Differences Between Rural & Urban Areas (The Village By The Sea)

Characteristics of rural areas
1. The children play 'Lame'. (Pg. 29-Up on the grassy bank where the path came down from their hut, Bela and Kamal were still skipping and playing. They were playing 'Lame'.Bela was hopping on one leg and trying to catch Kamal who was running about on two in a small square marked with pebbles.")

2. The villagers bargain. (Pg. 27-The women became louder and noisier as they fought over the baskets, pushing each other out of the way as they bid for the catch.")

3. The villagers fish for a living. (Pg. 52-The people in Thul went into the sea to launch their boats or catch fish, not to swim and splash like fish or frogs.")

4. There are very few modern technologies. (Pg. 46-'It is going to have a diesel engine and also a refrigerator. A deep-freeze,' he pronounced slowly, more impressed than anyone else by the unfamiliar words.)

5. Some people play and sleep. (Pg. 52-Although they did nothing but play or lie around and rest, everyone else around them was kept very busy.)

6. There are no formal doctors. (Pg. 76-Feeding the cow was a pious act and they were glad to pay a little and perform it. It brought him some money but not enough so he combined this occupation of ushering the sacred cow around the villages with the selling and administering of medicines that he found in the forest and prepared himself.)

7. There are free barnacles. (Pg.21 & 22-He knew they were going down to the rocks to chip at the barnacles - Lila must have told them to collect molluscs for dinner. He would not join them - the exposed rocks along the beach were already crowded with women and girls, all pick-pick-picking at the barnacles with their small sharp koytas to dig out and collect the molluscs in them.)

8. There are few things which can protect against elements (monsoon). (Pg. 198-The ponds and creeks filled, the fields were flooded and slushy, weeds spread rampant and frogs croaked madly through the night. Fires were smoky and the huts were damp and gloomy, the rain beating down on the thatch and leaking on to the mud floors, making everything so wet that it didn't seem possible they would ever be dry again.)

9. There are cheats. (Pg. 30 & 31-Their father thought he would like to go to Goa where the toddy was supposed to be especially fine, and he paid the man fifty rupees as his bus fare. Then, the day before they were to leave, along with several other jobless men from the village, Mr Pinto disappeared.)

10. The villagers are superstitious. (Pg. 78-The man told her to open her mouth and put out her tongue which she did, and on it he dropped some of the ash. 'Eat sister,' he said. 'Holy ash, purified ash. It will purify you within. It will drive away the demons that create the fever. Swallow.')

11. Industrialisation is most likely to be imminent. (Pg. 91-'Yes, yes,' said a man, spitting out bits of tobacco. 'I've had your rice. I've seen your fields. They will soon go. All the land will be bought up, factories will be built on it. Your rice will go.')

12. There is more natural environment. (Pg. 4-Then there were all the birds flying out of the shadowy. soft-needled casuarina trees and the thick jungle of pandanus, singing and calling and whistling louder than at any other time of the day.)

13. There are dilapidated thatched huts. (Pg. 5-The hut should have been re-thatched years ago
- the old palm leaves are dry and tattered and slipping off the beams. The earthen walls were crumbling. The windows gaped, without any shutters. There was no smoke to be seen curling up from under a cooking pot on a fire, as in the other huts in the surrounding groves of coconut and banana.)

14. The villagers are religious. (Pg. 37-The village road leading to the market was lined with houses, some of them of solid brick and white-washed, with bright floral patterns painted on their veranda walls, and others made of mud, with tattered palm leaves for roofs. But large or small, rich or poor, each had a sacred bail plant growing in a pot by the front door.)

15. There is a lack of medical facilities. (Pg. 80-'There's no hospital in the village we could take her to, and no doctor who would come.')

Characteristics of urban areas
1. There is higher crime rate. (Pg. 169-'There are enough bad characters in this city - thugs, murderers, thieves, gamblers, drunkards - why not go after them instead?')

2. There has been urbanisation (changes). (Pg. 210-'Look, even Bombay is not always the same. Fifty years ago there were hills, gardens, beautiful palaces and villas where now you see slums, shops, traffic, crowds. Once I lived in a villa with a garden and roses and fountains - now I live in a pigeon roost over a railway station!'

3. There is a greater variety of goods available. (Pg. 241-Then they were in Alibagh, the big town of the district, with its whitewashed bungalows, its wide roads, markets and shops where you could get mill-made bread, fireworks, anything you wanted.)

4. There is a large income gap between the rich and the poor. (Pg. 187-On the boulevard side of the hill the houses had been large and tall, pink and green and yellow, with names like Sunshine and Seagull, in which rich people lived. On the other side of the hill were shacks of the poor, tumbling downhill into an open drain and a busy road.)

5. There are high-rise buildings. (Pg. 117-As Hari looked up fearfully at the towering buildings, ten and twenty storeys high,)

6. There are formal doctors. (Pg. 192-At the dispensary, a broken building with a tin roof on which the rain drummed loudly, there was a long queue of men, women and children waiting on the veranda and out in the rain for the doctor to see to them.)

7. There is noise pollution. (Pg. 121-Hari strained to listen but the noise of the traffic that was so unfamiliar distracted him. He felt sure the cars and buses were all charging straight at him and if he did not keep a sharp lookout he would be run over.)

8. There is more air pollution than rural areas. (Pg. 121-'As it is, Bombay is heavily industrialized, crowded and polluted. How much more pollution can we stand?')

9. There are more motorised vehicles. (Pg. 117 & 118-and heard only the honking of horns, the grinding of gears and the roar of the great double-decker buses, the taxis and cars.)

10. The poor in urban areas are poorer than the poor in rural areas. (Pg. 186-Jagu was the proprietor of a 'restaurant', the owner of an eating house on a busy street and had plenty of customers, yet his house was in a slum, one of those colonies of shacks made out of rags and flattened tin-cans that are called zopadpattis in Bombay. There were not enough houses or flats in the city for the millions of people who came to work in it and earn a living in it, and since there were not enough, the rents of even the smallest flats were high for people like Jagu.)

11. The conditions of eating houses are unsatisfactory. (Pg. 146-The ceiling was thick with cobwebs that trapped the soot and made a kind of furry blanket over one's head. The floor and the wooden tables were all black, too, since they all got an even share of soot from the open stoves in the back room where the lentils were cooked all day in a huge aluminium pan and the chapatis were rolled by hand and baked.)

12. Processions are allowed. (Pg. 118-Once another procession passed directly in front of theirs and they had to stop and wait till it wound past them.)

13. There are more modern technologies. (Pg. 139-The door was shut on them, the man pressed a button in the wall and the little wooden cell shot upwards with a sickening lurch. Before Hari could get over the shock, it had come to a stop, the door was flung open and the man waved him out.)

14. There is law and order. (Pg. 116-Then the police appeared - the famed Bombay police who,
with a wave of their batons and a blast on their whistles, could bring traffic to a halt or send it up one road and down another, and were capable even of controlling processions and herding marchers through the crowded city such as this one of fishermen from Alibagh.)

15. There are monuments. (Pg. 119-But no, they were being led to a square between large, old, grey office buildings and there, in the centre of the square, was an empty pedestal (Black Horse).)