Boys Without Names - Kashmira Sheth

Eleven year old Gopal loves his small village in India. He has two close friends, enjoys school and spends time quietly writing stories, while sitting on a branch of a nimba tree overlooking a pond. His happy days in the village will soon be over. His family must leave the village quickly; a bumper crop has devalued the price of onions, leaving many farmers like Gopal’s Baba (father) struggling. The family owe a large debt to a moneylender and although they have sold their farm to pay it they are only able to cover the interest. They pay off the original debt many times by paying off the continuing interest, but they still owe money and the moneylender threatens to make Gopal work in his quarries to pay the debt in labour.

Baba convinces his wife and Gopal that they must leave the debt behind and move in with his wife’s brother Jama in Mumbai. The way Gopal talks about his village makes it sounds like a happy community (athough the farming troubles are hitting many people) and his descriptions of nature let the reader see how many positive memories he has made in the village:

‘I won’t be here to eat the fleshy yellow fruit of the nimba. Will they have gorus-chinch in Mumbai? I will miss these trees, leaves, pond, sounds and soil. Tears trickle down my cheeks.

I wish I had a camera like the tourists in Manhattan. I wish I could take pictures of the nimba tree, our home, Mohan and Shiva, and the hills that surround our village. I wish I had colors and brushes; I would paint the forest, the pond and the birds.’ .

A move to Mumbai may save his family, but it might not provide as many happy memories as Gopal’s small village. Maybe it sounds frivolous to consider the family’s happiness when they have to concentrate on surviving, but Kashmira Sheth allows space for Gopal to remember and mourn his village, while recognising the practicalities of his family’s situation:

‘As I eat the last of the gorus-chinch my heart feels the same as my mouth, sour and sweet at the thought of leaving our village. School has just started, and my friends will wonder where I am.’ .

Although Gopal is only eleven, he is required to be a responsible child, because his family need to escape the village and his young siblings need protecting from the painful truth of his family’s near poverty. While he tries his hardest to be supportive and helpful throughout the book, Gopal is sometimes frustrated and wants things that conflict with the practical needs of his family. He doesn’t often act on these wishes, because he is an obedient and empathetic son, but by using his first person narrative to let Gopal explain his disappointments Sheth makes her character more believable than if he was entirely good.

The family leave in the middle of the night, telling Gopal’s sister and brother that they are going on holiday, but when they all arrive at the local train station the train fares have increased and they can’t afford a ticket to Mumbai. They take a train to Thane, a station near to the Dadar where Jama lives, but become separated when Baba takes a bus to find Jama’s house. Gopal and his mother work hard to keep the twins safe while they wait for Baba to return, but eventually they have to gather a little money and strike out to find Jama without him. They arrive, but realise that Baba is lost somewhere.

When I started reading ‘Boys Without Names’ the blurb led me to believe that Gopal would get hauled off to the sweatshop quickly. I should know better than to listen to blurbs. Almost half of the book is about Gopal’s travels with his family, their struggles in Thane and their time in Jama’s house. Although I liked Gopal’s descriptions of his village and it’s easy to feel yourself falling into many of the places he goes during the book, like the sleeping place under the bridge, I felt a bit impatient with the book, as I waited for it to reach the dramatic events the back cover promised. The book did feel a little slow in the early stages, but later I realised that the build up makes the second half of the book richer. As the book moved forward to Gopal’s time in the sweatshop I began to understand that the first half of the book had been spent humanising Gopal, making him more real than children in a sweatshops seem on television appeals. It’s possible to form a connection with Gopal’s character and to empathise with his later problems because Sheth has shown the reader so much about his history, his hopes and his family.

After Baba disappears Gopal considers himself the new head of the family and decides he needs to find a job, while Jama and his Aai (mother) tell him to concentrate on school. He meets an older boy, who says he can get Gopal a job at his uncle’s factory, but he tricks Gopal drugs him and sells him to a sweatshop factory owner. Gopal wakes up with five other young boys in a hot, tin shack and is ordered to make beaded frames by a cruel man he names Scar.

This second half of the book is similarly slow and detailed. The moment of drama mentioned on the back cover is brief. Gopal’s new life in the sweatshop involves a lot of sitting around, adapting and planning. The boys are locked in every night. They are wary of Gopal and they don’t reveal their names, or histories to him, so he gives them all nicknames: Dimple Chin – the youngest one; Gray Cloud, or GC - the bully; Rocking Boy – a quiet boy who rocks while he works and Night Chatterer – a boy with fringed eyelashes, who mutters in his sleep. The last boy, who Gopal nicknames Thick Fingers is set up as a small boss who keeps the others in line. They receive very little food, are not encouraged to talk and take lots of beatings. Yet in this unconducive atmosphere the boys begin to form a friendship, thanks in part to Gopal’s ability to tell interesting khanis (stories) and they decide to stand up to the system of their small sweat shop. The friendships that grow tentatively between the boys were my favourite part of this book, as the boys who have been in the sweatshop for years close down easily and sometimes betray Gopal’s trust. Gopal has to adjust his expectations of friendship to avoid discouraging them from opening up. At the same time he can’t help trying to lead them in the direction of forming alliances so that they can band together and escape, or if they can’t escape, help keep each other safe.

In this part of the book some ideas turn up that an adult reader familiar with fantasy will recognise. The power of names and the importance of the story teller are subtly introduced to Sheth’s readers and when I say subtly I mean it. There’s no didactic discussion between characters about the power of names and stories, but it’s made clear that the boys hang on to their names and life stories as their last intangible possessions. I really like what GAL Novelty has to say about the story telling aspect of this novel so please pop over and read her enthusiastic review.

I’ve read a few books marketed to younger readers since I started blogging (what American readers call middle grade fiction and UK parents might give to kids in their last years of primary school/ just off to secondary school). ‘Boys Without Names’ is probably the first one that I’ve come across which felt maybe too young for me at times. I’m not sure what I put that down to. Maybe it’s my adult baggage getting in the way. Having read a few books about people involved in violent situations where the descriptions of violence and deprivation are graphic, the treatment the boys receive in ‘Boys Without Names’ seemed less violent. Looking back objectively at individual instances of punishment and living conditions in the book the hard reality of the sweatshop really isn’t glossed over. The boys are hit with tubing, forced to stand grasping their ankles for an hour:

‘Rocking Boy bends down, passes his arms between his legs, and grabs his ankles with his hands. It must be the way to become murga, so that is what I do too. My back is already sore from leaning over and working, but now it hurts even more. Scar raises the tube and it comes down on Rocking Boy’s back, satak!

He flinches and his lips quiver, but Rocking Boy doesn’t whimper.

Satak, it comes down again. I cry out in pain.’ .

They’re fed badly and the ladder to their room is removed at night so they can’t go to the bathroom. So if I thought the book’s depiction of sweatshop life felt tame it’s likely that I’ve become used to higher levels of pain, shame and sadness reading adult books and watching adult films and to an extent that’s dulled the impact of books that don’t spell out the nastiness of conditions in blood and bodily fluids like ‘Boys Without Names’. To be honest that worries me.
The ending to ‘Boys Without Names’ feels a little abrupt and I wanted more information about what happens to the other boys, but Kashmira Sheth has spent her whole novel building Gopal’s life slowly and carefully. He’s really the focus of the book, so it seems right (if a bit frustrating) that the book should follow him home. The result of her efforts is a book that children (and probably adults who aren’t jaded like me) will sit quietly with until they’ve seen Gopal and his friends out of harm’s way.

Other Reviews

GAL Novelty
Generation Zii
Reading Junky
Campbele