1. Warm up activity:
□ Discuss in a group any journey you have made to a village/town/city.
□ What significant changes have taken place in Bengal (today's Bangladesh) in the field of language and culture since the 19th century?
□ Can you find examples of travel writing in English? What are those?
As countries differ, so do their ways of life and living: How did the people in India and England lay out their houses in the eighteenth century? In the following extract from The Wonders of Vilayet (Vilayet is England in Persian), we get an enchanting picture of the parks, gardens and houses in London including the Queen's Palace. The author also makes references to houses and housing materials used in Bengal at that time. Can you identify some of the significant differences that the author points out? Mirza Sheikh Ttesamuddin, the author of the travelogue visited England in 1765 and recorded his experiences in Persian, the official language of India during the Mughal reign. The book, Shigurf Name-e-Vilayet, was translated into Bangla by the late Professor ABM Habibullah. Dr. Kaiser Huq, Professor of English at Dhaka University and a poet translated the book into English.
2. Now read the text below and answer the questions that follow:
The exterior of the King's palace is neither magnificent nor beautiful. The outer walls are not even plastered. It could easily be passed off as the multi-storied residence of a merchant of Benares. All the mansions in the city are of this sort, but the Queen's palace is very handsome. I was told, however, that the interior of the King's palace is very elegant, and that the suites of rooms and the chambers of the harem are painted an attractive verdigris.
The King's garden, which is outside the city, is very old. It has pleasant walks, lawns, and neatly arranged beds of various shapes - triangles, squares, hexagons and octagons. These are planted with varieties of flowers, green plants, and fruit trees such as the apple, gooseberry, peach, pear, filbert, etc. The garden also uses a special method to grow Indian fruits like the muskmelon, watermelon, cucumber, orange and pomegranate, and Indian flowers like the rose, henna, marigold, tuberose and the cock's-comb flower.
The cold weather in Europe doesn't allow one to grow Indian Suits and flowers in the open. A special kind of house is constructed for the purpose, three sides of which are of brick, while the fourth, which feces south, is made of glass-plates that keep out the cold air but let in the sun's rays. In the cold season stoves are lit in the house for heat, and fruit and flower seeds are sown in troughs filled with mould. The heat of the stoves and the warmth of the sunlight combine to aid the growth of Indian plants. European gardeners grow Eastern fruits in this manna- and make a very good profit, charging as much as five rupees for a pomegranate and three for a musk-melon.
The trees along the walks in the King's garden are arranged very tastefully. By cutting the branches many of them have been shaped into human forms, so that at night one may mistake them for real people. It takes many days of work to tailor the trees into these shapes.
The road in front of the Queen's palace is very broad and charming. On one side is the palace, on the other a pond which is part of a park. Deer are kept in the park and the walks in it are lined with shady walnut trees. On Sundays, men and women, old and young, rich and poor, natives and foreigners, all come here to stroll and amuse themselves. In these delightful surroundings a heavy heart is automatically lightened Sauntering courtesans with lissom figures and amorous maidens with the faces of houris spread a heavenly aura and the visitor's soul becomes a flowering garden.
These fairy-faced ravishers of the heart move with a thousand blandishments and coquetries; the earth is transformed into a paradise, and heaven itself hangs down its head in shame at seeing such beauty.... As soon as I saw this place I involuntarily exclaimed:
If there's a heaven on the face of the earth,
It is this! It is this!
It is this! Brick buildings in Bengal have rooms with high ceilings and large doors and windows, so that there is a soothing current of air in hot weather. It is exactly opposite in Europe. There is extreme cold, frost and snow; the ceilings are low, and the doors and windows small. The roofs are not flat like the roofs of brick buildings in India. Wooden beams and planks are used to build the frame of the roof in the shape of a camel's hump; that is to say, like the slanting thatched roofs of huts in Bengal. But whereas the latter are slightly curved at the end, both slanted halves of European roofs are plain. The frame is then covered with tiles of fired clay or slate. Such roofs last up to two hundred years without repairs, and if they are still intact when the walls have decayed, can be re-utilised. The bricks in the walls are laid with mortar prepared from pulverised stones. Human hair is mixed with the mortar to give added strength to the structure. Houses may be as tall as seven, eight or nine stories, yet the walls are not thicker than a cubit. Consequently the entire building quivers if the wind rises, and strangers may fear for their safety. But there is in reality no cause for fear, though I myself was at first alarmed. The inside walls, instead of being plastered, are lined with wooden planks, which are covered with paper decorated with pretty designs in many colours.
Teak and sal are foreign to Vilayet; houses and ships are built here with oak and walnut. These are light in colour, very sturdy and resistant to white ants and other insects. That is why buildings last so long in this country.
3. Answer the following questions:
a. The narrator was not impressed with the exterior of the King's palace. Why?
b. What does he say about its interior? How does he describe the Queen's palace?
c. The author is clearly fascinated by the King's garden. Why?
d. The narrator mentions a special kind of house which allowed plants to grow in cold weather. What are these houses called? How did they work in the narrator's description and how do they work now?
e. How many geometrical shapes does the narrator mention in describing the beds in the King's garden? Can you describe them?
f. Were Eastern fruits available in London when I'tesamuddin visited the city? If so, were they produced locally or imported?
4. Write about the differences between the Indian and the English houses described by the narrator.
5. Why was the narrator so fascinated by the road and the park in front of the Queen's Palace?
6. What makes the narrator describe the park as a 'heaven on earth'?
7. Describe how the houses in Europe were built when I'tesamuddin visited it.
8. Find out the differences among the following:
a. house, mansion, palace
b. frost, snow, ice
c. plank, beam, frame
9. Make a list of flowers and fruits the narrator mentions. How many are
unknown to you? Make a Google search and find out their pictures, then write brief descriptions of them.
10. Find out the meanings of the following words and make sentences with them:
a. lissom
b. courtesans
c. aura
d. blandishment
e. curved
d. slanted
g. sturdy
h. quiver
11. Find antonyms for the following words:
a. elegant
b. broad
c. soothing
d. safety
e. thick
THE END
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