Adam's Writing Portfolio

       In order to answer this question, I want to clarify that this question emphasized the subjective attitude towards his life not anyone else’s attitude. Therefore the solution should be divided into three parts to analyze. The first is the practical contrasts of Babu’s present and past living conditions because the hero’s feeling rises on basic of the practical experiences and this is the fundamental step to figure out his attitude. The second is the analysis of the current situation in India because it would influences the people’s mind strongly. The third part comes with the analysis of Babu’s characters which is crucial element directing human’s mind. Assume an accident faces both an optimistic person and a pessimistic person. As is clear the two go with absolutely different minds. So quite important is to make clear what Babu’s character is like.

First the practical contrasts are presented below:

       In the Paragraph 5 the author mentioned “The first was a footpath of Chittaranjan Avenue.” “Avenue?” It is believed that people who haven’t read this story will wonder, “How can people settle down in the streets?” The truth is that former “house” of Babu is “street”. And the streets were crowded----“The footpath was so crowded with residents, refugees like us and locals” (The Paragraph 5). This sentence indicates not only Babu lived in the streets in the open air but also shared them with others. In contrast to the roof, it was worse.

       After fleeing away from the footpath of Chittaranjan Avenue, Babu and his wife moved into an abandoned-looking freight wagon at the railway terminus. (P57 the top lines) Here the article mentions  Babu’ s thought “A whole wagon to ourselves-a place with doors which could be opened and shut” (P57 Line 2&3), and then tells his activities “we did nothing but open and shut them for a full hour” (P57Line 3&4). Why was he so happy with opening and shutting a door? That’s because no door exists in the place he lived before----more exactly without a shelter place, without a stable residence. Then a cement concrete pipe near the Sealdah railway station appealed to Babu. At that time, “Unfortunately, it was not occupied and, with no prompting from me, she crept into it.” “No prompting” means Babu desired strongly to settle down in that pipe, implying that so low a living condition-cement concrete pipe could cater to his satisfaction. His satisfaction proved that his living place before had not a patch on this cement concrete pipe, Saying nothing of his place----building roof with more room and better ventilation later on.
In addition, there is another emotional contrast I want to present----a proof of the transformation of the hero’s feeling condition. The 3^rd line in the last paragraph says “We have no fears and anxieties.” I think this is the most important element which satisfies Babu. It is human nature that everyone fears uncertainty most. Uncertainty makes people’s prospects unclear so no one knows what will happen in the next second and at this time the human broad imagination begins to work. Imagination creates a lot of things to happen and those things are always duplicates of the most disastrous experiences people have suffered. Later on in this story, Babu has got certainty, so he would enjoy his present life.

    The contrasts among different situations above are effective in providing evidence to support this view “The later-on roof was better than Babu’s past residences”. The factual evidences help prove “Babu enjoyed his life at present”.

    The second step is analyzing the current society in India at the time when this story happened. The sentence “…if you got up at night to relieve yourself you could not be sure of finding your place again…” ironically pictured such an image----a lot of people slept on the streets, overlapping each other. We can see through this there were masses of poor in India, and what’s more, these people suffered from very bad situations such as no individual living space. They occupied a large proportion of the population in India. The writer mentioned “Our fourth child. One died of diphtheria back home in Decca; two, from fatigue, on our long trek on foot to Calcutta.”(4^th paragraph in Page 57) The Babu’s children’s destiny symbolized poor Indians’ children. They had no health care and suffered bad nutrition, endangered by a high death rate. The author said on behalf of Babu that “We eat two square meals of grass every day” in an optimistic accent in the end. (P59 Line8) That expresses the happiness of the character at that time-they have staple grass meals. Of course it is square meal for in that society most people like Bijoy Babu (the person living bellow Ajit Babu) who have even no grass to eat so that he created a theory that “…if you reduce your consumption of food by five grams each day, you will not only not notice that you are eating less but after some time you can do without any food at all.”(The last paragraph in Page 58) Apparently, the pseudoscience can’t make sense. That resulted in his tottering. Babu’s “theory” can only cheat his stomach. The prospect for this poor guy ought to be starvation. This indicates a lot suffered inadequate food supply and starvation. The above mentioned uncovered the awfulness in Indian current society. In a bad macro circumstance, little people would have excessive requirements. So Babu must be very pleasant with his present condition--stable residence and enough room, two square meals of grass guaranteed. So he enjoys his current life.