~Her first short story was published when she was nine years old, but she did not find widespread acclaim until the publication of Cry the Peacock in 1963. Her subsequent body of work includes novels, short story collections, and children’s books. Her work has won prestigious prizes including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, and she is a member of the British Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

~Starting in the late 1980s, Desai held a series of academic posts in the United States, teaching creative writing at Mount Holyoke College, Baruch College, Smith College, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

~Although the British had been involved in colonial projects in India from the 17th century, it was not until 1858 that the British Crown under Queen Victoria assumed direct control over India from the East India Company.

~The British had always faced uprisings and revolts in India, but events in the early decades of the 20th century led to a vote by Parliament in 1945 to decolonize India.

~Reasons for the decision included global sympathy and appreciation for India as a founding member of the United Nations; the high-profile protests of Mahatma Ghandi, his followers, and others; and the toll World War II took on Britain.

Wild Things. In the book, Raka becomes fascinated with the Pasteur Institute, which manufactures rabies vaccines among other things. Rabies was—and still is—a significant health risk in India, which accounts for 36 percent of global rabies infections thanks to its large population of stray dogs. Fortunately, safe and effective modern vaccines are 100 percent effective against death if administered in a timely and correct manner.

~The division, called the Indian Partition, led to massive upheaval, violence, and death in the affected areas, which were primarily in the northern part of the country.

~Kashmir, where Nanda Kaul grew up, was claimed by both India and Pakistan, leading to outright war in 1947–1948 and tensions which have simmered—and occasionally broken out into renewed violence—in the decades since.

~ Nanda Kaul is described as proud and stern, and she does not like to exhibit her feelings. When she learns Raka is coming to her, she is initially extremely bothered, but she comes to respect and even cherish the child, especially as Raka seems so much like her

~ Raka keeps her at arms' length, though, causing Nanda Kaul no end of frustration. ~Nanda Kaul is Ila Das's closest friend, but the relationship is not entirely reciprocal, and Nanda Kaul does not invite Ila Das to stay with her even though Ila Das suffers from poverty and threats of danger

~At the end of the novel, Nanda Kaul feels crushed by the weight of the lies she's told herself and others.

~Her mother Tara is the daughter of Nanda’s daughter Asha. ~Raka’s name means “moon,” but she is a slight, angular child

~She is reticent, independent, and, unlike other children, finds refuge in nature rather than the company of her peers.

~She is extremely caring towards animals, loves to explore, and is wary of her great-grandmother's overtures.

~Her life with her parents deeply scarred her, leading her to prefer scenes of devastation and disintegration

~Raka is fascinated by and drawn to wild places like the ravine and the burnt cottage, and she feels an affinity with wild animals

~The dour elderly cook at Carignano, he is old and quite aware of this fact. He develops a camaraderie with Raka due to his talks about the village

~He is in awe of the English even after Independence. He warns Raka about the ravine, the Pasteur Institute, wild animals, and demons

~Although he helps with other chores around Carignano, too, he strikes up a friendship with Raka, telling her stories about Kasauli’s past as well as a few ghost tales and legends

~He has a sense of propriety, even though it’s clearly been a long time since he served in a fancy home

Raka listened to him create this bright picture of hill-station club life politely rather than curiously. It was a life she had observed from the outside—in Delhi, in Manila, in Madrid—but had never tried to enter. She had always seemed to lack the ticket. “Hmm,” she said, picking at a nicely crusty scab on her elbow.

Themes: Nature of Freedom, Class & Privilege

Part 2-Chapter 11:

~Somewhere behind them, behind it all, was her father, home from a party, stumbling and crashing through the curtains of night, his mouth opening to let out a flood of rotten stench, beating at her mother with hammers and fists of abuse—harsh, filthy abuse that made Raka cower under her bedclothes and wet the mattress in fright, feeling the stream of urine warm and weakening between her legs like a stream of blood, and her mother lay down on the floor and shut her eyes and wept. Under her feet, in the dark, Raka felt that flat, wet jelly of her mother’s being squelching and quivering, so that she didn’t know where to put her feet and wept as she tried to get free of it. Ahead of her, no longer on the ground but at some distance now, her mother was crying. Then it was a jackal crying.

Themes: Nature of Freedom, Trauma & Suffering, Women Oppression & Patriarchy

~The Vice-Chancellor married Nanda Kaul because he felt it necessary to marry an Indian woman, even though he conducted a lifelong affair with his British colleague at the university,Miss David.

~Nanda Kaul's husband was influential and well-regarded, but also selfish. He did not really love his wife and carried on a lifelong affair with Miss David, whom he truly loved

~He did enough to keep Nanda Kaul quiet, but he did not care about her wellbeing.

~She does not have any friends her age. She easily sees through the lies Nanda Kaul and Ila Das tell, and she accepts her mother’s frequent illness stoically

~She comes to resent Nanda Kaul’s neediness over the summer she spends at Carignano, and she finds Ila Das—with her loud, screeching voice and her sanitized memories—abhorrent.

~Although Nanda Kaul at first envies Raka for her apparent freedom and independence, the narrative later suggests that Raka’s constant solitude is not in fact a sign of her independence and self-confidence, at least not entirely

~Instead, it perhaps reflects Raka’s inability to connect with others, a consequence of the confusing turmoil she has witnessed in her home life

~At the end of the novel, she sets the mountain on fire

~Nanda Kaul's granddaughter, Asha's daughter, and Raka's mother. Tara is a depressed and anxious woman due to her abusive and philandering husband, and she suffers numerous mental breakdowns. She loves her daughter but cannot care for her.

*Rakesh

~Tara's husband and Raka's father. He is a well-regarded diplomat, but he is also a cruel man, having multiple affairs, beating his wife, and drinking excessively.

*The Priest

~Described by Ila Das as a "wicked" man, he is actively opposed to Western medicine and thus contributes to the death of several children in the villages. He turns the young men against Ila Das.

~A mathematics teacher with whom Nanda Kaul's husband had a long affair.

*Asha

~One of Nanda Kaul's daughters, Asha is beautiful and has dedicated her life to glamour and frivolity. She tires of her daughter Tara's depression and how she let "herself go to rack and ruin, as well as her house—and poor little Raka" (15)

~She decides to have Raka sent to Nanda Kaul without asking if her mother wants the child in the first place.

 She was a lovely child who grew up to be a lovely woman who married well

~She spends most of her time fussing over her own daughters Tara and Vina. Nanda Kaul finds Asha to be her most trying child

~It’s Asha’s idea to send Raka to Carignano to recuperate.

~Tara’s husband was given a new posting, this time in Geneva, and Asha had persuaded her daughter to go with him, to give him another chance

~There was the little problem of their child who was only just recovering from a near-fatal attack of typhoid, but Asha was sure they would find a way to deal with this minor problem

~The main thing, she had trumpeted, was for Tara to rouse herself and make another try at being a successful diplomat’s wife. Surely Geneva would be an excellent place for such an effort. “Why, why shouldn’t she be happy?”

~Asha had written and Nanda Kaul had not replied, had been too disgusted to reply.

Theme: The Nature of Freedom

Getting up at last, she went slowly round to the back of the house and leant on the wooden railing on which the yellow rose creeper had blossomed so youthfully last month but was now reduced to an exhausted mass of grey creaks and groans again. She gazed down into the gorge with its gashes of red earth, its rocks and gullies and sharply spiked agaves […] and said Is it wrong? Have I not done enough and had enough? I want no more. I want nothing. Can I not be left with nothing? But there was no answer and of course she expected none.

Looking down, over all those years she had survived and borne, she saw them, not bare and shining as the plains below, but like the gorge, cluttered, choked and blackened with the heads of children and grandchildren, servants and guests, all restlessly surging, clamouring about her

Themes: Class and Privilege, The Nature of Freedom

~Quote Chapter 7:

She had practised this stillness, this composure, for years, for an hour every afternoon: it was an art, not easily acquired. The most difficult had been those years in that busy house where doors were never shut […] She remembered how […] she had spent the sleepless hour making out the direction from which a shout came, or a burst of giggles, an ominous growling from the dogs, a contest of squirrels under the guavas in the orchard […]All was subdued, but nothing was ever still. […]

This would go on for an hour and she would keep her eyes tightly clenched, her hands folded on her chest […] determinedly not responding. The effort to not respond would grow longer by the minute, heavier, more unendurable, till at last it was sitting on her chest, grasping her by the neck. At four o’clock she would break out from under it with a gasp.

Themes: Nature of Freedom, Honest & Self-Reflection, Class and Privilege, Female Oppression & Patriarchy

Seated on the veranda in the late afternoon shade, Nanda Kaul waved away the tea tray and read, in small sips, bits and pieces from The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon.

‘When A Woman Lives Alone’ was the title of one scrap that caught her eye:

“When a woman lives alone, her house should be extremely dilapidated, the mud wall should be falling to pieces, and if there is a pond, it should be overgrown with water plants. It is not essential that the garden be covered with sage brush, but weeds should be growing through the sand in patches, for this gives the place a poignantly desolate look.

I greatly dislike a woman’s house when it is clear she has scurried about with a knowing look on her face, arranging everything just as it should be, and when the gate is kept tightly shut.”

Themes: Nature of Freedom, Honest & Self-Reflection, Female Oppression

But Raka ignored her. She ignored her so calmly, so totally that it made Nanda Kaul breathless. She eyed the child with apprehension now, wondering at this total rejection, so natural, instinctive and effortless when compared with her own planned and willful rejection of the child.

Seeing Raka bend her head to study a pine cone in her fist, the eyelids drooping down like two mauve shells and the short hair settled like a dusty cap about her scalp, Nanda Kaul saw that she was the finished, perfected model of what Nanda Kaul herself was—merely a brave, flawed experiment.

[…] Like an insect burrowing through the sandy loam and pine needles of the hillsides, like her own great-grandmother, Raka wanted only one thing—to be left alone an pursue her own secret life amongst the rocks and pines of Kasauli.

Themes: Nature of Freedom, Honest & Self-Reflection

The refuse that the folds of the gorge held and slowly ate and digested was of interest too. There were splotches of blood, there were yellow stains oozing through paper, there were bones and the mealy ashes of bones. Tins of Tulip ham and Kissan jam. Broken china, burnt kettles, rubber tyres and bent wheels.

Once she came upon a great, thick yellow snake poured in rings upon itself, basking on the sunned top of a flat rock. She watched it for a long while, digging her toes into the slipping red soil, keeping still the long wand of broom she held in her hand. She had seen the tips of snakes’ tails parting the cracks of rocks, she had seen slit eyes watching her from grottoes of shade, but she had never seen the whole creature before.

Themes: Nature of Freedom, Honest & Self-Reflection

“You should go in the evening, at the proper time,” he said primly, suddenly recalling better days, spent in service of richer, better homes. “You should have an ayah. Then she could wash you and dress you in clean clothes at four o’clock and take you down to the club. You would meet nice babas there. They come in the evenings with their ayahs. They play on the swings and their parents play bridge and tennis. Then they have lemonade and Vitmo in the garden. That is what you should do,” he told her, severely.

Raka listened to him create this bright picture of hill-station club life politely rather than curiously. It was a life she had observed from the outside—in Delhi, in Manila, in Madrid—but had never tried to enter. She had always seemed to lack the ticket. “Hmm,” she said, picking at a nicely crusty scab on her elbow.

Themes: Nature of Freedom, Class & Privilege

Somewhere behind them, behind it all, was her father, home from a party, stumbling and crashing through the curtains of night, his mouth opening to let out a flood of rotten stench, beating at her mother with hammers and fists of abuse—harsh, filthy abuse that made Raka cower under her bedclothes and wet the mattress in fright, feeling the stream of urine warm and weakening between her legs like a stream of blood, and her mother lay down on the floor and shut her eyes and wept. Under her feet, in the dark, Raka felt that flat, wet jelly of her mother’s being squelching and quivering, so that she didn’t know where to put her feet and wept as she tried to get free of it. Ahead of her, no longer on the ground but at some distance now, her mother was crying. Then it was a jackal crying.

Themes: Nature of Freedom, Trauma & Suffering, Female Oppression & Patriarchy

The burned cottage that lies a little way up the mountain from Carignano represents Raka. It went through the crucible of a wildfire, just as illness and the trauma of witnessing her father abuse her mother, Tara have so tested Raka. The cottage is also isolated and solitary—its potential neighbours abandoned their plan to build when they saw the burned cottage’s fate. Raka, meanwhile, likes nothing more than to be left alone and she spends most of her time by herself, resenting the few occasions on which Nanda Kaul imposes herself on her great-granddaughter.

Symbol: Fire

Fire traditionally symbolizes destruction and purification, both of which Raka seeks in setting fire to the mountain. Fire will burn away the traumas and terrors of the patriarchal world in which Raka and Nanda Kaul live, exorcise the demons of Raka's past, and cleanse the world of the grotesque party-goers from the Club who represent excess and abuse.

Symbol: Burnt House

The burnt house on the hill is symbolic of Raka and what has happened to her, which is why it draws her in so inexorably. A house is supposed to be a place of security and succour, but for Raka, it was a madhouse of abuse, fear, and impotence. This house being burnt shows Raka's devastated psyche but also the fact that fire can destroy and purify—exactly what Raka will do herself at the end of the novel.

The sea is a key motif in the book where mountains are often compared with the sea and lights in those villages are compared to ships. The imagery of sea animals is often used to describe people like Nanda, said to hook Raka like a fish which strengthens and loosens. The frequent evocation of waves, ships, and being shipwrecked strengthens the association of Carignano with isolation and wildness.

Motif: Silence

Throughout the text, Nanda Kaul and Raka often remain silent. Nanda Kaul keeps her thoughts to herself, does not finish thoughts aloud, and objects to the loudness of others. Raka also refuses to talk much, keeping her interior closed off throughout the novel. Ila Das, though, refuses to be silent—and is eventually killed for it.

~She uses a simile of her past as the gorge, cramped and crowded with unwelcome things that stifle, overwhelm, and injure her. When Raka comes, we learn more about the gorge, its detritus, its smells, and its dangers, which makes this simile even more potent

~This gives us a sense not only of India's oppressive afternoon heat but also of Nanda Kaul's mental burdens, even when she is resting

~Raka hates sitting still, hates being inside, and hates having to endure people talking to her. At one point, Nanda Kaul notices this and "watched the child seethe as if she were a thousand black mosquitoes, a stilly humming conglomerate of them" (45)

~This vivid simile conjures up tremendous but controlled movement, a buzzing restlessness, and a sense that, at any second, what is held back will break loose. As Nanda Kaul often compares Raka to an insect, this simile is especially apt.

~ This metaphor shows Nanda Kaul's life as busy, unceasingly whirling, and subject to sucking her down as she stands firm in its centre. As the linchpin of the household, Nanda Kaul was needed for everything, and comparing this position to being at the centre of a whirlpool helps us see her resentment of her past life.

~As both Nanda Kaul and Raka compare themselves to being shipwrecked at different points in the novel, this metaphor is consistent with the view of Carignano as a small bit of sanctuary in the void.

Raka's name is ironic because Raka is the Sanskrit word for 'moon', but Raka is nothing like her namesake: she is neither calm, nor radiant, nor round-faced. Rather, she is slim, sickly, and yellow from her bout of typhoid. Nanda Kaul feels that she looks like an insect with her thin legs and large eyes. It is also ironic as in Hindu mythology the moon is a god associated with calmness and grace, whereas Raka is usually dirty, inelegant, and scrappy.

~The narrator offers a brief bit of verbal irony in a comment about Carignano's earlier history, in which a piece of the roof of the house, built by an Englishman, flies off in the wind and knocks off a coolie's head. The narrator writes, "Eventually the roof was replaced—but not the coolie's head" (6)

~It's a wry, ironic comment that reinforces the violence the English wreaked on India.

~Thus, it is ironic when Nanda Kaul suggests Ila Das come to the house the next day and Ila Das replies, "you simply have no idea how my days are spent, how busy, how impossible—tomorrow, did you say?...Yes, well, tomorrow then" (103)

~ Ila Das wants nothing more than to come to Nanda Kaul's house: she would drop everything to do so, and she is not busy

~The women had the same background, more or less, but Ila Das's clothing reveals that she has fallen upon hard times

~Nanda Kaul clearly cares nothing for embellishment, fecundity, excess: she likes this bleak, barren landscape because it matches her own stripping away of extraneous people, things, and cares.

The animals that roam the countryside around Carignano represent both freedom and chaos. On the one hand, they’re unencumbered by human emotions or connections—at least those that remain wild, like the cuckoos at the burned cottage, the hoopoes in the eaves of the house, or the wild monkeys and jackals that live in the ravine.

Ravine

~The ravine that lies below Carignano, cluttered with detritus, symbolizes the messiness and drama of life. It is a place populated by ghosts and ghouls. It is also a dangerous place, full of crumbling land, rabid jackals, and the biological waste of the Pasteur Institute

~Early in the book, Kaur Naul looks down at the clutter of trash, brambles, and rocks, and it reminds her of the house she shared with the Vice-Chancellor and their children—of all the demands and unhappiness that characterized that period of her life

~Raka is drawn to the ravine, but she prefers to limit her explorations to its periphery. Her ability to explore the ravine daily but to return home with little more than a covering of dust and a few scrapes suggests how hard she’s working to avoid entanglements with others

Eagle

Nanda Kaul desperately wants to be the eagle, but she is actually the cuckoo, whether she likes it or not:

~"She had wished, it occurred to her to imitate that eagle—gliding, with its eyes closed. Then a cuckoo called, quite close, here in her garden, very softly, musically, but definitely calling—she recognized its domestic tone" (19). The eagle is a symbol of freedom, power, autonomy, and ferocity, and Nanda Kaul wants this after her life of domesticity and denial.

~From this first image of Raka, we see that she is closer to nature than people, that she is wild, and that she is fragile but strong.

~In this powerful image/metaphor, Desai depicts Raka being pulled out to the "sea" of the burnt house. We sense that Raka has little control over what appeals to her—and that she does not resist what she wants.

Bending down so that her face was at a level with the hunched child’s and her nose tapered softly forward, she said, “Raka, you really are a great-grandchild of mine, aren’t you? You are more like me than any of my children or grandchildren. You are exactly like me, Raka.”

But Raka retreated pell-mell from this outspoken advance. It was too blatant, too obvious for her who loved secrecy above all. Her small face blanched ad she pinched her lips together in distaste.

Nanda Kaul was equally shocked. Quickly straightening her back, she sat in her chair, stiffly. By the manner in which she tensed herself and drew strict lines down her face and folded her hands in her lap stilly, it was clear that she was trying to repair her authority, her composure, her distance in age.They averted their faces from each other.

Themes: Nature of Freedom, Honest & Self-Reflection

~Kasauli is a cantonment (a military or police quarters) and town in the Solan district in Himachal Pradesh, about 77 km from Shimla (or Simla, as Fire refers to it) and 65 km from Chandigarh

~At over 6,000 feet, the climate is temperate, with summer temperatures that rarely go above 89 degrees Fahrenheit and winter temperatures that are about 35 degrees. Most people in Kasauli speak Hindi and English

Link: https://youtu.be/BeBvU9I7ptc?si=mMi9mCZaLeUGRYq7

1. Nanda Kaul – Asha’s mother and Raka’s great-grandmother

2. Asha – Tara’s mother, who likes to organise the family

3. Tara – Raka’s depressed mother, married to a diplomat, shortly going with him to Geneva in an attempt to save her marriage; abused by her alcoholic husband

4. Raka- a frail and odd-looking child, who seems uncomfortable at meeting her great-grandmother.

illustrates

depicts

proves

demonstrates

it creates an effect

exhibits

reveals

communicates

conveys

presents

exposes

examines

expresses

dramatizes 

evidence/ evident

again, and then, besides, equally important, finally, further, furthermore, nor, too, next, lastly, what's more, moreover, in addition

Eight (8) basic categories you must learn:

• To Show Time. ...

• To Show Place. ...

• To Add An Idea. ...

• To Illustrate or Explain an Idea. ...

• To Compare or Contrast Ideas. ...

• To Show a Result. ...

• To Empasize an Idea. ...

• To Summarize an Idea.

~Transition words commonly appear at the start of a new sentence or clause (followed by a comma), serving to express how this clause relates to the previous one.

~ Begin each paragraph with a word like first, additionally, further, secondly, or third, next, first, last, we now turn, in the other hand, finally, now let's consider, if you think that's shocking, similarly, and yet, altogether, at present

~If you need to communicate a point that contradicts your previous statement, an effective transition sentence is one that includes a word or phrase such as however, despite this/that, in contrast, or nonetheless.

Type of Transitions Common Terms

Additive Also, Additionally, Furthermore, Moreover

Adversative But, Still, However, While, Whereas, Conversely, (and) yet

Causal Since, For, As, Because (of the fact that)

Sequential Initially, Secondly, Thirdly, Last