| Title | : | Coolie |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0140186808 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780140186802 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 282 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1936 |
Coolie Reviews
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Munnoo, the memorable character of Coolie remains even if you have finished the book..A book which shows the face of the "OTHER" India during the pre-partition period.... Also, it correctly shows the actual caste system of India, not the Rajputs, Vaishyas, Shudras, Brahmans But RICH & POOR....
With enough money one can make even the most hard nosed orthodox people their friends....The book also shows the Britishers during the tumultuous time of pre-partition...How communism & trade unionism was on rise, how they despised Gandhi & how they might have stoked the great Hindu-Islam divide in India....
The book correctly establishes Mulk Raj Anand as one of the most foremost of English novelists from India probably ranking along with Nirad C. Chaudari, Rabindranath Tagore, Michael Madhusudan Dutt and others...
I would rate this book among the best which i have read....5/5 -
For book lovers from India, there are some few writers who are must read for them considering the kind of role the writers have played in Indian writing over the decades and also considering the quality of their writings. Rabindranath Tagore, R.K. Narayan, Kamala Markandeya are a few of the names that comes to my mind. Add to that the name of Mulk Raj Anand, one of the finest writers of India. His book "Coolie" is a seminal book in Indian literature. Coolie depicts the life of an young boy who dreams of a life in the hills, but is forced to travel out of his village to earn a living as a domestic help, porter, factory worker & rickshaw driver which is basically foot rickshaw. There are pages filled with poverty, filth, loss of dignity, abuse by employers, calling of names in the sense that the early pages of the book is one unending story of depression following deprivation. But slowly the beauty of Mulk Raj Anand emerges in the way he surreptitiously heaps scorn on the ruling polticial class of that time - the Britishers and their cahoots in pre-Independence India. It is an absolutely savage book on par with Kamala Markandeya's "Nectar in a Sieve". The final pages of the book guts you like a sledge hammer. Absolutely highly recommended must read by every Indian book lover.
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Anyone who is willing to look at the lives of the majority of mankind needs to read this story.this living tale will fill the reader with the way the poor since birth live and the way they disappear with little concern by the other human beings. the wrath, insults,humiliation, great rage, fatalism, blind faith on god, the mental slavery defines the workers life. The visual depiction of the coolies as sweating, dusty bodies, the factory as a dark dungeon , of big cities , rich elites, pavements is striking and occupies a corner in your mind. I think the current situation for the worker is not different from the one mentioned by Anand.
Kindly read this heart wrenching , brutally direct journey of Munoo,the coolie. -
Mulk Raj Anand, Peshawar 1905-2004 !
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND.
This book "written 1935 in London; revised 1971 in Sukhrali, Gurgaon, Haryana, India", published 1972.
[Another of his novels is "Untouchable", publ. 1935.]
Munoo is an orphan [cared for by an aunt who resents doing it] in a hill-country village KANGRA in "the north" i.e. Punjab. His parents died of grief after landlord seized their land, leaving them destitute.
We follow his journeys and different forms of horrifying "coolie" employment for one year, until Munoo dies of consumption at age 15. Heart rending, yet I believe it must be very very accurately described, and so we can learn a lot from this book.
"A study in destitution"
"India seen third-class"
"Anand's social angers"
Seems to me the author wants to show us the real-life suffering of the masses of working Indians, and the details of their severe exploitation by fellow Indians [and occasionally by English colonials] - by moneylenders, shopkeepers, factory owners, overseers.
There are bits of humor and lots of bits of human compassion in between all the cruelty.
Half the novel is in Bombay, where Northerners [like Munoo] seek out each other and share each other's poverty.
Two friends Munoo makes [in Bombay and later in Simla] are labor union organizers, giving the author a chance to show something of this aspect. We see English and Parthans and factory owners agreeing to brutally suppress the union movement.
We see the deeply engrained submissiveness of nearly all the lower classes, never demanding but rather begging for a living wage, asking for pity, but never asserting their rights.
Munoo is intelligent and had 5 years of school, so can read and write, and he tries to discuss things reasonably. But the result is not much different.
The author assigns Munoo to the 2nd highest caste by birth [Kashtrya] presumably so we cannot blame his low caste for his ill treatment.
One incident:
Someone in a crowd shouts that a child has been kidnapped, another shouts it was done by Muslims, so the Hindu crowd goes on a rampage killing Muslims. And vice versa.
Intro by Saros Cowasjee:
"Anand is a political novelist: he sees his characters and their actions in relation to India, and often in relation to the world outside India."
Anand shows good-hearted [as well as evil-acting] people of all classes and colors, i.e. "the blame is not put squarely on the Whites or the Browns". -
I remember this as being incredibly sad and painful to read. Munoo, the protagonist, lives a tortured life.
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After completing this book, I placed Mulk Raj Anand among my favorite Indian writers in English. Coolie invokes a myriad of emotions, the greatest among them being humility and thankfulness for all the luxuries that god has bestowed upon us. For Munoo the future was bleak and uncertain, and education a far cry. Just at the cusp of boyhood, Munoo was sent away to work as a servant in the house of a rich baboo. He admires the baboo's children who go to school. He wonders at the 'Memsahibs' and 'Marchants' who spend all the money they have to dress up and go to party to meet people whom they don't like to meet. I too believe that charity is what comes when one is done with his responsibilities towards one's kins, or who tries to happily shirk that duty. There is no love among the rich, only false pretenses and greed. It is the poor who love unconditionally. Just like the poor beggar sharing his scanty meal with his beloved dog. This book also reminds us of the sweat and toil of innumerable coolies, upon whose hardwork the nation is built.
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lover of your sister - translitterations galore - could be forgiven considering Mr Anand lived in an era where English was still considered a province of the WASP Anglo-Saxon and the vernacular pride hadn't evolved beyond the general pride resulting from the freedom struggle.
In today's environs much of the nativity would have found it's way into the text directly, instead of the seemingly apologetic trans-litteration that litters this book. Detracts to an extent from the prose.
Nor is the makeup or development of Munnoo the coolie explored in much depth. Promising. Disappointing. -
An educational and interesting look into colonial India of the 1930s. Fascinating to see what has changed in today's India, and most importantly what has not. Recommended.
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A raw depiction of the poverty and condition of child labour as well as other labour classes during pre-independence era. Although the country is independent now, the condition is not much different than what it used to be.
While reading that book, I realised that even today many of the labourers are getting less than minimal wages and working in harsh conditions. Many of them still have their daily wages as low as the price of the book I was reading. The conditions have changed but the social class of wealth and caste is still their, replaced by new pallbearers instead of the previous ones.
The lively spirit of our protagonist Munoo is simply infectious. I found myself in high spirited just by the simple pleasures he enjoyed while leaving in apex poverty. The story begins and ends with a child's point of view along with omniscient description about other situations that went unnoticed by the child, unknown to the atrocities of the world, even though he has been witnessing one since his childhood. The hope in the characters mind seeps through the pages.
A must read book if I must say. -
History Fiction has always been a love for me. Reading about the lives of people at the time of Independence and somehow connecting it with the stories of our parents and grandparents is one of my favorite things to do. Author has however done justice on his work of displaying Munoo's life as a young "fifth pass" boy who aspired to become like one of the "babus" or "sahibs" who wore English suits and had a luxurious life. In his journey from hills to Bombay and then to Simla, Munoo experienced everything. Being surrounded by 100s of people and still feeling so alone, this story made me realize that the life of an orphan is never easy. In this journey which consisted all the emotions from pain, sympathy, happiness and adventures I loved this book thoroughly.
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Anand paints a world in the colours of Hardy or Chekov. The book is a tragedy but is far from being stark, dark. Rather, it is filled with colour and emotion, seen through a child's fresh eyes, where the emerging world is filled with wonder and promise. Munoo, the young coolie boy, and all his well wishers who he meets along the way, live a life of need. Theirs is a world of exploitation, of societal cruelties, and structural rigidities that keep them mired in their circumstances. And in that world of sweat and blood, Munoo, in his innocent youth aspires, reaches, hopes, loves, and blushes, often unaware of the depth and complexities of the apathy and injustice around him. You feel like reaching into the story and pulling him out of his circumstances. The author moves him from place to place, and in search for peace and safety, Anand presents the evils of the caste system, the British raj, and unrestrained Capitalism. The book's message, indicative of Anand's era, is still true today, despite its historical setting. That the world is divided into "Have's" and "Have-not's" is a fact. And for those who have not, their needs are sidelined and their persons are mistreated. And it is among the poorest, that people draw strength from each other in comradeship. A good book.
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This novel effectively depicts the sufferings of labourers through the story of Munoo, the protagonist. Munoo, an orphan brought up by his uncle begins the journey of his life from his village and going through many places say various stages of miseries, dies of consumption in the end. The portrayal is so realistic that it gives one a true picture of the conditions the workers live in - the depiction of nauseating surroundings, dirty lanes, labourers relieving in the open fields etc. The story of the novel covers many dark aspects like voluptuousness, communalism, hypocrisy, misuse of religion etc. Activities of the characters are so naturally depicted that they seem to be materialized. As for language, the dialogues are quite appropriate considering the characters. They make the narration even more natural.Summing up, Coolie is an excellent depiction of the troubles faced by the exploited working class.
Source:
http://www.shvoong.com/books/469213-c... -
As you probably know, Anand was an Indian who lived for roughly the entire 20th century and gained an international reputation for his bleakly realist social commentary novels written in English. This is his second of five novels.
Although his usual biography states that he was moved to write by the inequities of the Indian caste system (his first novel was called Untouchable), it strikes me that his communist engagement in the 30s and 40s causes him at times to more broadly characterize the problem simply as the oppression of the poor by the rich. Certainly the subtleties of the caste system are somewhat lost on the early adolescent rural protagonist here who finds himself systematically exploited by anyone with a crumb more power or money than he has (which is just about everyone). -
This is not a 'feel-good' read, but it is fascinating and well-written.
It is a heart-rending description of a young boy's suffering as he moves from one place to another in India in search of work and shelter.
It may be an unfair criticism but when I read this book as well as
Untouchable, I felt that the Indian author, who had received his university education in England, was writing for an English audience rather than for Indians. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this, but I felt that I was reading an English author rather than an Indian one. -
After reading RK Narayan's novel, I became accustomed to the slow paced books. Yet another book of the similar type, Coolie, was also from my college library. Mulk Raj Anand is simply superb in creating such an image where it sometimes makes us hate life. I was literally living with the characters when I read the book. Their sufferings, and the arrogance of those with money all were not just written, but painted. Yeah, this one's a good book.
Verdict: A nice book to read, though you might wanna collect some patience for reading slow pace books. -
of all Indian authors, i love Mulk Raj Anand the best. it shows the pre-independence India from an Indian perspective. most british authors revile or pity at being Indian. but Mulk does it the other way around. he sees the Indian way of life and its hardships and its boundaries. a sad ending to this book. a story of the still continuing saga of child labor, exploitation and abuse in India and its lack of security for the poor.
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Coolie portrays the adventures of a young sixteen year old boy Munoo. Munoo, at best, is like a universal figure who represents a passion not only for India but also the human race. The story of Coolie is a fight for basic survival that shines through with a raw sense of urgency while also highlighting the grim fate of the masses in a pre-partition India. Mulk Raj Anand's picture of Munoo is real, comprehensive and subtle.
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In this book, Mulk Raj Anand establishes himself as the Indian Charles Dickens. In a very Dickensian plot, a young man is ripped from the stable, clean and yet smothering world of rural poverty and deposited in the volatile, grimy and explosive world of urban poverty. Munnoo, or Coolie, as he comes to be known never gets his deliverance like either Oliver Twist or Pip, however. That is the difference between economical inequities created by industrialisation and those created by colonialism.
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Anand hung out with the cool kids of Bloomsbury for some years before snubbing that scene. Interestingly, he consciously imitated Joyce's Portrait and envisioned himself as a Stephen/Joyce figure forging the consciousness of India in the smithy of his soul. Untouchable and Coolie are terrific reads and offer very interesting commentary on Indian gender/caste constructions.
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Couldn't finish reading this book.
After Mulk Raj Anand's 'Untouchable', I had very high expectations set with this one. Read half way through but couldn't push my self further.
The book isn't unworthy but keeps a pace too slow to have me reading. -
An interesting read. Initially started to read for the college assignment purpose, but then was intrigued by the young character's trials and harships and his hard life. What a vivid picture potrayed by the author. Didnt know India did have such gems of a writer...
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading Coolie. M.R. Anand sahib detailed the landscape, scenes very well. I went back to the time of story and envisioned myself amongst all the characters. It soaked me completely. Loved it.
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creates a memorable character Munoo, through him we look into the plight of the poor in the British times. The novel also gives a glimpse into the lives of the Britishers, different from the stereotypical images we have been receiving through Bollywood movies all the time.
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Exceptionally well written and told by mulk raj anand. Great to read.
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Probably the first Indian author to write about the dark spots of the Indian society during the pre-independence staqge in such a elaborate and fancied manner.
