This narration of an experience of teaching has aimed to make a case for investing in learners the freedom to choose reading material for themselves, not merely for extensive reading or reading for pleasure outside the classroom, but as classroom material used for literacy acquisition and the teaching of reading. We hope to have shown the initial feasibility of this strategy. We have explored its usefulness as a way of giving content to intuitive characterizations of the growth of language in the mind, in terms of individual learners' current states of learning and their potential for change or growth. This relationship between a learner's current state and the kind of exposure or intervention that will be of most use in furthering learning has been characterized variously as input at the “i+1” level, given a learner at the level i (Krashen 1985), or intervention located in the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky 1978). We have argued that given the internal, hidden nature of learning as a mental process, the learner is the best judge of these levels or zones of development; thus our teaching interventions must be guided by learner preferences.

One concern was to ascertain whether and how the granting of such autonomy to the learner might depend on the learner's own readiness in terms of linguistic and cognitive maturity.

An Examination Again and the Assessment of Acquisition

When the new academic year began in June 1999, my visits to Ananda Bharati became less regular. The CIEFL was involved in a project with the Andhra Pradesh Residential Educational Institutions Society, which required the preparation of material and the training of teachers at workshops at CIEFL, as well as school visits. The “class VII” group now consisted of four girls: Sudha and Rajeshwari from the older group, and two newcomers, Sumati and Sharada, who had moved up from the less advanced group of children. (Another girl, Anuradha, moved up, but fell back into the beginner's group as she dropped out for about 3-4 months. Recall that Yamini, in the meanwhile, had passed the Class VII examination.) During this time, work on whole language and story-listening done by a student at CIEFL suggested listening to stories on cassette as a viable activity; accordingly, an audio story ‘The Monkey King’ was played to the group, which they listened to while following the text.

A School for Working Children

The research reported here was for the major part embedded in a natural teaching-learning situation in a school that aimed to integrate first-generation learners into the formal educational system where it could; although this was not its sole perceived goal. This school, and the individual learners who formed a part of this project, are more fully described below. Apart from the prescribed textbook, the materials from which learners could choose their input were mostly provided by me. Beginning with a small central pool that all learners had access to, the compilation grew in response to perceived appropriateness. This pool included books, magazines, newspapers and newspaper supplements, manuals and brochures.

We initially discuss five learners, of whom two had crossed the higher secondary stage of education, and three were judged ready to prepare for the class VII public examination of the state education board; this examination included a paper in English. This sample is supplemented with data from a group of about ten learners starting at a zero level in English. These are longitudinal data with periodic assessment of the level of language input chosen by the learner.

The issues addressed in the project had begun to take shape in June 1997, when I was asked for some “help with English” by Mrs. Janaki N. Iyer, Principal, Ananda Bharati, for two former students of the school.

Body Growth and Daily Food Intake

In Asian elephants large quantities of food stimulate rapid body growth and reproductive success in either sex. Well-nourished females seem to invest in body growth and in their own energy and maintenance resources, but well-nourished bulls invest in slim but tall and impressive body size. In males shoulder height, next to musth is the most prominent attribute for female choice (see Section 5.3), and high quantities of food trigger the phenomenon of musth, when the testosterone level is raised, and behaviours associated with reproduction, olfactory marking and aggression are increased. In captive Asian elephants, body growth varies considerably between individuals and populations. Many females kept in western zoos are obese, with body weight upto 80% more than the weight of wild-living ones, but certain captive elephants in Asian establishments are characterized by retarded body growth, which has been attributed so far to stress during taming, overwork and malnutrition (e.g. Sukumar et al., 1988). As the remaining wild populations of Elephas maximus are threatened with extinction, the importance of captive propagation of the species increases. This applies mainly to populations of jungle based working elephants, where captive reproduction occurs regularly, but so far not on a self-sustainable basis (e.g. Mar et al., 1997; Sukumar et al., 1997). In zoos, reproduction has until recently in Europe been unimportant for the conservation of the species. Nevertheless, studies on food intake and body growth are of considerable importance for the welfare of Asian zoo elephants with a strong tendency towards obesity.

In the history of India, a State of Emergency has been proclaimed three times since Independence (1947): the first time in 1962 during the Chinese Aggression, the second time in 1971 during the Bangladesh War and the third time from 1975 to 1977 to stem political opposition to Indira Gandhi. It is this last one that figures in A Fine Balance.

In 1975, the Allahabad High Court declared Indira Gandhi guilty of election malpractices. Jayaprakash Narayan, who had broken away from the Congress, announced a national agitation campaign to demand her resignation. On 27 June 1975, Mrs Gandhi declared a State of Emergency. This Emergency gave the President full powers to handle what was said to be a right-wing conspiracy that supposedly included calls to the military to revolt which aimed at preventing the democratically elected government from functioning. Top leaders were arrested, including Jayaprakash Narayan and a number of his supporters within the Congress Party. Censorship of the press was imposed and public meetings and demonstrations were banned in most places throughout the country – those attempting to organize such meetings in protest against the Emergency were arrested.

All fundamental rights were strictly limited on the mere proclamation of Emergency under article 352 of the Constitution. It is estimated that during the Emergency more than 1,00,000 persons were jailed without trial. The next phase of destruction came in the guise of City Beautification projects which lead to massive demolition in certain cities. Thousands of people were displaced in the process.

During the meeting of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Asian Elephant Specialist Group in Phnom Penh in May 2002, the AsESG formed a ‘Captive Elephant Taskforce’. Some AsESG members met again at the Workshop on Captive Elephant Management in Trichur (Oct., 2002) and again the Chairman of AsESG, Professor Dr. Raman Sukumar, asked for ideas concerning the aims of such a taskforce. Together with Khyne U Mar, the former Head of Elephant Research at the Myanma Timber Enterprise, we drafted a few ideas for Gajah the paper of AsESG and for the Smithsonian Institution of Washington (‘Ethics and Elephants’). They included the following thoughts:

The AsESG as well as other agencies should stop to speak of ‘domesticated’ elephants. Misuse of the term ‘domesticated’ leads to the fact that many captive elephants were, and still are, treated as cattle and managed accordingly.

One should ask what are the aims of IUCN and the IUCN Specialist Groups as compared to the aims of animal welfare organisations and zoos which are concerned with management problems of captive elephants, as discussed in the following pages. Then some very brief overviews are given on existing and forthcoming guidelines on the management as well as on the estimated sizes of captive populations. Different aspects of the significance of captive populations are broadly discussed according to the various keeping systems defined in Section 3.2. Finally, some suggestions are made concerning further activities of the AsESG and other conservation agencies in the management of captive elephants.

Genesis of Social Behaviour

Most of the captive Asian elephants stem from wild populations. Certain capturing methods can be rather unselective like kheddas (the wild animals are driven in groups into an enclosure), or highly selective like mela-shikar (noosing wild elephants from the back of a hunting elephant) and immobilization. Out of 3073 wild elephants captured in khedda operations in Myanmar 8.6% were neonates and infants, 23% juveniles, 10.8% sub-adults, 30.4% adults upto an estimated age of 30 and 27.2% older adults. Selective methods like mela-shikar and immobilisation refrain from capturing neonates as well as older adults, which are either too weak, or too reluctant, for taming, training and later for work. Of 298 elephants noosed and 714 immobilized in Myanmar 21.8% and 14.7% respectively were between 4 to 5-year-old, 42.6% and 39.8% were juveniles, 15.8% and 14.7% were sub-adults, 17.3% and 19.4% were young adults and only 2.6% and 11.4% were older than 30 years. Some of these old adults had to be selectively captured because they were a threat to human lives and crops (March, 2002).

Out of 438 Asian elephants shipped to western zoos 28.5% were in their first year of life, 22.8% in their second, 13.4% in their third and 9.8% in their fourth year and only 25.3% were older (Haufellner et al., 1993, 1997, 1999), i.e. about 50% were neonates and 25% infants, when they were separated from their families and confronted with a life in captivity.

The 1990s hold great interest for Indian writing in English. The decade witnessed the emergence of many literary talents. Author Gita Mehta attributes it to the expansion of the Indian middle class and their literary demands. John Mee argues that the emergence of Indian writing in English has a lot to do with the emergence of dynamic conditions of publishing in India and the facilities of market circulation which enable the target readership to have access to the texts (319).

It is also a fact that the need to re-imagine the nation through fiction has made itself felt in the last decade or so. This could be one of the reasons for the dynamic profusion of Indian, writing in English in the last decade as writers explore the multiple forms of the nation through fiction. In the critical field, the perception of the relative status of Indian writing in English as opposed to vernacular Indian writing has been the occasion of much polemic (Salman Rushdie's being the most notorious). The question of language and belonging and the positioning of the writer towards his material in language, place and time are important issues that have been addressed. In the case of Rohinton Mistry, he has made the literary choice to use English language to address the experience of the Indian Parsi. This experience located within a particular community is woven into a larger picture of India itself, and further, into the map of universal humanity.

The international literary scene has, in the last two decades, witnessed the emergence of strong subcontinental literary voices. Rohinton Mistry is one Indian author who has received acclaim worldwide. His fiction interestingly subverts all the conscious/unconscious cultural categorizations associated with the form of the novel. Whereas many authors from the ‘Third World’ disrupt the very form of the novel as a means of reasserting the central relevance of their experience, Mistry chooses to do otherwise. He does not challenge the classical form of the novel, but reasserts its predominance in the telling of tales. Realism is his preferred style. He chooses to alter narrative perspectives and to introduce a multiplicity of perspectives within an overall omniscient realist narrative. He focuses on the human condition, located in time and space: the Parsi middle class in suburban Bombay and rural migrants. The humanism of his narration and the grandness of his narrative tapestry give a universal dimension to his characters, who, therefore, become embodiments of a universal human condition.

A Literary-biographical Sketch

Rohinton Mistry is an Indian of Parsi origin residing in Canada. He migrated to Canada in his early twenties because he wanted to become a popsinger. He has said in an interview that he migrated because it seemed to be the trend then (Shaikh). He also stated in the same interview that the shift from music to literature “probably has something to do with the act of emigrating”.

The first chapter discussed Mistry's fictional imagination within the cultural space of the Parsi community as they struggle to make meaning of their existence within the politics and history of India. In a sense, the Parsis are twice ‘Othered’. They are a minority both in India and within the space of international literature.

Post-colonial discourse points to the way in which cultural/ethnic identities of the non-white cultures are often the ‘Other’ of the Empire. These ‘Others’ are the inhabitants of the ‘peripheries’, contrasted with the ‘self’ or European presence. Critics like JanMohammed, Bhabha and Said have argued that it is this ‘Other’, characterized as uncivilized, barbarous and sometimes mad, which was essential to the creation of the illusion of the ‘rational’, unified and sane European self. The dichotomy ‘Self’/‘Other’ raises issues of identity, alienation and difference, tied up with the problematic of the modes of apprehension of the cultural ‘Other’ of the West.

In this chapter I shall address the issue of ‘Otherness’ as it applies to the fiction of Rohinton Mistry, where it encompasses both form and theme. This is relevant because Mistry chooses to cast his narratives in the realist style.

Fiction and ‘Otherness’

The cultural world of the realist novel, according to Philippe Hamon, is a celebration of the stability of the bourgeois European self, represented by the main protagonist who is well integrated within his community.

Prior to the Bangladesh Wars, Pakistan consisted of both West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). General elections were held in Pakistan in the 1970s. Rather than toe the line of the seat of power in West Pakistan, breakaway elements from East Pakistan began to make themselves heard. An East Pakistani party headed by the popular Bengali leader Mujibur Rahman won the majority of seats in the new assembly. The message that the East Pakistanis wanted an autonomous government was clear. However, the autocratic General Yahya Khan, the then leader of Pakistan, refused to recognize the democratic verdict and denied Mujibur Rahman's demands for the independence of East Pakistan. He ordered a military massacre in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan which led to political riots. These riots worsened after the arrest of Mujibur Rahman who was imprisoned in West Pakistan.

This marked the onset of a massive influx of refugees into India across the border from Bangladesh, fleeing the martial rule imposed by the West Pakistani army. It is estimated that no fewer than 10 million refugees fled East Pakistan across the border to India. It was at this point that India intervened with the help of the Soviet army and forced West Pakistan to withdraw troops from East Pakistan. The support of the Soviet Union under an international agreement pact for mutual support in case of threat to national sovereignty allowed India to provide both sanctuary and military training to the resistance factions in Bangladesh, organized as the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Army). Pakistan reacted to this by bombing Indian territory.