My favourite part of Village By the Sea will be the part where Hari spoke to the birdwatcher, also known as Sayyid Ali Sahib. Just in case you guys forgot, Hari's sisters wash and cook for Sayyid Ali Sahib and he pays them money in return. Anyway, in my favourite part of village by the sea, Hari had mentioned to the Sahib that he went to Bombay in the procession to stop the government from building a factory in Thul.

To my surprise, the Sahib was actually quite familiar with this case and told Hari in dismay that the villagers have lost the fight and the politicians won. Then, he went on to say that Thul is lost. Everything is doomed. Somehow, I kind of think that he is one of those pro-environment kind of people, just like those environmentalists. He said that the fish in the sea will die from the effluents that will be released from the factories and the paddy fields will be built over by factories. He even went on to say that his little baya birds (which he has been watching) will fly away too.

But this is the part that I like most. The sahib asks: " What will we do? What will become of us? When it comes to people, I-I don't know, I am lost."

Hari then tells him that since it is too late to start fishing or farming, and since he does not want to work in a factory, he wants to start a poultry farm and maybe even a watch mending shop.

Then the Sahib suddenly cried out: Adapt! Adapt! He tells Hari that we have to adapt to the new environment just like the animals and birds. Urbanization, after all, is inevitable and the only way we can tackle it is to adapt.

The Sahib, in my opinion, had pointed out a very important point, which is to adapt. Instead of trying to stop the government from building the factory here, why can't they just adapt. Urbanization is inevitable, and as I have mentioned before, we must constantly upgrade ourselves with new skills so that we will not lose out in the society. In Hari's case, he had learnt to mend watches, and is also ahead of the others by already adapting to the present situation by planning to set up a poultry farm here in Thul. In conclusion, I like this part of VBTS most as it really shows that sometimes certain things are inevitable and there may not be a solution to it, but we must learn to adapt, for it is the only way out? And who knows? Maybe the villagers in Thul might even learn to like modernization after all.

“The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions.”
-Anonymous