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1) Talking about Punjab region/religion/culture
- One of the things that called my attention while I was reading
the story was the
religion of the characters. It is said theyre Muslims (and
therere some
references to Allah as the story is going on), however I had the
impression they
were Hindus, for example boys Father assumes the weak bird has
to die because
it was its sin and a man cannot change it. Another sign of the
Hindu religion is
the opinion of not desiring things. So I looked up in the
Wikipedia about the
Punjabi culture and I founded the Muslim religion is only
followed for the 2% of
the Punjab population, being the Sikhs and Hindus the
predominant religion.
- Reading more about Punjabis, I have learnt its the second more
spoken
language in England and the 11th
more spoken in the world.
- And the latest thing Ive learnt about that region and about
India is the national
bird is the peacock (it appears in the story, is one of the farm
animals)
2) Talking about racisms
- One of the topics treated in the story is the racism in
Australia. I knew about the
racism of Australian white people towards aboriginal people, but
I didnt know
about the racism towards the Indian people. For that reason I
looked that topic
up on the internet and I found there were racism attacks towards
Indians in
Melbourne in 2009. Some Indian students were bashed and robbed
in train in
front of lots of passenger who did nothing to avoid the attack.
This crime brings
to my mind a similar racism attack happened in Spain. It was
some years ago in
a tube wagon in Barcelona, when a boy attacked a South American
girl sitting
there. The crime was recorded by the security camera of the
wagon, and it was
shown the other passengers looked to another place instead of
helping that girl.
- I remember this new was widely spread by the mass media and
some experts in
social behavior explained, no one help the girl because they
were afraid of the
boys reaction, and passengers were waiting someone else helped
the girl first.
- Maybe we can discuss now about racism (if you know any similar
case). I think
practically all the stories in the book treat the topic of
Indian racism in
Australia. Quite probably the authors suffer it when they were
young.
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3) Talking about the main characters (the boy)
- After reading the book I started thinking about the boys and I
get to the
conclusion they never had been at school. I have that opinion
from the fight with
the white children. As the narrator says the young boy (Lal) was
happy to see
the white children because hehad growth in a world of women and
he had no
friends. His only friend was the cat and the Rusilla. For that
reason I suppose
children never had been at school, and this fact is another
version of racism.
