Ls.5 The Open Window -Saki – summary

Ls.5 The Open Window    -Saki

INTRODUCTION:

 The open window is written by Saki(1870-1916). Saki is the pen-name of Hector Hugh Munro, a famous short stories and novels writer born in Scotland. ‘The Open Window’ is a short story that makes intensely interesting reading. It presents to us a very self possessed young lady of fifteen whose speciality is ‘mischief and framing tale at short notice’. Mr Nuttel who was supposed to be undergoing nerve-cure was terribly frightened by her story. The element of horror fades away, leading to a pleasant surprise at the end.

CONTENT:

Framton Nuttel, an eccentric (strange) hypochondriac (a person who is always worried about his health and belives he is ill even though he is alright), has moved to the country on his doctor’s advice to effect a cure for a nervous condition from which he was suffering. His sister has lived in the area he visits and has given him letters of introduction to his new neighbors. The story concerns his visit to the home of one of these neighbors, Mrs. Sappleton.

Mr. Nuttel first meets Mrs. Sappleton’s niece Vera, who entertains him until her aunt is available. She deceived him by telling false story about her aunt. She told him that her aunt’s husband and her two brothers had gone out with their dog for hunting three years ago and never came back and they are dead .  The aunt was driven to distraction by her grief and loss, left the window open thereafter, anticipating that “they will come back some day” with “the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in that window just as they used to do.” She told the story in such a way that Framton believed it.

When Mrs. Sappleton comes to Mr. Nuttel she explains why she kept the window open, apparently confirming Vera’s story. He gives  horrible expression when Mrs. Sappleton said that her husband and brothers would be home soon from the shooting. To avoid that horrifying discussion  Mr. Nuttel then tells Mrs. Sappleton about his nervous disorder and his need to avoid any “mental excitement.” At that very moment Mrs. Sappleton sees her husband and brothers returning from their hunt. Veera was a good actor, she appears to be horrified by the sight of them. The nervous Mr. Nuttel is therefore terrified and believed them to be ghost and without waiting even a second he dashed outside the house.

Spinning another tale, Vera explains to the newly arrived hunting party and her aunt that Mr. Framton fled when he saw the brown spaniel because of his severe fear of dogs.

CONCLUSION:

This story shows Veera’s remarkable ability to create convincing fiction, instantly and crack practical jokes. She was very clever, resourceful and naughty. She was very good fabricator.

Ls.4. The Price of Flowers – Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay (Lila Ray) summary

Ls 4. The Price of Flowers – Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay

summary

INTRODUCTION:

The Price of Flowers is a short story which is written by Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay. It was written in Bengali and it has been translated into English by Lila Ray. The Price of Flowers is a touching story by Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadyay. The story was set in London during the pre independence era. In this story Mukhopadhyay had portrayed the life of a poor English family. Mr.Gupta is the narrator of this short story who was an Indian civil servant undergoing training in London.

CONTENT:

Gupta was an Indian living in London. Once he met an English girl in a vegetarian restaurant. Her name was Alcie Margaret Clifford. She was called Maggie. She was thirteen years old. She was working as a typist in a nearby office. She belonged to a poor family. She wanted to know if Gupta was an Indian. Her brother Frank was in Military service in India. Mrs Clifford, Maggie’s mother thinks that India was a land of tigers, snakes and fevers. So her mother was worried about her son.

Mr Gupta meets a teenaged girl in a restaurant.  Her interest in him arouses his curiosity.  He later becomes friends with her and learns her story.  She lives with her widowed mother in a poor neighbourhood.  Her only brother Frank is in India serving the British army.  They have no information from him for several months and they are worried.
When Mr.Gupta visited their home, Mrs.Clifford requests him to look into the crystal of a ring sent by Frank from India.  They believed that the ring has magical powers and a Hindu will be able to see the future and predicts if he concentrates on the crystal.  Mr Gupta tries but fails.  This disappoints her.

Later Mrs Clifford falls ill.  Maggie requests him to come home and look once again into the crystal and tell her mother that Frank is alright.  As this would help her to recover, he agrees to tell this harmless lie.  But by the time he tells this, Frank was already dead.  Later Gupta comes to know that Frank had died in the war. Gupta feels very sad. Then in the morning of his last day in London, Maggie came to see him. He was packing up things. She gave him a shilling to buy flowers and place them on her brother’s grave in Punjab and bid farewell to each other.

Conclusion:

The story is a really touching one.  The one shilling that Maggie gives him is hard earned money.  At first Mr Gupta thinks of returning it.   But later he decides to take it as he does not want to deny her this joy of sacrifice.  What is the price of those flowers?  It is not certainly one shilling.  The flowers are priceless when we consider Maggie’s feelings towards her brother.  So the title of the story is an apt one. The story opens and ends with the meeting between Mr Gupta and Maggie.

Lesson-3. Princess September – E.Somerset Maugham summary

Lesson-3.  Princess September    –         E.Somerset Maugham      

summary

INTRODUCTION:

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) holds a unique place among the English writers of this century as an entertainer. He wrote novels, plays and short stories and delighted his readers in every form of his art.  Princess September is a delightful fairy tale. It is a short of fantasy, identity, jealousy, resentment, freedom, trust, control and innocence.  It is a story of the girl, the  youngest of nine sisters to the king of Siam.

CONTENT

The King of Siam had nine daughters named after the months of the year. The youngest daughter named September had a very pleasing personality. Her other sisters were all of sullen nature. One year on his birthday the King gave each of his daughters a beautiful green parrot in a golden cage. The parrots shortly learnt to speak. Unfortunately, the parrot of Princess September died. She was heartbroken.

Presently a little bird bounded into her room and sang a lovely song about the king’s garden, the willow tree and the goldfish. The princess was thrilled. The bird decided to stay with her and sing her beautiful songs. When the princesses’ sisters became jealous when they came top know of the sweet bird that sang better than their parrots. The malicious sisters urged Princess September to put the bird in a cage.

The innocent princess put the bird into a cage. The bird was bewildered but the princess justified caging the bird as she was afraid of the lurking cats. When the bird tried to sing, it had to stop midway as it felt wretched in the cage. The next morning the bird asked Princess September to release her from the cage, she did not listen to it. Instead she assured the bird that it would have three meals a day and nothing to worry all day. The bird was not happy with it and pleaded to let it out from the cage. September try to console the bird saying that she had caged the bird because of her love for it. The distraught bird did not sing the whole day and stopped eating its food.

The next morning the princess noticed the bird lying in the cage still. Thinking that the bird was dead, she started weeping. Then the bird rose and told the princess that t could not sing unless it was free and if it could not sing it would die. Taking pity on the bird, the kind princess released the bird. The bird flew away. Yet, it returned to enchant the princess with its sweet songs. The princess kept her windows open day and night for the bird to come and go whenever it wanted.

With time, September grew up to be a paragon of beauty. Her youth was exuberant. At the right age, she was married to the King of Cambodia. On the contrary, the eight sisters became uglier and uglier with time. They had never slept with their windows open. They were given away to the councilors with a pound of tea and a Siamese cat. Their wicked minds drove them to such disgrace.

Conclusion:

In the story Maugham is suggesting us that if a person do good things, then they live happily as the Princess September lived after marring the king. Good things will happen to a Good person. By keeping the window open she has learnt the importance of freedom and what freedom means. Thus she could learn many important lessons of life from that bird. Maugham has also shown us the other side of the ugliness of people through Princess September’s sisters who lived their life controlling their environment and driven by jealousy. Thus, couldn’t achieve much in their life.

“God Bless the good and Curse the bad!”

Ls 2. The Postmaster – Rabindranath Tagore, summary

Ls 2. The Postmaster – Rabindranath Tagore,

summary

 

INTRODUCTION:

“The Postmaster,” a story by Rabindranath Tagore,( 1861-1941) a gifted Indian writer and thinker, achieved a world-wide reputation when he as awarded the Nobel Prize. The Postmaster is a story of a city-bred young man forced to live in a remote village. Necessity drove him to spend his evenings in the company of a simple orphan girl Ratan.

CONTENT:

The Postmaster short story is about an unnamed postmaster who was transfered to a remote post office in a small rural Indian village. The village was near a factory, and the owner of the factory where Englishmen. The postmaster was from the huge city of Calcutta and feels out of place in such a distant rural village. The post office seems to contain only two rooms: the office itself, and the postmaster’s living quarters made of “thatched shed” near a stagnant pond circled by thick foliage.

The workers in the nearby factory were so much busy with their work that they have no time to make friendship with anyone. Besides, they were not good company for “decent folk.” In addition, people from Calcutta were not particularly good at socializing. They appear to be arrogant or uncomfortable. In any case, the postmaster had few companions, and he does not have many activities to keep him occupied.

Occasionally he tried to write a bit of poetry. The rural landscape have inspired the kind of happy poetry he sought to compose. But the postmaster is uninterested in the landscape and would be happy if it were replaced by a paved road and numerous tall buildings. His salary was not great; so, he had to cook his own food and would share his suppers with Ratan – an orphan girl of the village. She did odd jobs for the Postmaster.  In the evening, when the village was filled with appealing sights and sounds, the postmaster lights his lamp and called for Ratan.

Ratan, who has been waiting for the nightly call, typically asks whether she has indeed been called. She then routinely lights the fire needed for cooking. The postmaster tells her to wait till he smoke his pipe, which Ratan always lights for him. The postmaster used to talk with Ratan while smoking. He asked Ratan about her early life which She loved to share with him . The postmaster himself recalls his home, his mother and sister and discuss about them with Ratan.

She used to call the Postmaster “Dada” meaning ‘elder brother’. She obeyed her master. The postmaster taught her how to read. Ratan begins to learn about double consonants. They develop a bond of trust and friendship. They have meals together and Ratan runs small errands for the postmaster.

One day, postmaster falls ill due to the showers of the season. Ratan took care of him like a mother when he was sick. She sat beside him the whole night during the time until he was cured completely. The Postmaster decided to apply for a transfer back to Calcutta. His application for transfer gets rejected, thus he resigns from the job.

 

 

Finally the time came when our postmaster decided to return to his city. Ratan was deeply hurt but didn’t express it. She asked him to take her with him to his city. He laughed at her request. While leaving he offered her his entire salary but Ratan denied it and ran away crying. The kind gesture made her cry! She wandered about the post office with tears trickling down her cheeks. Poor Ratan! Her affection was not reciprocated. At the end, Ratan gets heart-broken to know that her master left her forever.

CONCLUSION:

This short story was full of pathos and moves the readers to tears.  This story shows the difficulties which a city person faces when migrate to the remote place and the life of an orphan girl Ratan whose life is full of numberless meetings and partings. She knew no philosophy of life. Her fondness for the postmaster may be regarded as a one sided affection of a thirteen year old girl which indeed was selfless and innocent.

A woman’s heart is indeed difficult to understand!

Ls 1. The Doctor’s World Summary -R.K. Narayan

Ls 1. The Doctor’s World  –        R.K. Narayan

Summary

INTRODUCTION:

The Doctor’s Word, is a short story from the collection of  “Malgudi Days” by R K Narayan  published in 1943. In “The Doctor’s Word” R.K.Narayan tells the story how a doctor’s word save the life of a patient, that’s very reason his opinion was valued; he was not a mere doctor expressing an opinion , but a judge pronouncing a verdict.”

CONTENT:

Dr. Raman was an experienced doctor. He spoke plainly and always spoke the truth. So, his pronouncement held in high esteem. Gopal was the dearest friend of Dr. Raman. They had been friends for 40 years. They spent their time in dinning, seeing  pictures and talking. Their friendship was not at all affected by chang of time.

One day Dr.Raman was informed that Gopal was ill. He went to Gopal’s house. Gopal was lying on the bed as if asleep. Dr.Raman examined him and gave necessary treatment. He is exceptionally fond of him and scolds Gopal’s family for not notifying him earlier about Gopal’s illness. He was worried about his friend’s life and he had no hope of saving his life.

The patient asked the doctor about his condition He wanted to sign the will and settled the property before he dies to avoid the “endless misery for his wife and children”.   If Dr. Raman reveals his pessimistic opinion, that Gopal will not survive the night, then it would “virtually mean a death sentence and destroy the thousandth part of a chance that the patient had of survival.” So, Dr. Raman decided to tell a lie. For the first time in life, he told his patient a lie. He informed Gopal that he would live for long time. Gopal was relieved to hear this information. The next morning the doctor was surprised to find Gopal alive with study pulse. How the patient survives would be a puzzle to him all his life.

 

CONCLUSION:

Throughout the story Dr. Raman’s genuine concern for Gopal was seen. The concern was not only with professional ethics but also with the tension that often arrives when personal ethics and professional ethics intersect. It is clear that Dr. Raman violates his usual practice of truth-telling so as to save the life of his friend ‘Gopal’. Dr. Raman still remained a man of his word though he does remain puzzled as how Gopal has survived.

 

“Human life is more important than the Science.”