Summary
Chapter 10
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.
The monsoon makes life very difficult for the denizens of Bombay. Streets are gutters, drains are blocked, floods flow through the street, cars break down. The cooler temperatures are welcome, even though Hari still has to work hard and cannot sleep in the park anymore.
It rains every day, week after week. Mr. Panwallah becomes sick and his shop remains closed. Hari feels like a prisoner in Jagu’s kitchen and eating house and starts to feel sick. Jagu feels bad for him and invites him home.
Jagu might have a restaurant with a lot of customers, but he still lives in a slum, Hari realizes. The hillside is muddy and the huts are derelict; Hari wonders why Jagu brought him here. The huts cannot keep the rain out. It is dark inside.
Jagu growls at his wife to get the boy food and his wife begins to complain that she cannot feed their own children. Jagu is fed up with her and leaves to go get a drink. After he leaves, she falls silent. Hari is embarrassed and feels bad for her.
Jagu’s wife begins to mumble that men can go out and get drunk but women can do nothing but lie down and sleep. Hari haltingly tells her that his father drinks too. She is sympathetic now, and asks if he beats his wife. Hari nods and coughs. She sighs that tomorrow they will get him some medicine.
The next day, Hari tells Jagu on the way to the dispensary that he will go back because there is no room here and his wife has enough to worry about. Jagu realizes he has erred in bringing Hari here. Hari tells him to go to the eating house and he will be along later.
Things continue on. The monsoon is tough and Mr. Panwallah does not return. One day, Hari encounters Hira Lal, who cheerfully tells him the de Silva family is back. Hari had forgotten all about them, and he begins to have feverish thoughts about their lifestyle—could he be a part of it?
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.
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.
Lila visits the hospital weekly and is happy her father has quit drinking. The visits are hard but she is grateful to see her mother’s progress.
The fishermen can no longer afford to not go out and decide to get their boats ready. Biju sees them on the tempestuous sea and yells that their boats cannot handle the storm, but the men laugh and say they will be fine. Lila watches all this and feels sick.
That morning the worst storm of the season hits and lasts for three days. Hira-bai comes by and tells the girls of the fishing boats, which have been lost for four days. A search party set out and Biju insisted on going and leading it. Three boats were broken, the rest battered and ruined; three men died, the others were rescued. Biju boasted of how his boat helped, especially to the factory man, who scurried away, having to admit that the villagers and their crafts weren’t as sorry as he thought. Lila feels bad for the fishermen and their wives.
In their hut, the sisters express their gratitude for the Mon Repos visitor, who was not driven away by the monsoon and who could pay them so they could eat. However, they miss their parents and Hari. Lila thinks he may return when the monsoon is over, during Diwali.
Chapter 11
Hari tells Mr. Panwallah of his desire to go back immediately, but Mr. Panwallah encourages to stay on during the rainy season and keep up his training. Hari found out where the old man lived when he heard Jagu giving a customer Mr. Panwallah’s home address. Hari excitedly asked for it as well and visited Mr. Panwallah.
The old man has a comfortable little home and is improving in health. Everyone in his area loves him and they have been taking care of him.
Mr. Panwallah is delighted to see Hari and they talk about Hari’s plan to return to Thul. He suggests Hari should not have left but Hari says he had to because there was no work for him there. Mr. Panwallah replies that he can find work anywhere as long as he can use his hands and be willing to change and adapt. Hari tells him of the factory and how he thinks only skilled workers will be wanted. Mr. Panwallah explains that may be so, but there will be other jobs building the factory or the roads, or providing food to the workers, and some day there will be a need for all those workers to have their watches and clocks fixed.
Hari laughs in delight; why hadn’t he thought of this? He tells Mr. Panwallah he wants to learn as much as he can. This is what the old man wanted to hear, and he tells Hari that one must always learn so one can grow and change. Things always change; nothing remains the same. Not even Bombay is the same. Hari is lucky since he is young and can definitely change.
The wheel turns as Mr. Panwallah said it would. Hari works hard and spends less time in the eating house. The rains slow. Hari never does go to the de Silvas’ house; he is no longer a frightened and confused boy, and is figuring out his own life.
Hari wishes he could go back after Coconut Day but Jagu tells him he ought to really stay until Diwali. When Hari tells Mr. Panwallah he is disappointed by this but knows Jagu did a lot for him, Mr. Panwallah says it is a good thing because he still has a lot to teach Hari.
Hari asks him, curious, if he is celebrating the Hindu festivals because he thought he was a Parsee. Mr. Panwallah replies that he is Parsee but he believes in sharing and enjoying everything.
Later that day, they are finishing up their work on a Japanese watch when the customer comes in to pay for it. Mr. Panwallah tells him to give the money to Hari, who did all the work. Hari is stunned, and says he will buy his family presents.
Coconut Day arrives and the sea is calm, the clouds puffy, the sights and smells sweet. Bombay seems like a fairground, and Mr. Panwallah and Hari enjoy the day together. Thousands of coconuts bob in the sea where the people tossed them, and Hari fights the traditional fight for one. He emerges from the water, dripping, and Mr. Panwallah warmly tells him he is a real city boy and he will not worry about him.
Analysis
Hari wasn’t much of a fan of Bombay even before monsoon season, but this time of year reinforces the difficulties of city living. He and others become sick, he cannot seek refuge in the park, and the interior conditions are even more squalid and unhealthy. His glimpse of the way Jagu and his family live is yet another eye-opener as to the harshness of the city, and it becomes clear, if it wasn’t already, that Desai has a critical eye for Bombay.
The critic Roshan G. Shahani looks at how Indian writers in English deal with the city, and spends a bit of time on Desai. Shahani explains that Desai had exiled herself from India and that her literature (and that of other writers who behaved similarly) on the country might be a way to “grapple with the city, to shed their sickness, to experience catharsis, and thereby to come to terms with it. Sometimes even this becomes an impossibility and the city is rejected as much as it is seen to reject.”
Even though Shahani writes mostly of Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988), The Village by the Sea can be viewed in a similar light. She says, “Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay is neither Baumgartner's Bombay nor Desai's; in fact, the Eliotian nihilism of the Unreal City finds its hollow echo in Desai's rendition of Bombay, even more than in her earlier novel, Voices in the City, set in Calcutta. Her novels are peopled with ‘isolated singular figures’ says Rushdie referring to the protagonists in Fire on the Mountain and Clear Light of Day [Rushdie 1988-91:71]. Baumgartner, an exiled Jew, epitomises the exiled psyche at its most lonesome. The city in Desai's novel becomes a metascape that projects the inner climate of the mind. For Baumgartner, the crowds and the clamour of Colaba Causeway represent the ‘mainstream,’ ‘leaving so little space for him.’” Again, though she is talking about Baumgartner, it is not a stretch to see Hari in this description of “an isolated singular figure.”
Shahani continues, “Desai's Bombay contains depictions of the stark squalour of the city's pavement dwellers, but they are hazy shadows—symbols rather than actual people. It is as if, by suggesting a sensitive awareness of these deprived sections of the community, the writers seem to offer a rueful apology for their helplessness to give voice to this silenced minority.” This observation can be easily extended to Jagu and his family, as well as the poor boys working in the Eating House, the derelict customers, the rundown people perambulating in the park, etc.
When Hari hears the news on the radio of the fishing boats of Alibagh going down during the big monsoon storm, he has an epiphany—these are his people, that is his home, and he belongs there now. Hari has always been uneasy with life in Bombay but the desire to return home coupled with the money he has earned from Mr. Panwallah and a growing sense of courage and confidence leads him to finally make the choice to head back to Thul. As a child, he still of course reveals his age by deciding to take off immediately even though the weather and the lack of funds should obviously preclude him from doing so, but this is where his mentor Mr. Panwallah comes in with his encouragement to wait. Mr. Panwallah also gives Hari the encouragement he needs to put his hands to good use back in Thul.
