Kamala Das's Farewell To Bombay, By Kamala Das

The city of Mumbai has seen much growth in the past years. A string of elegant hotels have been set up for travelers and high-class business men. An ever growing, top of the line airport has been built for those coming in and out of the country. From the outside, Mumbai seems to have taken a liking to being internationally integrated with the rest of world, otherwise known as globalization. This is not the case, however; as seen in Katherine Boo’s novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. This novel is set in a slum right next to the Mumbai International Airport called

“I’m Nikhil” (Jhumpa Lahiri 96) these are the words that Gogol uttered for the first

The poem represents Tokyo as a city that is over populated, which leads to congestion but the population keeps growing. The poem explores Tokyo in relation to its congestion and quality of life. The persona’s attitude to the city is best described as negative as evidenced by using a negative tone, the use of metaphors to describe her negative feeling to the cities and the majority of negative adjectives.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is a beautiful tale of two women in Afghanistan during the Taliban uprising. They grow up on complete opposite sides of Afghan culture. The main character, Mariam, grows up in a more traditional way caused by her forced marriage to Rasheed. Laila on the other hand, grows up with a supportive father who encourages gender equality and education. There are many cultural differences such as, women’s rights, public executions, and the Taliban. The two main characters, Mariam and Laila, develop greatly throughout the novel. They push each other to be better and to stand up for equality. This plays into the themes of the novel. Women’s strength and loyalty are the two most important themes. They

For some people finding out who they are is not exactly the hardest thing to do in the world, some know it from the moment they are born. There are, however, also other people who have to struggle and search for their identities. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is the story of a boy who does just that. It focuses on the Ganguli’s, a Bengali family, who, after moving homes from India to the United States, struggle to uphold a delicate balance between honoring the traditions of their heritage and assimilating into the American culture. Although Ashoke and Ashima’s parents are proud of the sacrifices they have made to provide their children with as many opportunities as they could, their son, Gogol, strives to create his own identity without leaving his heritage behind. In the novel Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Gogol faces many struggles while searching for his identity.

A breath of fresh air is the first book written by Amulya Malladi. In 1984, when she was nine years old, her father was posted in the city of Bhopal. On the third of December, 1983 the city suffered The Bhopal Gas Tragedy that killed many people. When this gas tragedy occurred, she along with her family was staying at the Army Center which was a few kilometers away from the plant. Due to the wind that blew in a direction opposite to theirs, they remained unaffected by the gas leak. In the last half of the year 1984, she faced the Assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that led the country’s division in the name of religion and made her come to terms with the finality of death.

While it may be easier to persuade yourself that Boo’s published stories are works of fiction, her writings of the slums that surround the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s airport are very, very real. Katherine Boo’s book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” does not attempt to solve problems or be an expert on social policy; instead, Boo provides the reader with an objective window into the battles between extremities of wealth and poverty. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” then, exposes the paucity and corruption prevalent within India.

Throughout world history women have been treated abysmally. Societies with male-dominance have abused and used women and continue to do so today. Women have been made vulnerable to a man due to the spread of cultural values and beliefs in society that condemn them from power. In Khaled Hosseini's novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, the two main characters Mariam and Laila develop an unconditional bond in which they become each others protectors. The immense inner strength of women from adversity has been exemplified through the growth of Mariam and Laila's contrasting relationship, the pain they endure from Rasheed which strengthens their bond and the courage within them that ultimately resolves their conflict.

The narrator of Hari Kunzuru’s short story, “Raj Bohemian” faces an existential crisis when he is introduced to a scheming manipulator. The story revolves around an urban

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

Khaled Hosseini presents the struggle Afghan women go through every day by discussing honour, marriage and the place of women in society in Afghanistan.

“The demand is the result of a simple biological appetite. When all other sources of gratification fail, due to defects of person or circumstance, prostitution can be relied upon to furnish relief” (Davis, 753). Prostitution in a latent sense saves marriages and allows men to fulfill their sexual desires. “Prostitution embraces an economic relation, and is naturally connected with the entire system of economic forces” (Davis, 749). One societal function that prostitution fills is a release for those who desire the prostitute (latent) and a source of income for the prostitute (manifest).

The speaker refers to the night as his acquaintance. This implies that the speaker has a lot of experience with the night, but has not become friends with it. Thus, because even the night, which has been alongside the speaker in comparison to anything or anyone else, is not a companion to the speaker, the idea of loneliness is enhanced. In addition, “rain” (2) is used to symbolize the speaker’s feelings of gloom and grief, because there is continuous pouring of the rain, which is unlikely to stop. In line 3, “city light” is used to convey the emotional distance between the speaker and society. Although the speaker has walked extensively, he has not yet interacted with anyone – thus distancing himself even further from society. Moreover, the moon, in lines 11 to 12, is used as a metaphor of the speaker’s feelings. The speaker feels extremely distant from society that he feels “unearthly.” The idea of isolation and loneliness in this poem is used as the theme of the poem; and the use of the setting and metaphors underscores the idea that the speaker feels abandoned from society.

In this essay I will be comparing two poems which show connections between people and the places in which they live. The two poems I will be comparing and contrasting are “Blessing” by imtiaz Dharker and “Island Man” by Grace Nichols. Both of these poets express their feelings through these poems. Grace Nichols allocates her experiences of how people feel when separated from the environment and place they lived in for such a long period of time. On the contrary Imtiaz Dharker uses the poem “Blessing” to convey the importance of water for less fortunate people. From both of the poems I have chosen I can see that the poets have written about something they feel is important. The reason why I have chosen these two poems is because both of the

and that he believes them. The poem also translates into how living in the city is toilsome and that the city is unrelenting. On the other hand it shows how the city can be prosperous and happy with the city’s disadvantages. in the second half of the poem it’s telling how nomatter what is wrong with the city, the people are still proud of who they are.