People Are Life, by Graham Swift

Crisis in Six Scenes, by Woody Allen

PEOPLE ARE LIFE, by Aurora Ledesma

 Vangeli, a Greek Cypriot barber, is cutting the hair of an elderly customer. It’s the last customer of the day for him, and he is quite tired when the working day is over.  The customer confesses that is mother has just died. He had lived with his parents all his life and feels a bit abandoned now.

The barber senses that the man’s reflection in the mirror reveals more than his speech. Vangeli tries to sympathise but wants to know what is the full message. He asks himself, What is he telling me? That he is all alone in the world?

The barber offers the consolation that is apparently expected of him with phrases like:

“Well it had to happen”, “Sooner or later”, “Eighty – Three’s not a bad age”, “But you have friends”, “If you have people to see and talk to, then you have friends”, “If you have people, you have life”.

The talkative barber narrator dispenses bits of wisdom like the story title to the customers who want a little philosophy with their hair-cut.

The protagonist is just as lonely and friendless as his customer. His mother and father died years ago in Cyprus. His English wife Irene died too, just three years ago. They’d been split up for years. He has two grown-up boys also who are both in computers and are embarrassed by their father who’s just been a barber all his life. Despite his loneliness and his problems, he says nothing to his customers. He knows how to listen to the sorrows of the others but he has no one to tell his own. At the end of the day, what he likes most is to get home and have a beer.

When he finishes serving his customers, he pats them on the shoulder and tells them.

-“ Thank you for the tip, and now go and live your life”.

  

Some reflections

The story makes us reflect on the true childhood friends with whom we shared everything, our homes, games, worries, sorrows and joys, friends with whom we spent all our time together and later in adulthood we wonder, where are the real friends now? Maybe, like the barbershop customer, we only have people with whom to share anecdotes in a café. Even the protagonist Vangeli, who, after a lifetime in England, doesn’t know the names of his customers and is surprised by some English reactions, doesn’t have real friends.

QUESTIONS

Can you make a summary of the narrator’s life?

“People are life” versus misanthropy / loneliness. What are the benefits and the shortcomings of one kind of attitude versus another?

“The last costumer is different”. Do you think people treat costumers differently according to the time of the day? For the barber, why the last one is different?

Different kinds of friendship: people to whom you say hello, people who you meet, mates at work, friends… How can you define true friendship? Is a real friend “someone you can talk to”?

Is a barber a kind of psychologist, philosopher, confessor (he didn’t know his costumers’ names)? And the hairdresser?

What do you think of this type of communication?: The barber looks at the man who is talking to through the mirror. Is it similar to the communications through mobiles or computers?

Do you think there is a relation between the way you wear your hair and your personality? And what about your hair’s shape, colour…?

“We are in each other’s lives: that’s having friends”: do you think is it a good definition? Why?

What do you know about Cyprus? History, politics…

Did the costumer really need a haircut? How do you know? Do you go to the hairdresser if you have to go to a funeral?

Are you embarrassed by your parents’ jobs? Are there “low” jobs or only “low paid jobs”? Who usually does the “low paid jobs” nowadays?

“It’s how the English are.” What are English people like? Is it all clichés?

Do you think is it easy to become a barber?

What differences can you find between a barber and a women’s hairdresser?

 

VOCABULARY

snipped, hefty, tough, crinkly, clippers, split up, gabble away, regular, flick

Remember This, by Graham Swift

Remember This

The story has two very different parts.

First: A just married couple go to see a solicitor to make their will. They feel elated making this great document with an attorney that is a really nice person. But, after the appointment, the weather isn’t so nice: the sky is threatening with clouds and rain. All the way, they went to celebrate it, and make love twice and spend the rest of their day off at home because of the rain. There they discuss what they’ve just done and how can a solicitor be so nice and inventing a family for him.

Second: In the evening, while his wife is sleeping, the husband gets up and decides to write a love letter to his wife, because he has never written one. The beginning is easy, but he doesn’t know how to go on. So it’s only three lines long and signs it. He puts it in an envelope with only his wife’s name on the address, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. Was he giving it to her? In the end, he hides it, waiting for a special moment to delivery it. But he never does, because they get divorced, and in these circumstances it wouldn’t be a good moment. And he keeps the letter forever.

 

I think this story is a very special one because in it the divorce isn’t a kind of catastrophe, but something that will happen in the course of any marriage. It’s as if a divorce was a regular phase in the life of everybody who is married. In my opinion, the key of the story is the written document that tells our legacy. They make their will to give their possessions to the other, and the husband writes a letter to remember all the love he felt for his wife, even when they got divorced. And not “love” in general, but the love they experienced for each other in that Friday when they made their will. So that day off was the treasure, the diamond, of their love. And then, like a testament, he will never deliver it while living. Perhaps his heirs will.

QUESTIONS

Have you done your will and your last orders? Do you recommend doing it? Why?

When do you usually dress up? Did you find in an embarrassing situation because of your clothes?

What do you think about formalisms? When are they necessary, and when are they old-fashioned? A dress/position, does it change your personality?

In your opinion, why is the husband thinking about his wife’s bum when they were going to the solicitor and even at the beginning of their meeting?

What can be the difference between “grow older” and “age” (verb)?

What is the symbol of the umbrella in this context?

After the meeting with the solicitor, “the clouds had thickened” and while they were having lunch, “the sky turner threatening”. What does it suggest?

Why do you imagine this day was more a celebration for them than even their wedding?

So much thinking about Mr Reeves, what can be the author intention for this? Can another person’s character change your points of view?

Do you regret that the habit of writing love letters has been lost? Do you think it’s better the modern way with WhatsApp or emails? Examples of love letters.

What do you think it’s better for a love letter, the details or the solemn statements and promises?

“The essence of love letters is separation”. How true is this sentence?

Are you a person who procrastinates? Do you think it is a serious problem and that it can be solved? How can it be solved?

The way of destroying a letter: Do you approve of rituals, or do you think they’re unnecessary formalisms?

Do you have a secret place at home?

“It was like looking at his own face in the mirror, but not at the face that would  […] replicate what he might do”. What do you know about “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”, by Oscar Wilde?

Why do you think that at the end he says he was a “poor sad fool”?

 

VOCABULARY

solicitor, giggly, grim, steered, drafted, pending, commitment, clingy, common, enhanced, slithery, shrug, pelt down, stair rods, starter home, sopping, Welsh rarebit, lingeringly, inkling, smitten, welling, nuzzled, woo, assailed, random, stash, fountain pen, release, bland, snags, prickly, chocking, faltered, yearning /longing, misdeed, spilled, fitted, propped, endorse, anointing, poker, quilted, penned, last ditch, warped, fabrication, concocted, smirking, mustered

Wonders Will Never Cease, by Graham Swift

WONDERS WILL NEVER CEASE,
by Begoña Devis 

The story is about the friendship between two men, who both did the same PE course at college. This is a metaphor about seeing life as a race, like athletes or behind women. In both cases, the trophy is the goal.
The narrator is fascinated by his friend Aaron, who according to him gets the best women, while he must conform to those he rejects. In fact, he ends up marrying one he rejected, Patti.
But after the years his friend calls to ask him, along with his partner, to witness his wedding. Then he sees that his friend isn’t so attractive as he expected, and that his future wife isn’t either. In fact, he now believes that his wife is more beautiful than Aaron’s.
In addition, he also likes the relationship he has with his wife more than the one his friend has with his, which seems much more childish to him.
Is it possible that he has done things better than his admired friend? It could be: Wonders will never cease.
 In my opinion, it means that sometimes we believe ourselves inferior to other people, just because they seem to have chosen a more interesting path, while we have chosen a more ordinary accommodating one. But then it turns out that everything is deceiving, and that we have been wasting our time ascribing virtues to other people that they did not have.
On the other hand, the story is terribly sexist, although it must be understood according to the way of thinking of the other times, hopefully forgotten by now (I hope).

QUESTIONS

-Talk about the characters

The narrator

Aaron

Patti

-The narrator says about himself: “I’m the type who sees the life like a book, with chapters.” How do you see life? Like a novel, like a river, like a circle? Why?

-The protagonist has to content himself with the girls Aaron rejected. There are big novels about being the “second one”. Do you remember any?

-The wedding in the story is a very simple ceremony, with only the narrator and his wife invited. Why didn’t he invite more people?

-Talking about weddings: have you ever had to make a speech in one? What do you have to say in a like speech? Do you remember famous speeches in films? Prepare a speech for a friend/son/daughter wedding and tell us in our meeting.

-What is the pun with “Wanda will never cease”? Do you know other puns in English?

-In the story there are two different kinds of love: Aaron and his wife, Patti and her husband. Can you describe them?

-What do you think it’s the morality of the story? Who are the happiest? Why?

VOCABULARY

hurdles, hang out, letting the side down, count me out, hankering, out of the blue, cagey, wound up, arm-twisted, spell it out, shacked, pared-down, locked up, twigged, glint, going places, kid myself, goosing, sorting ourselves out, head start, crashing, peep, upended, mucking around, stopwatch, handicap, real deal, missis, chuckling, yanked

Going Up in the World, by Graham Swift

Going Up in the World

The story tells us about the lives of two friends, Charles Yates and Don Abbot, about their friendship, their partnership in business of cleaning windows in skyscrapers and how do they improve their status and their lifestyles. Now that they are nearly sixty, are they happy with their lives. The path they have followed, is it worthy of their effort? 

QUESTIONS

-According to the narrator, Charles Yates is a toff’s name. What do you know about names? Did you find anything curious about your name? Do you have prejudices about names? How did you choose your children’s name? Would you like to change your name? Do you celebrate your name’s day?

-What do you know about these places: Wapping, Blackheath…? In the story, they mention “cross the river”. What is the meaning of this phrase for the Londoners? They say it’s a “good move”.

-They play nine holes: Do you play any sport? Do you think that a sport defines the character of a person, that is, according to one’s personality there is a different sport for them?

-There was a time when everybody wore a chain round their neck, and now we consider it out of fashion. How does fashion change our minds?

-There are three generations of jobs in the story: docker, window cleaner (self-employed), liberal profession. What is it different between our jobs and our parents’ jobs? And what about next generation?

-What do you think about boxing? Do you think it should be banned, or banned in the Olympic Games, at least?

-Describe Charles Yates (appearance and personality)

-Describe Don’s character.

-Talk about Charles’s jobs.

-In the story, they say he can climb like a monkey. Do you have vertigo? What do you know about people who don’t feel vertigo?

-They mention something about “smiling differently”. What can be its meaning? Sometimes you cry when you are very happy. Is it possible to laugh when you are very sad?

-What is the double meaning of the title?

-At the end of the story, there’s a mysterious phrase: “whole fucking world”. What is the meaning of this in relation with the story? What is for you the final idea of the story?

 

VOCABULARY

toff, crisp bright, heath, brow, nine holes, sloppy, docker, chunky, nipper, bantamweight, oil rig, roofer, steeplejack, girders, giddiness, birdman, clincher, sprees, cuddling up, stashed, twigged, hunch, wheeler-dealer, muck about, contraptions, gentry, take your pick, barrow boys, whoosh, ref, cumbersome, lumbering, easy-peasy, tingle      

Fireworks, by Graham Swift

Fireworks

This story deals with the feelings of a father when his only daughter is about getting married. Bur two weeks before the appointed wedding, there is the famous missile crisis. Are they going to celebrate the wedding, or they prefer waiting for the end of the world? A few days after, it’s the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes Day, but now the celebration will be a bit different and perhaps not so happy as in previous years.

QUESTIONS

-What do you know of the crisis of the missiles in Cuba?

-How do you think the world will end? Do you think it’s going to be and end for the humanity? What is, according to your opinion, the best literary end of the world?

-Is Monday the worst day of the week, or it is a cliché? Do you have a favourite day? And a day you hate? Do you know the origin of the prejudice against Fridays (in Anglo-Saxon countries) or Tuesdays (as for example in Spain)?

-About news: Why are they all the time negative? Is there a secret objective? Or is it simply because people don’t like good news?

-Can you see an analogy between the pair of presidents and the pair of fathers-in-law?

-Do you keep old clothes or do you prefer donating them? Is there any piece that you love specially and want to keep it forever?

-What do you know about Guy Fawkes Day? And about Guy Fawkes?

-Is there an analogy between Guy Fawkes Day and a wedding?

-There had been a worldly alarm of a nuclear explosion, and at the end there were only fireworks. Do you think the author wanted to mean something with this?

-What was your experience with weddings? Have you been in a very unusual wedding?

 

VOCABULARY

flippant, distraught, forked out, crackling, tantrum, chucking it down, glued, aimer, get into flaps, grizzling, fixture, thrill, regalia, give it a miss, foible, slouching, juddering, rant, plonked, Bovril, debriefings, swig

Mrs Kaminski, by Graham Swift

Mrs Kaminski

This is a very short story about a woman who went dizzy in the street, fell over and was taken to a hospital. There’s a sad/funny dialogue between the woman and the doctor because the woman is very old, and also a bit confused, and the doctor very young.

 

 

QUESTIONS

Tell us the story of Mrs Kaminsky.

What can you say about Tooting?

And about Lodz?

What do you know about Polish pilots in the RAF?

What do you know about Polish people migrating to the UK? Have you seen the film Moonlighting, starring Jeremy Irons?

Is the woman senile? Can you tell some anecdotes about senile people?

Is it easy for a young person to understand a very old person? What do you think they are the points where it’s easy to have misunderstandings or difficulties in understanding between them?

 

VOCABULARY

(funny/nasty) turn

boilerman

dab

 

England and Other Stories, by Graham Swift

Graham Swift FRSL (Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature) was born in 1949 in London, England. He was educated at Cambridge, and later the University of York.

One of his most important works is Waterland (1992), which was adapted as a film, starring Jeremy Irons and Ethan Hawke, directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal (father of the actor Jake Gyllenhaal and of the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal).  It’s the story about a teacher in a secondary school, and it’s situated in the Fens, a marshy region in the east of England. The teacher, a tormented person because he feels guilty of a sad incident, teaches history and mixes his lessons with the history of his family.

Another novel that has also adapted as a film is Last Orders (1996), starring Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins and Hellen Mirren. It’s about a group of friends who have to scatter the ashes of a deceased friend in the sea. The story goes backwards and forwards, this way remembering the old days of their dead friend. The novel got the Booker Prize in 1996 and this was a cause of controversy because of its similarities with the novel As I lay Dying, by Faulkner. The title of Swift novel alludes to the will of a defunct and also to the phrase said by the bartenders at 22:55 to prompt the patrons to order one last drink, because at 23:00 the pub will be closed.

He wrote several novels more, and also two collections of short stories: Learning to Swim and England and Other Stories.

Swift is more an English than a world writer, because he writes mostly about English subjects and situates his stories in British soil. The events (murder, adultery…) of his novels are treated with decorum, in an almost puritanic fashion. We can use the saying “Still waters run deep” for his narratives: at first sight all is calm, but the tragedy is underneath. His characters are “typical British”, phlegmatic people.

Technically, Swift does not innovate. His novels are mostly conventional. And that means he is understandable to everyone. But his novels are full of mystery: you don’t know the reasons why the people act and react, and these reasons will be revealed only gradually. In this case, sometimes you think that the author is playing with you: if he knows the solution, why doesn’t he tell us about it from the beginning?

 

About him:

He went to live in Greece for a year with the purpose of becoming a writer, and he went back to England with a horrid (according to him) manuscript.

He was influenced by Isaac Babel when he was younger, and kept a photograph of the Russian writer on his desk.

 

About himself:

“I believe it would be a bad day for a writer if he could say, “I know exactly what I'm doing”.”

“I hope my imagination will always surprise and stretch me and take me along unsuspected paths.”

“When you're reading a book, you're on a little island.”

 

About England and Other Stories

“All these stories are bits of England, but they are bits of different Englands.”

His short stories are an affectionate chronicle of everyday lives.

A calculated ordinariness unites the protagonists in Graham Swift’s new collection of short stories.

In most of the stories, ‘Englishness’ has a less concrete nature, a bittersweet quality.

This is a sharp, beautiful collection: every story quick and readable but leaving in the memory a core, a residue, of thoughtfulness. Some are wicked, some are funny.

The Raft of the Medusa, by Julian Barnes

Théodore Géricault

The Raft of The Medusa at the Wikipedia

Julian Barnes at the Wikipedia

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters at the Wikipedia

Analysis

New York Times review

The short story you’re going to read is a bit different from the ones we have read until now, but don’t get scared, because I’m going to help you.

The story has two very different parts.

The first part narrates the shipwreck, so it has a lot of naval vocabulary (there is a glossary below), but don’t worry about it: to understand what happened you don’t even it to look up these words in a dictionary: just go on reading. The event is more or less like this: in the year 1816 a group of four French ships sailing from a port near La Rochelle were heading south along the African coast. Due to the incompetence of the commandments and/or adverse winds, the group of ships got separated, and the last one got stuck in a reef and couldn’t go on sailing at all; so the commandments ordered to leave the ship, but, as there were not enough boats for all the passengers and crew, they decided to build a raft that would be towed by the boats. But the raft couldn’t support so much weight, and they had to throw away some food and drink; even so, when everybody was on board, the raft was more than half a metre under water, and almost everybody on the raft had their legs under water. But the worst was that the boats cut the ropes that were tied to the raft to tow it, abandon it to their own fate and went away. The situation on the raft was desperate: they didn’t have instruments to navigate, neither rows nor a sail; they fight for better positions on the raft and for food and water; during the night it was a storm; a lot of people died or were murdered or committed suicide; there were cases of cannibalism… At the end, only a few survived on the raft and were rescued by the ship Argus. The survivals had decided to write down the events, and so now we know a lot of details of the story.

The second part narrates how Théodore Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa (Medusa being the name of the stranded ship) and what was the public opinion about the painting. This second part of the story doesn’t have vocabulary problems (I think), but perhaps it isn't as moving as the first one, and it demands an effort extra as it goes into art.

Julian Barnes is very keen on art and has a book of essays about paintings and painters called Keeping an Eye Open and the novel The Man in the RedCoat with a lot of art inside, or The Noise of the Time about the Russian musician Shostakovich… So in his books we find a lot of history, art and also politics.

This is the cover of the book I bought thirty years ago. In it, you can see the Ark of Noah and a part of a spaceship floating in a stormy sea in an intent to convey the contents of the book: the history and the sea. The idea of the book is similar to another famous book by Stefan Zweig: Decisive Moments in History: Twelve Historical Miniatures. So, Barnes tells us about ten “and a half moment” in the History (real or literary) of the world but under a fictional vision with a short story form.

QUESTIONS for the first part of the story 

Tell us in your words what the bad omen was.

What happened in the Canary Islands?

Why was Senegal important for the French?

What do you know about famous rafts? What do you know about the raft of Odysseus?

Do you remember other famous shipwrecks?

What do you know about the myth of Medusa?

When the raft was ready with all the people on it, they shouted “Vive le Roi!” What political moment was France in?

Tell us about the sufferings of the shipwrecked people.

What cruel or repugnant but necessary actions did the shipwrecked do? What would you do in your case?

What happened to the people who didn’t want to abandon the ship?

Who rescued the shipwrecked, and what did the survivors do afterwards?

 

QUESTIONS about Scene of Shipwreck, by Géricault

 

Do you remember any film or novel about catastrophes? Why do you think we like this kind of films if we already know how they end?

What do you know about Géricault (not the biography, but some curious or interesting fact)?

Géricault shaved his head in order not to see anyone and be locked in his studio working. Do you know more cases of artists who had to do something radical to keep on working?

What human resources did Géricault use to paint more realistically his painting?

What can you tell us about Delacroix?

“You can tell more by showing less”: What does this saying mean? Can you give some examples?

What do you think about the title “Scene of Shipwreck”? What other title would you have given to the picture?

Who is Venus Anadyomene?

What differences do you remember between the painting and the real facts?
As we can see that cannibalism is taboo in most societies, do you think eating meat would be so in some years?

(some) VOCABULARY (in context)

portent = augury
porpoises = sea mammals similar to dolphins
frigate, corvette, flute, brig = different kind of ships
banian fig
shallows = not deep water
lead = heavy metal used to measure the depth
ensign = junior lieutenant
luffing = losing wind
have a heel = incline to one side
astern = behind
pinnace = boat
soundings = measuring (the depth of the water)
billows = big waves
tags = strips of (e.g.) metal
pewter = metal mixture of tin and lead
supernumerary = extra

The Teacher's Story, by Gita Mehta

Gita Mehta at the Wikipedia

Review

Another review

A comment

Gita Mehta, The Teacher’s Story, by Elisa Sola

 

Gita Mehta, biography

 

Gita Mehta is an Indian writer and documentary filmmaker. She was born in Delhi in 1943 into a well-known Odia family. She’s alive, and she’s 79 years old.

Odia people are native to the Indian state of Odisha, which is located in Eastern of India, and they have their own language, Odia, which is one of the classical languages of India. India is an independent republic since 1950, and Odisha, formerly Orissa, became independent into the republic of India on April 1936.

Gita’s father, Biju Patnaik, was an Indian independence activist and a Chief Minister in post-independence Odisha, and her brother, Naveen Patnaik, is the Chief Minister of Odisha since 2000. In 2019 Gita Mehta was nominated for one of the highest civilian awards in the field of literature and education, the Padma Shri, but she declined, because the general elections were coming and she didn’t want to harm her brother.

She was educated in India and in the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. In her professional career, she has produced and/or directed 14 television documentaries for UK, European and US networks. During the years 1970–1971 she was a television war correspondent for the US television network NBC.

She is the widow of Sonny Mehta, former head of the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house, whom she married in 1965. She has one son, Aditya Singh Mehta. Her books have been translated into 21 languages and been on the bestseller lists in Europe, the US and India. Her fiction and non-fiction writings focus exclusively on India - its culture and history - and on the Western perception of it. Her works reflect the insight gained through her journalistic and political background.

She has published 5 works: Karma Cola in 1979, a non-fiction book about India and its mysticism; Raj, her first novel, in 1989, which is and colourful historical story that follows the progression of a young woman born into Indian nobility under the British Raj. In this novel, she mixes history and fiction. The next work is A River Sutra, published in 1993, a collection of short stories, including our story, “The Teacher’s Story”. Her latest work was Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India, in 2006, which is a collection of essays about India since Independence.

Mehta divides her time between New York City, London and New Delhi.

 

The Teacher’s Story

 

Gita Mehta is an Indian writer that she has written about Indian culture and society. In this short story, the author shows us how the life in India is. We know the paanwallah, the paan leaves, betel leaves, the samosa, the paisa, the Quawwali singers of Nizamuddin, the tanpura, the raga, the street hawkers, the goats and shepherds in the marble mausoleum of the Victoria Memorial…

The Teacher’s Story is one of the six stories that make up the novel A River Sutra. These stories are: “The Monk’s Story", “The Teacher’s Story”, “The Executive’s Story”, “The Courtesan’s Story”, “The Musician’s Story” and “The Minstrel’s Story”.  Every main character of the novel represents a particular community.

These six stories are presented by a nameless narrator who is in dialogue with his close friend Tariq Mia. In this novel, Gita Mehta uses not only one narrator, but sub-narrators. For instance, in the Monk’s Story the narrator is the nameless narrator, but in The Teacher’s Story the narrator is Tariq Mia, an old Muslim Mullah who is the best friend of that narrator. Therefore, the story is told from third person point of view and makes the narration omniscient. The technique of the novel is similar to the epic Mahabharata because these narrators aren’t involved in the novel as a character. However, they know omnisciently everything that happens, because they have been told or witnessed.

The kind of narration, very simple on the surface level, with flat characters, seeks to give moral lessons to the people, and it roots with the ancient Indian tradition of story-telling. In ancient times' story telling was a skill, and Gita Mehta wants to tell a traditional story with its moral message.

The main character of The Teacher’s Story is Master Mohan, a very sensitive person who sees broken his dream to become a famous singer when he was child because of his tuberculosis. Due to that, he became a teacher’s music like his father, who couldn’t see his dream come true. However, Master Mohan, despite not having fulfilled his dream and being blamed for it by his wife and children, is not a bitter man and continues to look for a way to live with his goal. On this path, he meets Imrat, a blind and poor boy with a great ability to sing: good voice and good hearing, and they both immediately make a bond.

Master Mohan teaches little Imrat to turn him into what he couldn’t be: a splendid singer, and they both form a family, the sweet family that they don’t have, because they both are orphans in some way (Master Mohan is rejected by his family and the boy is abandoned by his sister because she can’t raise him).

In the end, the boy achieves fame in the form of a record contract, but his voice is so pure that he is murdered out of envy, in an act of much cruelty that has a moral explanation: “such voice is not human. What will happen to music if this is the standard by which God judges us?”

If I had to compare this little story with a piece of music, I would do it with de Ravel Bolero, because it rises in tone to the final ecstasy: the pure voice of Imrat who can’t survive in this world of evil and is silenced with a sword.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters

-Master Mohan

-His wife

-His father

-His children

-Mohammed-sahib

-The paanwallah

-Imrat

-Imrat’s sister

What are the Quawwali singers of Nizamuddin?

Why did Mohan keep Imrat?

Can you tell us about the attacks from Mohan’s wife and children against Imrat?

What do you know about the taboo against eating pork? What other taboos you know that are strange for us?

What do you think about children’s cruelty? Is it something biological, or something that they learn from society, family, school?

Try to make a description of the Victoria Memorial Park in Calcutta.

What’s the Ochterlony’s Needle?

Who was Amir Rumi?

What kind of song did the boy sing? I mean, what was the topic of the songs?

Tell us adjectives for Imrat voice.

What is Tansen’s tamarind tree?

When did the miracle of an offer for a recording contract happen?

Don’t you think there is a contradiction singing for God and at the same time singing for a recording contract?

In your opinion, what happened to Imrat at the end? How do you know?

 

VOCABULARY

paanwallah, paan, betel, sahib, yoked, taunts, paisa, muffling, drilling, relishing, struts, tablas, sheikh, prodded, welling, pimp, puffed up, clumsiness, greed, drone, tanpura, raga, hawkers, samosa, pandering