The movie “Gandhi” deals with biographical potrait of Gandhi. It was published in 1982.

The whole story starts with the following scene: the young student Mohandas K. Gandhi is directly confronted with racism and descrimination as he gets thrown out of a train after taking seat in the first class. After that incident he’s aware of the lack of equality between prevailing cultures and wants change.

I wouldn’t say there’s a explicit climax in the plot. In my opinion it was a succession of various important events that made Gandhi the person he used to be. Although many ups and downs, there seems to be no change with his personality, he’s like a constant in an mathematic term.

Just with his believes and speeches he’s able to guide a whole country to protest and non-violent-resistance – and at least – is able to liberate India England’s imperalistic control.

pp. 147-149

• Comment on the Nawab’s attitude to Olivia’s baby.

• Explain Olivia’s decision to have an abortion.

• What role does Harry play in this section, and what do we learn about this character?

//comment

//Olivia’s decision

Olivia seems to be alarmed about her baby’s birth. By thinking about an abortion, one thing becomes clear: she doesn’t want to offend Douglas’ feelings towards her. She continues reporting about Douglas making plans and arrangements for the ‘great’ day, about him romancing and so on – but in the aftermath she beseechs Harry to help her.

//”What about Harry?”

In this section, several characteristic traits of Harry become are conveyed. He’s in a quite bad mood -

“The resulting air of sadness matched Harry’s mood. (p. 147, l.25)“

so the whole situation seems to affect him deeply.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE (born May 7, 1927) is a Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer, and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant. Their films won six Academy Awards.

Personal background

She was born Ruth Prawer in Cologne, Germany to Marcus (who was Polish-Jewish) and Eleanora Prawer (who was German Jewish); Her father, Marcus, was a lawyer from Poland and her mother Eleanora’s father was cantor of Cologne’s biggest synagogue.^[1] The family fled the Nazis in 1939, emigrating to Britain. Her elder brother, Siegbert, is emeritus professor of German at the University of Oxford, an expert on Heine and horror films.

During World War II she lived in Hendon in London, experienced the Blitz and began to speak English rather than German. She became a British citizen in 1948. She received her MA in English literature from Queen Mary College, University of London in 1951. She also married Cyrus H. Jhabvala, an Indian Parsi architect, in 1951.

The couple moved to New Delhi, India, in 1951 and they had three daughters: Ava, Firoza and Renana. Her three daughters are living all around the world: in India, in Los Angeles and in England. In 1975 Jhabvala moved to New York and divided her time between India and the United States. In 1986, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Literary career

While living in India during the 1950s, Jhabvala began to write novels about her new life there: To Whom She Will (1955), Nature of Passion (1956), Esmond in India (1957), The Householder (1960) and Get Ready for the Battle (1962). Her literary output would be steady and of a consistently high quality (see below).

Her early comedies drew comparisons with Jane Austen, in their anatomy of power within westernised, extended families, or the slow growth of love in arranged marriages. She found affinities with Jewish culture in an emphasis on family and humour.

She wrote to 20 publishers in London, who “all wrote back”, and soon joined John Murray, her UK publisher for four decades. After she found a US agent in the 1950s, many of her short stories appeared first in the New Yorker.

Her view of India is different than that of Naipaul or E. M. Forster. Jhabvala, unlike Naipaul, wasn’t drawn to India by ancestry or, as in Forster’s case, by a desire to move beyond a complacent Western liberalism. She was in Delhi, as she wrote, only because her husband was there, and she was interested not in India but in herself in India. In any case, what matters is that she managed to transmute her personal experience, however narrow, into art.^[2] Often her stories are seen from the point of view of an outsider. Some Indian critics have labelled her authorial detachment as a sign of old-fashioned Western attitudes toward India.^[3]

In 1975, she won the Booker Prize, the most prestigious literary award for the English language in the Commonwealth, for her novel Heat and Dust.

Merchant Ivory Productions

In 1963, Jhabvala was approached by filmmakers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant to write a screenplay of her 1960 novel The Householder. The film, The Householder, was released by Merchant Ivory Productions in 1963 — this began a partnership that would produce over 20 films. She had no previous film making experience.

The next Merchant-Ivory project Shakespeare Wallah (1965), was a critical success, and it was followed by a number of other collaborations between the three, including an adaptation of Jhabvala’s novel Heat and Dust, (1983); A Room with a View (1985), for which she won her first Oscar; Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990); Howards End (1992), her second Oscar win; and The Remains of the Day (1993), for which she was nominated for a third Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, though she did not win. Her screenplays are often less comedies of manners than profound struggles over the souls of young women.

>>> Of this collaboration, Ismail Merchant once commented: “It is a strange marriage we have at Merchant Ivory…I am an Indian Muslim, Ruth is a German Jew, and Jim is a Protestant American. Someone once described us as a three-headed god. Maybe they should have called us a three-headed monster!” [1].

Ismail Merchant died in 2005, of complications resulting from a stomach ulcer.

Jhabvala’s next screenplay is The City of Your Final Destination (2008), based on the novel of the same name by Peter Cameron.

taken and slightly modified from Wikipedia

Task I: characteristical ‘table’ of persons (basing on diary-entry no. 1)

narrator

//appearance

//state of mind

• careful: is very concerned about thieves

//background

• just arrived in Bombay/India
• comes from England: “of course I’m still on English time”
• lives in the women’s dormitory of the ‘Society Of Missionaries’ hostel

//aims & wishes

“neighbour-woman” in the dormitory

//appearance

• looks like a ghost
• “tied her hair in one dropping plait”
• “paper-white” & “vaporous” & “thin”

//state of mind

• hates Indian food: “I wouldn’t touch it for anything”
• lost hope

//background

• has been in India for 30 years
• quite christian views and mentality

//aims & wishes

Miss Tietz

//appearance

//state of mind

//background

• Swiss
• camewith the Christian Sisterhood to India
• looking after ‘Society Of Missionaries’ hostel for about ten years
• looking after the kitchen

//aims & wishes

Task II: short biography of the unkempt European

My name is Lars Fall, I’m from Finnland, spend my youth-time in a little province near Helsinki. In the age of 22 I started studying medicine in Helsinki. I guess I never was someone ’special’, everybody wanted to be with. I did the normal things – things just everybody did: having a good time, evolving oneself and being interested in the world.

And then that one day came. The day, I heard about the great appeal on doctors, to board the ship to the ‘glorious India’. ‘Glorious India’ – European trained men are yet rare in this country. This was my chance! – at least I thought so back this time. So I finished my last year at the university, abandonned my ‘European’ life, left my wife Emelie and entered the “Anna” – direct course to India!

This might have been probably worst step I’ve ever took in my whole life. I’m too ashamed of describing everyting starting at that stage. So just read this extract of my diary and visualize everything yourself!

“So here I am now… I guess I finally reached gutter. I remember so well… it’s almost as it was yesterday, awaiting the ‘great’ India, awaiting the scenic landscapes and the unlimited possibilities for men like me, for doctors like me. What the **** came over me that I really believed in all those slogans? Was I really that stupid to believe Indians would consult a European doctor? Yes, I think I was. Shit.

I wish I’d kept my old-fashioned life in Europe and never bought that ticket. Just this moment I could sit in my surgery or spend my time with Emelie – I really left her. Left her, only to finance this goddamn trip.

It’s so pathetic. A monkey is living on my shoulder, paying me off by lousing my matted hair. I hate this country. I even don’t know in which town I right now. Still Bombay?

I’m so confused, I guess the sun wasn’t that ‘healthy’ as promised. Yeah, I hate this country.

I wonder what would have happened, if this stupid guy didn’t steal all my money, my baggage and my medical gear… I could’ve started the surgery I wanted to maintain. I might be the ‘famous’ doctor from Europe and all the women adore me. Maybe those people are simply too traditional, too religios to believe in medical achievements.

I hate this country, it’s so goddamn hot.”