Thinking Activity

✴️Thinking Activity: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Hello everyone, I am Nidhi Dave, a student of the department of English, MKBU. This blog is a response to my thinking activity given by professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I'm going to discuss about the some questions of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

1) The Reader’s Digest Book of English Grammar and Comprehension for Very Young Children By S. Tilottama - Give answers to the questions asked regarding any three stories. Questions are given at the end of each story.

2) Three points mentioned in the photo of board-work. (List of characters, Summary - plot - narrative structure, Fact & Fiction)

3) Write about any one theme or character of the novel with the help of Chat OpenAI GPT. Ask to Chat GPT and put screenshot as well as copy-paste the answer generated by this response generator.

Arundhati Roy:

Arundhati Roy was born in 1960 in Kerala, India. She studied architecture at the Delhi School of Architecture and worked as a production designer. She has written two screenplays, including Electric Moon (1992), commissioned by Channel 4 television. She lives in Delhi with her husband, the film-maker Pradip Krishen.

The God of Small Things, her first novel, won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and has sold over six million copies worldwide. She is also the author of several non-fiction books,including: The Cost of Living (1999), a highly critical attack on the Indian government for its handling of the controversial Narmada Valley dam project and for its nuclear testing programme; Power Politics (2001), a book of essays; and The Algebra of Infinite Justice, a collection of journalism. The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire was published in 2004. She has since published a further collection of essays examining the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy (2009).

Arundhati Roy was awarded the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2003. Her latest book is The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), her second novel. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and, in the US, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

💠The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: 

Spanning the 1950s to the 2010s, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a 2017 novel by Arundhati Roy, follows the interconnected lives of several characters against the backdrop of contemporary India. The novel skips backwards and forwards in time freely, often pauses for detours into the stories of minor characters and includes several texts within the main text (e.g., Bhartiya’s manifesto, or Tilo’s Kashmiri-English Alphabet). At heart, however, the novel consists of two main narrative threads, one of which is centered in Delhi, and the other in Kashmir. 

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on a journey of many years – the story spooling outwards from the cramped neighbourhoods of Old Delhi into the burgeoning new metropolis and beyond, to the Valley of Kashmir and the forests of Central India, where war is peace and peace is war, and where, from time to time, ‘normalcy’ is declared.

Anjum, who used to be Aftab, unrolls a threadbare carpet in a city graveyard that she calls home. A baby appears quite suddenly on a pavement, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. The enigmatic S. Tilottama is as much of a presence as she is an absence in the lives of the three men who love her.

1] The Reader’s Digest Book of English Grammar and Comprehension for Very Young Children by S. Tilottama. (Question - Answer)

✴️First story (The Old Man and His Son)

💠THE OLD MAN & HIS SON

When Manzoor Ahmed Ganai became a militant, soldiers went to his home and picked up his father, the handsome, always dapper Aziz Ganai. He was kept in the Haider Baig Interrogation Centre. Manzoor Ahmed Ganai worked as a militant for one and a half years. His father remained imprisoned for one and a half years. On the day Manzoor Ahmed Ganai was killed, smiling soldiers opened the door of his father’s cell. ‘Jenaab, you wanted Azadi? Mubarak ho aapko. Congratulations! Today your wish has come true. Your freedom has come.’ The people of the village cried more for the shambling wreck who came running through the orchard in rags with wild eyes and a beard and hair that hadn’t been cut in a year and a half than they did for the boy who had been murdered. The shambling wreck was just in time to be able to lift the shroud and kiss his son’s face

before they buried him.

Q 1: Why did the villagers cry more for the shambling wreck?

Q 2: Why did the wreck shamble?

1, Why did the villagers cry more for the shambling wreck?

Ans,  The villagers cry more for the shambling wreck because Ahmed Ganai was killed.

2, Why did the wreck shamble?

Ans,  Wreck Shamble because his boy was killed.

 ✴️Second Story (NEWS)

💠NEWS

Kashmir Guideline News Service Dozens of Cattle Cross Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri

At least 33 cattle including 29 buffaloes have crossed over to Pakistan side in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir.

According to KGNS, the cattle crossed the LoC in Kalsian sub-sector. ‘The cattle which

belong to Ram Saroop, Ashok Kumar, Charan Das, Ved Prakash and others were grazing near LoC when they crossed over to other side,’ locals told KGNS.

Tick the Box:

Q 1: Why did the cattle cross the LoC?

• (a) For training
• (b) For sneak-in ops
• (c) Neither of the above.

Ans, (C) Neither of the above 

3, THE CAREERIST 

The boy had always wanted to make something of himself. He invited four militants for dinner and slipped sleeping pills into their food. Once they had fallen asleep he called the army. They killed the militants and burned down the house. The army had promised the boy two canals of land and one hundred and fifty thousand rupees. They gave him only fifty thousand and accommodated him in quarters just outside an army camp. They told him that if he wanted a permanent job with them instead of being just a daily wage worker he would have to get them two foreign militants. He managed to get them one ‘live’ Pakistani but was having trouble finding another. ‘Unfortunately these days business is bad,’ he told PI.

‘Things have become such that you cannot any longer just kill someone and pretend he’s a foreign militant. So my job cannot be made permanent.’ PI asked him, if there was a referendum whom he would vote for, India or Pakistan?

‘Pakistan of course.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it is our Mulk (country). But Pakistan militants can’t help us in this way. If I can kill them and get a good job it helps me.’ He told PI that when Kashmir became a part of Pakistan, he (PI) would not be able to survive in it. But he (the boy) would. But that, he said, was just a theoretical matter. Because he would be killed shortly. 

Q 1: Who did the boy expect to be killed by? 

(a) The army

(b) Militants

(c) Pakistanis

(d) Owners of the house that was burned.

Ans, (A) The army 

✴️ Three Points mentioned in the photo of board - work.

1, List of Characters 

• Jahanara Begum- mother of anjum

• Malakat Ali- father of Aftab 

• Anjum/ Aftab (Man who knew English)

• Ziauddin- Blind Imam

• Ahlam baiji- midwife

• Bombay Silk

• Mary- the only Cristian

• Gudiya and Bulbul (Hindu)

• Razia

• Nimmo Gorakhpuri

• Begum- Kulsoombi (Leader od Khwabgah Haveli)

• King Aurangzeb

• Abhaychand

• Harat Sarmad

• Barte Khatum

• Changez Khan

• Zainab

• Saeeda

• Sakim (Anjum's brother)

• Sadam Hussain/ Dayachand

• Sangeeta Madam

• Shehrawat

• Tubby old Gandhian (Anna Hazare)

• Mr. Agarwal (Kejriwal) 

• Dr. Azad

• Gujarat ka Lalla (Narendra Modi)

• Manmohan Singh (Trapped rabbit)

• Biplav Das Gupta

• Chtrarupa (Biplav’s wife)

• Rabia and Ania (Biplav’s daughters)

• Hariharan Nagarjun- journalist

• S. Tillotama (Tillo)- Ustaniji

• Maryam Ipe (Tillo’s mother)

• Musa Yeswi- Terrorist

• Arifa (Musa’s wife)

• Jebeen (Musa and Arifa’s Daughter)

• First Jebeen) Baby- Jebeen, The second Udaya- Udaya Jebeen (baby found at Jantar Mantar)

• Caption Amrik Singh

• Lavleen Singh (Amrik’s wife)

• Acp Pinky Sodhi

• Balbir Sodhi(Pinky’s brother)

• Khadijah (Musa appointed her with Tillo in Kashmir)

• Aijaz (terrorist; has an interview encounter with Nagarjun)

• Jalil Qadri (Human right activist)

• Revathy- Comrade Maase 

• spirit evoked by her salutation “Lal Salamaleikum” 

3,Plot and Narrative Style 

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is Roy’s second novel, appearing almost twenty years after TGOST. In the interim, Roy has written about the many grassroots movements and mass agitations in India, using her considerable polemical skills in arguing for the marginalized, the lost causes, consistently taking anti-establishment positions.

It seems logical that Roy, who has always held that her fiction and her essays are part of the same persona, should marry her skills and venture upon a polemical work of fiction, and that for its content, nothing less than the contemporary history of India will do. This is a novel which takes up, with righteous anger, a swathe of causes, from the “soft” social issues such as the plight of the hijras, or that of beagles dumped on the road by unscrupulous testing labs complete with tubes dangling out of their sides, to the “larger” political events and causes, including caste discrimination and violence, the Bhopal gas leak, anti-Sikh violence, the Gujarat riots, the rising saffron tide and cow vigilantism, the anti-corruption stir at the Jantar Mantar led by “old-man-baby-voice”, he of the “gummy Farex baby smile” — Roy’s sharp wit, observation and felicity combine in her pithy epithets for political figures — and finally the burning cause at the heart of this novel – the ongoing political unrest in Kashmir.

It appears as if Roy has opened her third eye and subjected the nation to her searing vision; and here lies the strength and the weakness of this ambitious novel. While the sweep of issues that Roy tackles is impressive and even plausible, her storytelling engaging and multi-layered, the polemicist wins over the writer of fiction — she sees everything in black and white – and red. The intimate anecdotal narration which we saw in TGOST takes second place – and for a historical narration of the kind The Ministry aims to be, Rushdie had his foot in the door first with Midnight’s Children.

Roy evokes a poignant symbol of resistance — a boy is brought home “his fists, clenched in rigor mortis, (were) full of earth and yellow mustard flowers grew from between his fingers.” However, Roy’s monochromatic vision allows for only two sides, the good and the bad; one side is noble and blameless, and on the other side, even the children are not innocent. Despite Roy’s considerable story telling skills, the overkill in the narrative with its stock figures of fun, vilification and heroism turns weary, making the reader long for the nuances of a plain old newspaper report.

Which brings us to the purpose of the novel. How to tell a shattered story, Roy asks in the course of the novel, and answers, “By slowly becoming everybody. No, by slowly becoming everything.” Perhaps a single, sweeping grand narrative with a smoothly interlinked plot, an organic conclusion, rounded characters, polyphonous voices and chuckling wit are the tools of a novelist who has come to terms with her vision and the world she has created, and left it behind. This is a novel of unfinished business, whose dedication reads — To the Unconsoled. In the world that Roy beholds and which she has evoked, utopia can only lie in a place like Jannat House, a people’s paradise built in the graveyard, a bottom-of-the-pyramid of disenfranchisement, a collection of simple, never-say-die people, the happy few, the band of brothers, who wear their wounds lightly, and where an Anjum and a Tilo can live side by side.

3, FACT & FICTION

💠FACT IN THE NOVEL:

• 2002 Godhra riots- Gujarat
•  Leaching of Dalits (lower class) in Una Gujarat
• Gulf war between Iraq and America
• Hanging of Sadam Hussein by America
• Anna Hazare movement 2011-12
• All the Jantar Mantar protests
• The madness of adopting names
• Naxalite Maoist movement
• Sanjay Gandhi and Emergency
• Narendra Modi and his case of suit

💠FICTION IN THE NOVEL:-

• Gujarat ka Lalla

• Trauma to Anjum; their visit to Gujarat

• Dayachand’s father’s killing in Haryana for taking a dead animal’s skin

• Inspiration for Dayachand to adopt the name, Sadam Hussein

• Tubby Gandhian at Jantar Mantar in TV and news

• Dr. Azad Bharti

• Letter from Revathy 

3] Write about any one theme or character of the novel with the help of Chat OpenAI GPT. Ask to Chat GPT and put screenshot as well as copy-paste the answer generated by this response generator.

💠Resilience & Hope in Ministry.

✴️Explain the theme Resilience and Hope in the ministry of utmost happiness.

The theme of resilience and hope is central to the narrative of Arundhati Roy's novel "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness". The novel portrays a complex and diverse world that is deeply scarred by conflict, violence, and trauma. Yet, in the face of such adversity, the characters in the novel demonstrate remarkable resilience and a steadfast hope for a better future.

One of the primary ways in which resilience and hope are portrayed in the novel is through the characters' ability to overcome their individual traumas and challenges. For example, Anjum, a hijra (transgender) woman, faces discrimination and violence from her family and society, but she finds a sense of belonging and purpose in the community she builds in a graveyard. Similarly, Tilo, the novel's protagonist, navigates political violence and personal loss, but she remains committed to her principles and hopeful that change is possible.

The novel also highlights the resilience and hope of marginalized communities that have endured centuries of oppression and violence. The novel's setting, the city of Delhi, is a site of ongoing conflict between Hindu and Muslim communities. Despite this, characters from both communities demonstrate a deep sense of solidarity and a commitment to coexistence.

Throughout the novel, Roy emphasizes the importance of hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges. The characters often turn to religion, mythology, and stories as a means of finding solace and inspiration. For example, Anjum finds comfort in the stories of the Prophet and the lives of the Sufi saints, while Tilo draws strength from the legend of a Kashmiri queen who fought against the Mughal Empire.

Overall, "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" presents a powerful portrayal of resilience and hope in the face of trauma and oppression. Through the characters' stories, Roy highlights the enduring strength of marginalized communities and the importance of maintaining a sense of hope even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Thank you.

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Unit 2

Hello everyone, I am Nidhi Dave, a student of the department of English, MKBU. This blog is a response to my Thinking Activity given by professor Megha ma'am. In this blog I'm going to discuss What is Plagiarism and its Consequences and Forms of Plagiarism. 

✴️1, What is Plagiarism and what are its consequences? 

Plagiarism means using someone else’s work without giving them proper credit. In academic writing, plagiarizing involves using words, ideas, or information from a source without citing it correctly. In practice, this can mean a few different things.

💠History of Plagiarism: 

Plagiarism is not a phenomenon in this digital world. It was pretty popular in ancient times as well.

Some scholars also believe that most religious texts were authorless, and people didn't know where a few manuscripts came from.

So there was an opportunity for many so-called scholars and philosophers to copy the written material from various books and texts and claim that those ideas were their own.

💠Definition of Plagiarism:

Derived from the Latin word ("kidnapper"), to plagiarize means "to commit literary theft" and to "present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source". Plagiarism involves two kinderen. Using another person's ideas, information, or expressions without acknowledging that person's work constitutes intellectual theft. Passing off another person's ideas, information, or expres.. Sions as your own to get a better grade or gain some other advantage constitutes fraud.

Plagiarism is sometimes a moral and ethical offense rather than a legal one since instances of plagiarism fall outside the scope of copyright infringement, a legal offense.

💠Consequences Of Plagiarism: 

A complex society that depends on well-informed citizens strives to maintain high standards of quality and reliability for documents that are publicly circulated and used in government, business, industry. the professions, higher education, and the media. Because search has the power to affect opinions and actions, responsible writers com- pose their work with great care. They specify when they refer to an- other author's ideas, facts, and words, whether they want to agree with, object to, or analyze the source. This kind of documentation not only recognizes the work writers do; it also tends to discourage the circulation of error, by inviting readers to determine for themselves whether a reference to another text presents a reasonable account of what that text says. Plagiarists undermine these important public values.

Students exposed as plagiarists may suffer severe penalties. Ranging from failure in the assignment or in the course to expulsion from school. This is because student plagiarism does considerable harm. For one thing, it damages teachers' relationships with students, turn- ing teachers into detectives instead of mentors and fostering suspicion instead of trust. By undermining institutional standards for assigning grades and awarding degrees, student plagiarism also becomes a mat- ter of significance to the public. When graduates' skills and knowl- edge fail to match their grades, an institution's reputation is damaged. For example, no one would choose to be treated by a physician who obtained a medical degree by fraud. Finally, students who plagiarize harm themselves. They lose an important opportunity to learn how to write a research paper. Knowing how to collect and analyze information and reshape it in essay form is essential to academic success." This knowledge is also required in a wide range of careers in law, journalism, engineering, public policy, teaching, business, govern- ment, and not-for-profit organizations.

Plagiarism betrays the personal element in writing as well. Discuss- ing the history of copyright Mark Rob notes the tie between our writing and our sense of self-a tie that, he believes, influenced the idea that a piece of writing could belong to the person who wrote it! Rose says that our sense of ownership of the words we write "is deeply rooted in our conception of ourselves as Individuals with at least a modest grade of singularity, some degree of personality Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright Gaining skill as a writer opens the door to learning more about yourself and to developing a personal voice and approach in your writing, It is essential for all student writers to understand how to avoid committing plagiarism.

✴️2,Why is Academic Integrity necessary? Write your views. 

💠What is Academic Integrity:

Academic integrity means acting in a way that is honest, fair, respectful and responsible in your studies and academic work. It means applying these values in your own work, and also when you engage with the work and contributions of others. These values are expected of both staff and students.

Academic integrity is a set of values and practices that expect us to act with honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. It means approaching your studies, research and professional life in an ethical way, having the courage to make the right decisions and displaying integrity in your actions as part of the Monash community. Academic integrity is about who you are as a person, and how you act when it matters.

💠Maintaining academic integrity is important because:

• good academic work is underpinned by honesty, trust and respect

• you want to acknowledge who created or developed new ideas or research

• knowledge is created by many people, and we want to acknowledge each person's contribution

• when you copy someone else’s work, you don’t actually learn anything.

Academic integrity is important for students' personality and academic growth. Therefore, it is critical that the students understand the value of academic integrity in their academic careers. Practicing academic integrity would be beneficial for them in every facet of their life. Hence, schools should promote academic integrity among students and take measures to eliminate academic dishonesty among students.

 

Thank you

Words: 940

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Unit 1: Petals Of Blood

Hello everyone, i am Nidhi Dave a student of the department of English, MKBU. This blog is response of my Thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. In this blog I'm going to discuss about the novel Petals Of Blood.

🔅About Author: 

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, original name James Thiong’o Ngugi, (born January 5, 1938, Limuru, Kenya), Kenyan writer who was considered East Africa’s leading novelist. His popular Weep Not, Child (1964) was the first major novel in English by an East African. As he became sensitized to the effects of colonialism in Africa, Ngugi adopted his traditional name and wrote in the Bantu language of Kenya’s Kikuyu people.

The prizewinning Weep Not, Child is the story of a Kikuyu family drawn into the struggle for Kenyan independence during the state of emergency and the Mau Mau rebellion. A Grain of Wheat (1967), generally held to be artistically more mature, focuses on the many social, moral, and racial issues of the struggle for independence and its aftermath. A third novel, The River Between (1965), which was actually written before the others, tells of lovers kept apart by the conflict between Christianity and traditional ways and beliefs and suggests that efforts to reunite a culturally divided community by means of Western education are doomed to failure. Petals of Blood (1977) deals with social and economic problems in East Africa after independence, particularly the continued exploitation of peasants and workers by foreign business interests and a greedy indigenous bourgeoisie.

Ngugi later published the memoirs Dreams in a Time of War (2010), about his childhood; In the House of the Interpreter (2012), which was largely set in the 1950s, during the Mau Mau rebellion against British control in Kenya; and Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer’s Awakening (2016), a chronicle of his years at Makerere University.

🔅About Novel:

The Mau Mau rebellion, as it is often called, which began in Kenya in the early 1950s, was a nationalist, anticolonial armed resistance against the British colonial state. The guerrilla movement called itself the Kenya Land Freedom Army; the British dubbed the movement “mau mau,” a meaningless name, to obscure the aims otherwise so clear in the resistance army’s name. Ngugi Wa Thiongío’s Petals of Blood examines, among other things, the betrayal by the postcolonial regime of the ideals of this anticolonial struggle that helped Kenya achieve its independence.

Set in the aftermath of Kenyan independence, revered Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o’s novel Petals of Blood (1977) follows schoolteachers Munira and Karega, and barmaid Wanja and her boss, Abdulla, as they cope with the rapid modernization of their rural village, Ilmorog. The novel examines the effects of the Mau Mau rebellion and the legacy of colonialism while criticizing the Kenyan government for reproducing the inequalities of the colonial regime. The title is taken from “The Swamp,” a poem by Derek Walcott.

✴️Write a note on the first chapter of the novel (Interrogation of all characters)

🔅Major characters:

• Munira - School teacher. 
• Wanja - Barmaid, Prostitute.
•  Abdulla - Shopkeeper.
• Karega - School Teacher.
•  Nyakinyua - Grandmother of Wanja.
• Kimeria - Businessman.
• Chui - School boy.
• Nderi wa Riera -MP, Politician.
•  Mzigo - Education Officer
•  Joseph - Son of Abdulla
•  Inspector Godfrey - An officer in charge of the murder investigation.
•  Mwathi wa Mugo - Ilmorog's local diviner.
• Mukami - Munira's beloved.
•  Ezekieli - Munira's father.
• Mariamu - Mother of Karega
• Cambridge Fraudsham - A strict, Christian headmaster.

Ans, The novel begins with a glance at its ending: three notable Kenyans—a teacher and two successful businessmen—have died in a fire. Inspector Godfrey, who believes that the police force is “the maker of modern Kenya,” investigates. His suspicion falls on the schoolteacher Munira.

From here, the novel moves back to the beginning of the story. Schoolteacher Munira arrives in the pastoral village of Ilmorog, to take up a position at the village school. Many teachers from the city have come and gone in Ilmorog, and the villagers assume that Munira won’t last. His new neighbors treat him with suspicion, and few children come to his classes. However, Munira befriends the owner of a local bar, Abdulla, a hero of the Mau Mau rebellion, who helps Munira to settle in the village. Munira also befriends Joseph, a young boy whom Abdulla has adopted. Eventually, Munira is accepted as one of Ilmorog’s own.

Another refugee from the city arrives, Wanja, the granddaughter of a respected Ilmorog elder. She begins working in Abdulla’s bar, helping him to expand the business. Soon, Munira finds himself falling in love with her. Munira and Wanja have a brief relationship, but Munira is married, and when Wanja discovers this, she is bitterly disappointed. She leaves the village for a time; when she returns, she breaks off the affair.

A former colleague of Munira’s, Karega, arrives in Ilmorog to question Munira about events at the school where both used to work. Karega ends up taking a position at the school. That year, the village suffers a long, dry summer and a poor harvest. Karega rallies the villagers and leads them to Nairobi to ask their Member of Parliament for help.

It is a long journey. On the way, Joseph grows very ill. As soon as the villagers arrive in Nairobi, they try to get help for Joseph. A minister turns them away, assuming they are beggars. Finally, they are admitted to the house of a rich man, only to be rounded up and imprisoned in the building. They are subjected to questioning by the house’s owner, Kimeria, an unscrupulous businessman who explains to the villagers that he and their MP are allies. Later, he blackmails and rapes Wanja.

The villagers go to meet their MP anyway. They find that he is an empty demagogue with no interest in their plight. However, a Nairobi lawyer takes an interest in their case, advancing it through the courts and attracting national press attention. As a result, journalists and charity workers pour into Ilmorog.

When the rains finally come, the villagers celebrate with ritual dances. A villager named Nyakinyua brews a powerful traditional drink made from the Thang’eta plant. All the villagers partake of the drink. Under its influence, Karega confesses to Munira that he had an affair with Munira’s older sister, Mukami. Munira and Mukami’s father forced her to leave Karega due to Karega’s brother’s involvement in the Mau Mau rebellion. This was the real reason for Mukami’s suicide.

A plane crashes in the village, miraculously killing no one but Abdulla’s donkey. Many people come to see the wreckage, and Wanja suggests they capitalize on this tourism by selling the Thang’eta drink in Abdulla’s bar. The drink becomes a notorious attraction of the village, and tourists begin visiting just to try it. Soon, Wanja starts a brewery making the drink.

Karega and Wanja start seeing one another. Seething with jealousy, Munira schemes to have Karega fired from the school. Karega is forced to leave Ilmorog.

The government begins building a new road­—the Trans-Africa road—right through the village. Workers arrive, and the village rapidly expands. Soon it is a town, New Ilmorog. The farmers of the old village are advised to fence their lands and mortgage them, so they can prove they own them. Banks offer them loans against their harvests to pay for this. When Nyakinyua dies, the bank moves to seize her land, so Wanja sells her brewery in order to buy Nyakinkua’s land. She opens a brothel catering to the new arrivals and is eventually forced to work as a prostitute herself.

Karega returns, telling Wanja that after his departure, he collapsed into alcoholism before finding a job in a factory, from which he has been fired. Though they still love each other, they cannot agree about how to live in the new Kenya, and Karega leaves again. Munira tries to rekindle their relationship, but Wanja simply asks him to pay. He does so, and they have sex.

Wanja comes up with a plan to rid herself of the men who have taken advantage of her. She invites them all to the brothel, including Karega and Kimeria. Her plan is to present Abdulla to them as her chosen partner. However, Munira sees Karega arrive and then leave again; in a fit of jealousy, he sets fire to the brothel. The other men die, while Wanja is hospitalized.

Inspector Godfrey charges Munira with arson and Munira is imprisoned.

Thank you 

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Revolution 2020

Hello everyone, i am Nidhi Dave a student of the department of English, MKBU. This blog is response of my Thinking Activity given by professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I'm going to discuss about the Some questions of the novel Revolution 2020 by Chetan Bhagat. 

Revolution 2020:

Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition (2011) is a story of success and failure of three youngsters - Gopal Mishra, Raghav Kashyap and Aarti Pradhan who live in a small and traditional town called Varanasi. The subtitle of the novel runs as Love, Corruption, Ambition and each word in the subtitle sticks to the particular character. Aarti is a sensitive girl and very much cared about her love. When she comes to know that Raghav has no time to spare with her, she comes to Gopal who happens to be her childhood friend. Gopal Mishra indulges in corruption as he joins his hands with MLA Shuklaji. Though he fails to be an engineer, he becomes the owner of engineering institute. Raghav Kashyap is a brilliant boy who succeeds in entrance examination and secures a degree in engineering. However, he leaves the job offered by Infosys and starts to work as journalist to eradicate corruption in the society.

About the Author: Chetan Bhagat:

Chetan Bhagat is the author of five blockbuster novels – Five Point Someone (2004), One Night @ the Call Center (2005), The 3 Mistakes of my life (2008), 2 States (2009) and Revolution 2020 (2011).

Chetan’s books have remained bestsellers since their release, and have been adapted into major Bollywood films. The New York Times called him the ‘the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history’. Time magazine named him in the “100 Most Influential People in the world” and Fast Company, USA listed him as one of the world’s “100 most creative people in business”.

Chetan writes columns for leading English and Hindi newspapers, focusing on youth and national development issues. Thus, almost all of his novels are overloaded with social realism and the youth shading light on their ambitions, struggle, love affairs, marriage institutes, corrupt politics and media culture. 

1, Social realism in the novel:

Realism, broadly speaking, is the faithful or truthful representation of the events in a matter of fact way avoiding any kind of embellishment or glorification. In literature, the term ‘realism’ is associated with a number of prefixes that varies its trends of presentation. There may be philosophical realism, magic realism, surrealism, hallucinatory realism, social realism and many more. Social realism is a literary technique that presents a true picture of society. It also mirrors the life as it is and offers social commentary. The novelists who use the technique of social realism often present the social evils, social injustice and social issues that affect the life of middle class particularly. 

Chetan Bhagat is the well known author of sixnovels and all these novels are about the youth, their aspirations and problems, their

struggle, success and failures. According to Chetan Bhagat, the young generation of India is on the verge of destruction. They are indulged in drinking, smoking, sex and illegal business. Gopal, the narrator-cum-protagonist of Bhagat’s fifth novel Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition symbolically stands for the young generation of India who are walking on the wrong path. Aarti, the only female character in the novel enjoys Gopal’s company for drinking and develops sexual relations with him though she loves Raghav. Thus, by introducing these two characters, Chetan Bhagat succeeds in presenting degradation of moral and ethical values in Indian society. Gopal, Aarti and Raghav are three young aspirants in the novel who aspire for being successful person in their life. Gopal, because of his father’s wish wants to be an engineer but couldn’t make it. Aarti wants to be an air-hostess but fails and Raghav has great ambition of eradicating corruption. These three characters have faced severe problems while achieving their target. Through these characters, the novelists tried to depict the problems of youth such as unemployability, poverty and failure and malpractices in the society, etc.

Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition (2011) is overloaded with the theme of social realism. It sheds light on social evils and unfair practices. The author has shown the social stratification through the central characters. The novel narrates the ambitions of youth, their struggle, the problem of unemployability, the scenario of private coaching classes and job fairs, etc. Through Gopal’s character, the author has succeeded to present two attitudes of the youth. In the beginning, Gopal says “Nothing will happen here. This is India. No revolution will take place in 2020 and no revolution would take place in 2120.” This is his negative attitude. However, at the end we learn some bits of positivity through his act of sending Aarti back to Raghav. Chetan Bhagat delivers the message- if we want to bring revolution, we have to contribute.

2, Significance of the title 'Revolution Twenty20': 

Title of the novel, ‘Revolution 2020’ itself suggests the revolution, which might have started in 2020. Bhagat’s views are similar to Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Dr Kalam used to say that India would become one of the developed nations by 2020. Unless and until corruption ends, no country can makes progress. Bhagat is agreed with Dr Kalam’s vision. The author in the novel has given minute details of corruption in Indian politics, administrative, and educational system. Corruption has burrowed Indian political, social, and educational system. Talking about corruption Chetan Bhagat says:

In India, one question is

constant: why isn’t corruption

going away? The question

baffles the educated middle

classes. Why is a reasonable,

universal and noble demand for

an honest society so difficult to

achieve in a democracy? 

And why is it that corrupt parties win election time and time again.

Revolution 2020 is bookended with a Prologue and an Epilogue in which Chetan Bhagat speaks with Gopal Mishra, "the young director of GangaTech College" -- a typical set-up for a Bhagat novel, framing the main story itself, Gopal's story. Sub-titled Love. Corruption. Ambition, it revolves around a trio of friends from Varanasi (formerly Benares): Gopal, Aarti, and Raghav, and the story gets going as they finish high school and Gopal and Raghav's futures are determined by how they did in the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) and the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE).

Much of Revolution 2020 is about the 'Great Indian Education Race', and Bhagat covers a lot of this ground fairly well: the importance of the test results, the cram-schools, and then also the competition among them as well as various colleges for students (with bargaining for discounts and ruthless competition). Education is big business in India, and a fast-growing one -- and this is something which Gopal is able to take advantage of when the original plan -- get a higher score and get into a prestigious engineering school -- falls short again.

The Indian way Bhagat describes -- of doing business, and most everything else -- is one of connections and bribes. Corruption is endemic. So also with the education system, especially the setting up of new colleges. And so, as the corrupt local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Shukla-ji, who partners with Gopal explains to him:

If we had a straightforward and clean system, these professors would open their own colleges. Blue-chip companies and software firms could open colleges. The system is twisted, they don't want to touch it. That is where we come in.

Revolution 2020 does offer many interesting insights into fast-changing contemporary India, especially the educational and business systems. The portrayals of Kota-life or the building of a college from the ground up, in particular, are quite fascinating. Bhagat is on less sure ground with the relationship-aspects of the novel, his leads generally behaving more like petulant teens (especially in breaking off communication when often what they really should be doing is talking things out) than young adults. Gopal is also a somewhat problematic narrator in that he is so shallow -- and apparently completely oblivious to any and all ethical questions, as if he were able to just block them out. Ironically, Gopal is the perfect advertisement for a liberal arts education: he's obviously never had anything like that -- never engaged in even the most cursory way with literature or philosophy -- and, boy, could he have used a big dose of it.

       The love story (or stories) are also somewhat frustrating, Gopal's behavior towards Aarti rarely allowing him to appear to be worthy of her (while we see too little of Raghav to know if he is -- and given her complaints of how little attention he pays to her, there are obviously issues here too). Particularly frustrating, too, is the characters' avoidance of one another at various times: rather than communicate they ignore each other -- even when there are obviously things to discuss. Gopal's final act, determining the final outcome, and their futures, is also entirely staged -- not even a real confrontation, but just a tableau, a faked scene meant to mislead (which it does, just as intended); ridiculously, the characters can't just talk things out, and instead Gopal does something extremely hurtful. (Arguably he is doing a 'good thing' but, again, a proper liberal arts education -- or common sense and decency -- might have allowed him to do so in a less theatrical and brutal way.)

       If the final outcome is vaguely satisfying, with the three central characters on the 'right' path, Revolution 2020 still leaves a bit of a bad taste, specifically because Gopal seems to have so little moral understanding, of anything he has done. Bhagat's characters again show a shallowness that makes even the positive outcome feel almost like happenstance. Both the novel as a whole, and Gopal as a characer, feel teen-age, not adult: the worldview here is a simplistic young-teen one, as is the way relationships are handled and hurt dealt with, as are the grand gestures. The way the world works is presented in a reductionist almost black-and-white way, the characters -- and Bhagat -- refusing to deal with life's complexities in a meaningful (much less thoughtful) way -- life the way a young teen might see it.

       Revolution 2020 does offer enough to make for an engaging read -- though it is the technical aspects, about education, politics, and business (including, incidentally, Aarti's career struggles), that are far more successful than the relationship stories (much less the family ones: Baba, and the land-disputing relatives, serve their brief purposes, but are unceremoniously swept away when Bhagat doesn't have any roles left for them to fill). It makes for a decent (if in some ways annoying) YA novel -- but one wishes Bhagat had allowed his characters to show more growth and eventually some actual maturity.

3, Do you think that an opportunity of a good novel is wasted because the story is told from Gopal's perspective? Can it be better if narrated from Raghav or Aarti's perspective? How would it be better if it was narrated from Raghav or Aarti's perspective? 

The book revolves around three major characters Raghava, Gopal and Aarti. They are childhood friends and want to succeed in their life. However, the deep-rooted corruption turns on the ambition of one who wants to fight against this and another joins hand with the very corruption to make it a staircase to success. But the story loses the track when it just begins to make a progress and the narrative shifted to a classic Chetan Bhagat love story. Both boys Raghava and Gopal are friends and they love the same girl Aarti. As you could have expected it to be, yes, it is a classic deception by Chetan Bhagat who can turn any tragedy into a semi-thriller or a cheap love story which does not offer anything new to the readers rather than hopes and despair and continuous rounding up of this cycle. Revolution 2020 could well be his magnum opus but then, Chetana and the fans of Chetan certainly did not plan it this way! 

Yes, story is wasted from Gopals perspective, Gopal Mishra is a protagonist who you can easily root for, even as his ‘grey shades’ continue to darken as the book progresses. Despite being quite stereotypical, it’s probably this that holds the book together, as all the other characters are quite cardboard.

Yes, it can be good if story narrated by Raghav and Arti's perspective because Raghav Kashyap belonged to an upper-class family. His father was an IITian, and an engineer at BHEL. Raghav himself cracked JEE exam and graduated from BHU- IT. but then he followed his passion of being a social reformer and became a journalist. He became a fearless journalist who went against authority/ power which lead him to lose his job and so he began his private small printing press where he tried to bring the real face of authority and real news to society. In this run of following his passion, he didn't give time to Aarti which created distance in their relationship. He also went against his family for his passion. 

 Raghav expects to convey perfect world inside the general public through influencing the general public to free from tricks, misbehaviours and debasement. He is by all accounts the honest to goodness illustrative of Chetan Bhagat himself. The author seems to energize the more young innovation to ponder thought on country, defilement and mission. The message of the unpredictable is completely clear, that on the off chance that one needs to be a superb person, it isn't important to be an IITian or a scholastic topper. Goodness continually exists in people. In a genuine set up-forefront encounter, Chetan Bhagat goes about as a social portrayer or pundit, featuring the greater issues of the Indian coextensive society.  That's why story was totally change of Raghav and Arti's perspective .  

In the novel Revolution 2020 it is my favorite novel from my Graduation to still now. In my graduation i was read first time in Chetan Bhagat novel so at that time I did not understand the whole idea of that novel. I have read it as a Love story but in during the master I read it as my study novel. so I have totally changed my point of view on this novel.  

so, here I have also put my personal presentation of this novel that I have prepared in the Third year of my college.

Upoload ppt from NidhiDave30