My part is between page 145 to 154, so several pages of chapter 9 and the beginning of chapter 10.
SYNOPSIS:
After Asha decided not to decide Manju’s marriage, she encouraged Manju to network more to the people of the upper-class and even mimic them in order to become part of them in the future.
In this way, Manju first thought about selling insurance in the Life Insurance Corporation of India and this is the place where she learned that not to say the word “tragedy” or “death” because otherwise no insurance will be sold.(Contrasting with the huge amount of farmers committed suicide mentioned several pages before, and the death of the scavenger in the beginning of chapter 10) The book moved on talking about Manju’s degree of education and her worries about not getting well paid jobs after graduation. While thinking about all of these, she taught for Asha at the school. But Asha was mad at her and shouted at her in front of her class because Asha thought there’s no benefit networking with students in lower-class.
Then, chapter nine includes the second idea of Manju of joining the Indian Civil Defense Corp which is basically an organization helping people who suffered from terror activities or flood. Indian Civil Defense Corp is the place where Manju met this college guy named Vijays, and hold hands with a male at the first time.
Moving on, chapter nine includes Asha’s affair that forced her to leave her birthday party in the end and brought up huge contract of Asha’s affair and rich couple getting married in a fantasy wedding.
Starting in chapter ten, the book talks about a scavenger lying in on the road with one leg smashed by a car. Sunil passed him but Sunil was too scared to call the police. Rahul passed him but Rahul had to run to class. Zehrunisa passed him but Zehrunisa’s husband Karam is as hell as the scavenger so Zehrunisa went to the hospital for Karam instead of helping. So the scavenger died at last, and ended up being loaded into a police van. Further, the author includes the second body and the third body and move on to other plots depicted in chapter 1o.
QUESTION 1:
There are three places talking about “death” in chapter 9 and 10. The death of farmers, the death of the scavenger, and the lesson Manju learned of not include the word “death” while selling insurance. How does the contracts between these three “death” work for either depiction of the characters or the plot?
ANSWER 1:
Like what I wrote in the synopsis, the contract between different kind of death is  emphasized in chapter nine and ten. Here, I think the author is using “death” as a symbol to depict the huge gap between social and economical classes. Poor people are suiciding and being abandoned to death while “death” is a “forbidden” word for rich people. Poor people can’t afford to be alive while rich people can earn huge amount of money when they die. It sounds really satire to me.
On the other side, I agree that using “death” as a symbol helps the readers to understand more about this gap between social hierarchy and how bad things really were since death is horrible and such a big thing to all of us who has been born and raised up in an environment hundred times better than what it was in Mumbai. To the plot, I believe that including word or topic about death definitely push the story to a severer level and force the readers to read the story more rationally and seriously.
QUESTION 2:
Marriage is also talked about very often in this two chapters. The author detailedly describes how Asha and Manju think about Manju’s marriage. In the prologue, the book includes Abdul’s point of view of wishing to have a wife in the future “who didn’t much mind how he smelled”. What do the difference say to the readers?
ANSWER 2:
Firstly, like the use of “death”, including this contract of various marriages in the book helps the viewers to comprehend the hierarchy better, as marriage is a relationship that we all understand. Marriage is also huge. No one is going to get married 365 times a year. More, it is something sweet and special and fantasy-like. Or mostly. When I thinking about marriage I can think of candies, kisses, beautiful bride and groom but not a ticket to the upper-class live nor two people suffering around trash together. Unlike the fear we can think about from “death”, marriage and love are what we are pursuing. So it works on the opposite side of feelings of death to depict how lives were in Mumbai.
