have no money, and the man mocks them before swearing he will find their father and break his neck. Pinto barks in rage at the man and runs towards him, baring his teeth like a guard dog. The man panics and tells the girls to call Pinto back, and in the uproar, Hira-bai, the man’s mother, appears. She curses at him for frightening the girls and drags him off while he is still shouting threats at Lila, Kamal, and Bela. Right after they leave, Hari comes home and asks what has happened, and they tell him the story.
Chapter 4
Hari now knows that some action is needed. He goes to the beach where Biju’s boat is being built; now that the freezer is installed, Biju never leaves the boat’s side. He has named the boat "Jal Pari," meaning “mermaid,” and Hari walks purposefully up to it, meaning to ask Biju for a job. But Biju turns to address another stranger who has walked up to him at the same time—the same Bombay man from the factory.
The man jokingly comments to Biju that he’s building another ordinary fishing boat, which irritates Biju; he tells the man about all of the boat’s special features. The man laughs and says that soon fifty miles won’t be enough as the area is being overfished. He tells everyone listening that the Thul villagers should give up on fishing and move onto other things. Biju says that fishing is the village tradition, and always will be, and even if it wasn’t, they still have their fertile crop fields. The man points out that soon the factory landowners will buy up the rice fields. Even if the Thul villagers don’t want to sell it, the government will force them.
Biju asks why they have chosen this land instead of a less fertile area, and the man shrugs and cites its easily accessible location, close to Bombay and near the seaport of Rewas so that the factory goods can be easily transported. There will be whole new colonies built for the new workers, new cities with infrastructure and public transit. Biju angrily asks what will happen to them and the Bombay man says that their village will cease to exist. The man laughs coldly, and says that the boys had better get jobs fifty miles out to sea on Biju’s boat because they won’t be hired at the factory—only engineers and mechanics from “elsewhere” will be offered jobs.
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?
He tells the people that the government will send men to “pacify you with lies,” but that they will never have high-paying jobs, only low-paying servant work, like being janitors, coolies, and sweepers. Can the people of Thul let this happen? No, they reply. They will fight back. The man urges anyone available to come to Bombay to tell the Chief Minister Sahib that they disagree with the factory plan. Apparently the man has already tried to talk to the District Commissioner at Alibagh, who did nothing. A Minister came to speak to the crowd at Alibagh, but when he saw the mob, he withdrew into his car in fright, leaving the police to break up the protest with batons. The people should no longer stand for “police rule!” The man says that tomorrow he will wait at Rewas for anyone who wants to go to Bombay, and that (try as they might!) the government “can’t take the sea from us—the land is ours, the sea is ours!” The people shout in agreement, and their hands in the air reminds Hari of palm trees or of sails.
When Hari reaches the market, the ice-man has not yet arrived due to a traffic delay. He welcomes the wait, needing some time to be alone as he feels he has been shoved around by crowds a lot recently. Hari has given up on asking Biju for a job because he knows the Bombay man is more clever and wily than Biju and that he probably spoke the truth.
The young man speaking at the temple is named Adarkar and he is a member of the Maharashtra State Legislative Assembly; Hari feels like he should stand with Adarkar and defend the rights of the village in Bombay. He turns over the options: take a dull, low-paid job with the new factory, or go to Bombay? The ice-man comes and Hari collects the ice chips and puts them in a bag before hurrying towards home before the ice melts.
As Hari nears their hut, he hears his sisters crying and knows something is wrong. He immediately assumes something has happened to their mother, but it is Pinto: the dog is dead. Lila says Pinto was poisoned—he got sick, vomited blood, and then dropped dead. Hari wonders why anyone would hurt Pinto. Kamal shrieks that it was the drunk brother who had demanded money from them, and that the brother hates them and had already threatened to kill Pinto because their father owed him money. Hari gets angry thinking about debt. He decides he will run away to Rewas, and then to Bombay, and will never come back again to his sad house with his sick mother, his drunken father, and his frightened sisters.
Analysis
From the beginning chapters of Village by the Sea we can see that while the setting of Thul is an immensely beautiful place, the suffering that the family undergoes is severe. Father is a drunk, who can no longer work and support his family. Mother is very ill with an undiagnosed disease. The eldest children, Lila and Hari, are only thirteen and twelve, respectively, but it is up to them to eke out a living for themselves and their family. They do not go to school anymore because they cannot afford it, food is scarce, their hut is dismal, and their futures are uncertain. Desai based this story on a real family and decided to tell it to children, but later in life came to regret it; she told an interviewer that she made it a sort of fairy tale and “certainly [the real family’s] lives didn't end as happily as I made out in the book.” She also said, “I wrote [Village by the Sea] that way for children. I felt immensely dissatisfied with it and admitted to myself that I would have written it quite differently if I hadn't been writing it for children.”
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 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).
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).
Hari is smart enough to see the truth in what the factory man and Adarkar say, and decides that all he can do is travel to Bombay with the rest of the men to protest what is happening. It is not an easy decision for the introspective boy, and he wavers a bit before deciding that the prospect of Bombay is too thrilling to pass up. After all, he had always told himself he could get there and find work, and now he also has a moral cause to motivate him. His youthfulness and naiveté show through, of course, but he is clearly motivated by a desire to be part of something, to be useful, to make an impact somehow—even if he is just a “young, penniless boy who had never been anywhere” (100).
