Skip to main content

Book Review: Weathering the Storm in Ersama by Harsh Mander

It is a story about courage, loss, adventure and tragedy. Prashant is a nineteen-year-old boy, who one day goes to Ersama – a coastal town 18 kilometers away from his village Kalikuda – to meet his friend. In the evening torrential rain and storm surrounds the town, the rain is so heavy, along with strong gales of wind, that water enters the homes of people and trees begin uprooting. Overall, life becomes tough; people are scared to the hell. To avoid water in the home Prashant and his friend’s family move on the roof of the home, as it was a brick and mortar home. In rain and wind and storm, they spend almost two days there, struggling for warmth and food, thanks to one coconut tree that is lying on their roof, which provided them food.


From the roof Prashant sees the streets flooded and corpses of humans and animals and trees being afloat. The super cyclone has caused havoc all around. He is worried about his family members, though his mother had died seven years ago. There are his brothers and sisters, granny and aunts and uncles.

In desperation, he sets out for his village. He wades in the waist-length turbid water with a wooden stick. He notices that houses that were built with brick and cement are partially intact; otherwise huts are nowhere to be seen. When he reaches the village, he finds no traces of his home; in fact some of his luggage is floating here and there. He in great despair rushes to the Red Cross shelter. There he finds his family member. However, in the Red Cross shelter living conditions are awful and people are sustaining on coconuts. Prashant feeling the lack of leadership in the village in the times of adversity decides to lead by example. He gathers boys and first off gets the rice from a merchant. Next he makes young children lying on the sand with utensils on their bellies – this indicated the relief helicopters for food and other needs. As a result, helicopters often drop food and other items for help. One by one, Prashant with the help of young boys provide much relief to the victims.

When government decides to put orphan children into an orphanage, he with his team protests and allows the orphans to mix with the widows, so that people can form foster family.

This story is about leadership and bravery in the times of adversity. Had Prashant not led the people of his village, they must have died in starvation or lack of medicine and orphans must have engaged to any orphanage and widows have been alone and without support.

For CBSE class 9 syllabus, read all stories summary from your Moments textbook. 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
67 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
63 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
23 comments
Read more