Summary of the pages 1 - 15:
The first part of the chapter one is about an entrepreneur, Balram Halwai, and the prime minister of China, Wen Jiabao. Balram Halwai lives in Bengalore, India. He writes an e-mail to the premier to talk about his arrival after the lady on "All India Radio" told it. She is also publishing, that Mr. Jiabao wants to know the truth about Bangalore. The unreliability of the media is reason for him to ask the prime minister if he really plans to come to Bangalore. About the second aspect Balram thoroughly thinks of. He thinks that he is the best one you could ask about this issue, so he tells about his life´s story and about employers in India. He wrote about children which run up to stopped cars and try to sell some bootlegged american books dealing with businesses. Mr. Halwai goes over to a short situation, in which he´s the driver of an american businessman. In his opinion, most of Indians are half-baked. Balram, which is thinking that all entrepreneurs are made from half-baked clay, carries on narrating. He tells about posters, including his face, which hang out in nearly every post, railway and police station. Referring to the poster, Balram explains how he got his name by his former teacher and why Laxmangarh, the place where he grew up, is called darkness. He narrates the moment when his mother were burned on a stage above the river Ganga, which definitly isn´t the same one all american tourists always think of. Full of feces, soggy parts of human bodies, buffalo carrion and so on. This is the reason why he advises the prime minister to not take a dip under any circumstances. In this moment, while he´s watching his mother burn and thinks of his own death, he faint and haven´t been back to see the ganga again.
Personal impressions:
I personally am amazed in which way these person is telling about his life, which is, without doubt, a painful as well as sad one so far. In my opinion, he´s narrating it with an unbelievable easiness. Next to it, I am also shocked about the use of the Ganga. On the one hand, the natives use it to clean up corpses, buffalo carrion et cetera, and on the other hand, it is a popular attraction for tourists.
I took these two links, because I think that they reflect the problems of the Ganga very well and symbolize the Indian´s disinterest.
Thank you! This is very well written. Hats off to you :)
AntwortenLöschen