Reading Journal 02, done by 蔡宗桓

English Reading Journal-2

Book Title: Real Time- Stories and Reminiscence

Author: Chaudhuri, Amit

Publishing company: Picador

Year of Publishing: 2003

Number of pages: 183

Student: Chung-Huan (Allen), Tsai

49677007

During the week, I have been focus on the second story out of fifteen of the book, The Man from Kurda District. Kurta is a place where most people work as farmers and gained less salary compared to the people in the large city, like Calcutta. The main character of the story, Bishu, was originated from Kuta district and moved to Calcutta to find a better life after the path of his older brother, Medja, who worked as a helper of a cook. However, he still gained less income, sometimes even expenditure, at the job as a sweeper. In addition, he was not fluent in Bengali, which was mainly spoken in Calcutta, which let people show no respect to him. To conclude, we realized that problems faced from the people came from countryside to cities in India was that they are not respected and still cannot get themselves to a higher social-class level.

Even though most people might not get themselves better lives in large cities, but these who used to work in farmlands still eagerly came to these cities. In the story, the older brother, Medja, had taken the first step to the city and did not succeed well; however, Bishu still followed the step of his older brother. Even more, Medja and Bishu even tried to send their younger brother to the city. For me, whose parents is the first generation of the city immigrants, can find the clue out of my parents' experiences. My parents from Kinmen, a small island near to Fukin Province once recalled "it is our dream to come to Taipei to have a better life , and we hope to raise our children in a place full with more chances." And I continuously asked them whether we feared of the big difference of the city and the unknown of the future. They said they, of course, were afraid of not finding jobs and being discriminated by people born in Taipei, some reasons forced them to seek a different life cause they don't want to be farmers and City, this word, equals to Opportunity .

So I think maybe that's the reason why Bishu and all other countryside people want to move to cities. Opportunity is the answer！Although most of these people did not succeed in big cities in India, they all bring to cities by hope. Or maybe that's the human nature to hope to make a change of their used and dull life

At this time of reading, by the technique of using margin note, I can get more out of book. However, some words are really new to me cause I have no good foundation good Hindu culture, but I try not to use the dictionary and find context clues. And I do enjoy more in reading than at last time.