Nine lessons by Part · three exam-skills lessons

Lessons by Part

A teaching sequence that follows Desai’s three Parts. Each lesson gives a focus, reading by chapter, a key question to drive discussion, activities and a written outcome. Reading is cited by part and chapter, never page number, since editions vary. Part III carries the novel’s disturbing material; prepare the class for it before you reach the final chapter.

Jump to: Part I · Part II · Part III · Exam skills

Part I: Nanda Kaul at Carignano (Ch. 1–10)

Three lessons. The work here is to make the class feel the strangeness of a protagonist whose every wish is negative, and to read Carignano and its landscape as an extension of that wish. Keep close to the text; the irony of Part I only pays off once students take Nanda Kaul’s self-image at face value. Student guide for this Part →

#	Lesson focus	Key question	Activities	Written outcome
1	The postman and the pines Ch. 1–2	What does Nanda Kaul want, and why does an ordinary visitor feel like a threat?	Close reading of the opening: “to be left to the pines and cicadas alone” and “to be a tree, no more and no less”. Read the history of Carignano and its English maiden ladies; ask what the house offers her that people do not.	First-impressions note: three things Nanda Kaul values about being alone.
2	The ordered life and the letter Ch. 3–6	How does Desai make solitude look like an achievement?	Track the daily routine and Ram Lal; read Asha’s letter and the news of Raka; the cry “I want nothing. Can I not be left with nothing?” The telephone call from Ila Das and the “shrill and strident” voice.	Analytical paragraph: how Desai presents Nanda Kaul’s craving for emptiness.
3	Duty refused; the summons Ch. 7–10	What is Nanda Kaul running from, and has she really escaped it?	The remembered Vice-Chancellor’s house, “too many” of everything; “Discharge me… I’ve discharged all my duties”; the reading of Sei Shonagon; she sends Ram Lal for Raka rather than face curious eyes.	Character note: pride, control, and the life Nanda Kaul is refusing.

Part II: Raka comes to Carignano (Ch. 1–21)

Three lessons for the novel’s longest Part. Raka is the engine here: teach her as Nanda Kaul’s mirror and opposite, and let the landscape do its work. The fire motif builds steadily towards the ending, so start a fire-and-ruin tracking task now. Student guide for this Part →

#	Lesson focus	Key question	Activities	Written outcome
1	The arrival of Raka Ch. 1–4	Why does Raka unsettle Nanda Kaul more than Ila Das ever could?	The estranged embrace, “a sound of bones colliding”, and “Raka - what an utter misnomer”. Close reading of the defining contrast: a recluse “out of vengeance” against one “by nature, by instinct”, “born to it, simply”.	Comparison paragraph: Raka as the “finished, perfected model” of what Nanda Kaul only attempts.
2	The wild child and the burnt land Ch. 5–12	How does the Kasauli landscape carry the novel’s feeling?	Map Raka’s wanderings: the ravine, charred pines, the Pasteur Institute, Monkey Point. Ram Lal’s warnings and stories; the dust-storm “bonfire” and “This is how forest fires do start.” Begin the fire-and-ruin tracker.	Setting analysis: what the harsh, blighted landscape tells us that the characters do not say.
3	Invented stories; the burnt house Ch. 13–21	What is Nanda Kaul doing when she tells Raka stories of Kashmir?	The tales of an adventurous father and a Tibetan Buddha, and Raka listening “politely rather than curiously”. Close read the fire-gutted house: “the scene of devastation and failure somehow drew her”, “till she was alight, ablaze”, “the crazy one from Carignano”.	Extract essay: how Desai presents Raka’s attraction to ruin.

Part III: Ila Das leaves Carignano (Ch. 1–13)

Three lessons that carry the novel’s hardest material. Set the register before you begin: name what happens plainly and treat it as Desai’s indictment of violence against women, without sensational detail. Tell the class in advance that the final chapter is disturbing, and give the child-marriage subplot and Ila Das’s murder a serious, restrained handling throughout. Student guide for this Part →

#	Lesson focus	Key question	Activities	Written outcome
1	Ila Das to tea Ch. 1–6	Why does Desai make her clearest victim also her most comic character?	Read Ila Das’s grotesque, brave performance and her backstory of a ruined family and a lost lecturing post. Introduce her welfare work and the child-marriage subplot: Preet Singh means to marry his seven-year-old daughter to an old landowner, and Ila has confronted him. Handle plainly, without dwelling.	Character note: dignity, poverty and courage in Ila Das.
2	The unspoken invitation Ch. 7–9	What does Nanda Kaul fail to do, and why does it matter so much?	Close read the withheld invitation: she holds the arm of her chair “in an effort to speak, to say ‘Come and stay with me, Ila’”, then clutches it tighter to stop herself. Meanwhile Raka steals the matches. Discuss the ethic of care against the ethic of withdrawal.	Analytical paragraph: the failure of care and what it sets in motion.
3	The murder and the ending Ch. 10–13	How do the two final blows change everything we thought about Nanda Kaul?	Ila Das’s ironic “I am always alone. I am never afraid” before her murder; the telephone call. Nanda Kaul’s admission that her stories were “tranquillizers, pills” and that she “lived here alone because that was what she was forced to do”. Raka’s “I have set the forest on fire.”	Evaluation paragraph: how the murder and Raka’s arson work together to close the novel.

Exam skills (whole text)

Three lessons for the end of the unit, once the whole novel is read. The Paper 1 prose question is closed book and offers a choice between a passage-based question and a general essay; students answer one. See the student Exam Skills page for the paragraph and essay method, and the marking desk for redrafting.

#	Lesson focus	Key question	Activities	Written outcome
1	The passage-based question	How do you build an argument from a printed extract in a closed-book exam?	Model annotating the extract for method and effect; teach a plan that tracks the passage in order while keeping a line of argument; anchor every point to the question. Practise on an unseen extract from a Part the class knows well.	A planned passage response and one drafted paragraph.
2	The general essay	How do you range across the whole novel from memory?	Build quotation and episode banks from all three Parts; interrogate a general essay question for its key word; plan a whole-text argument that draws on at least two Parts. Warn against narrating the plot and against bolting context on at the end.	A planned essay and one drafted paragraph.
3	Timed writing and redraft	What separates a secure response from a strong one under time pressure?	A full timed essay under exam conditions; route it through the marking desk; redraft in a second colour before it comes to you. Compare the draft and redraft to name the moves that lifted it.	Timed essay plus annotated redraft.

Teaching the sensitive material

The child marriage and the rape and murder of Ila Das need a steady, serious register. Say what happens once, clearly, and turn straight to what Desai is doing with it: the novel sets Ila’s brave, futile welfare work against a violence the state cannot reach, and her death for daring to interfere is its sharpest statement about the vulnerability of women. Avoid lurid detail in discussion and in students’ writing, and let a class know beforehand that the final chapter is hard to read.