Coolie

The novel explores the harsh role of chance in the lives of the poor. Evaluated as a traditional novel—that is, a plotted, designed construction in which events carefully work to make inevitable the move into the next event—Coolie suffers because Anand elects to reflect the reality of the world of the downtrodden coolies, a dark world ruled by the blind intervention of chance. Coolies are powerless. Munoo, just a boy, exerts no control over what happens to him. His father dies of a broken spirit after he loses the tiny family farm; his mother dies from exhaustion and overwork; Munoo accidentally, even playfully, bites the daughter of the accountant who gives him work; Munoo just happens to meet Prabha and his wife on the train, and they take in Munoo because they just happen to have suffered a miscarriage; Prabha’s business partner schemes to defraud the investors in the chutney factory that in turn costs Munoo his job; Munoo, wandering the streets, happens to see the exotic posters advertising the circus heading to Bombay; the hut where Munoo lives in Bombay happens to be destroyed by a monsoon storm; he happens to be struck by Mrs. Mainwaring’s touring car; and, in the end, he happens to contract the bacterial virus that kills him.