Thirst

The earliest chapters of Thirst establish the young characters’ innocence and optimism. These characteristics are essential to the plot since challenges to their optimism will drive the conflict. Each of the children—Minni, Faiza, Sanjay, and Amit—has their own dreams and distinct forms of naivete. In addition, the opening chapters foreshadow another challenge that Minni will face to her naivete and values. Her father uses his favorite proverb, “See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil” (6), to admonish his children from getting entangled with any criminal activities happening in their neighborhood, and Minni initially tries to comply with his instructions. After she and the other children accidentally witness the water mafia stealing from their water supply, however, Minni comes to recognize The Necessity of Standing Up to Injustice.

As the story’s protagonist, Minni’s dreams are examined in the most detail of all the children, as are the obstacles to achieving them. With all the family’s hopes and dreams placed on her successful academic career, Minni enters the story with a sense of intellectual invincibility, even as her living circumstances are not ideal. Minni is unaware of how precarious her academic position is. For example, the revelation of who is paying for her private school shocks her: “What would we have done if Ma’s boss hadn’t offered? […] It’s troubling to think my future was in the hands of someone else and I didn’t even know” (11). These questions foreshadow the ways the Compounding Effects of Resource Deprivation will interfere with her education and ambitions. Her education depends on the voluntary generosity of another family that can be withdrawn at any time. There are still more barriers to Minni’s academic dreams that she will discover, but this revelation establishes the precarity of her socioeconomic position.

Sanjay is both more ambitious than Minni and more reckless. Unlike Minni, Sanjay’s dreams of becoming a world-renowned chef are not supported by their parents, but he approaches them with bravado, nonetheless. This bravado is also revealed in his dangerous pastimes, including jumping from roof to roof. The danger does not bother him because it makes him “feel like Superman and Hanuman rolled into one” (38). Likening himself to a superhero and a god in the same stroke, Sanjay displays both boldness and arrogance. Following traditional story structures, Sanjay’s character arc is set up in the manner of well-known classical heroes like Agamemnon and Odysseus, whose hubris is punished by the gods. For Sanjay, his humbling is more mundane. After recklessly getting close to the water mafia, he is sent into the countryside to protect him from being targeted for retribution.

Finally, Faiza’s dreams of becoming a dancer illustrate both the children’s naivete about how their socioeconomic position curtails their opportunities and the way a Supportive Community in Times of Crisis can keep hope alive. Faiza’s passion for dance distinguishes her from Minni and Sanjay as a natural performer and also helps to reveal the cultural centrality of Bollywood dance to the city of Mumbai. Her dancing skills are held in such high esteem by her friends that they speak of a career in Bollywood as an inevitability. Sanjay tells her, “When you become a dancer in a Bollywood film, don’t forget that I taught you how to hold a cricket bat” (19). In the cheerful haze of childhood, the reality of how difficult achieving such goals will be goes unconsidered. Such optimism is not a bad thing; all of the central characters are driven forward by their fantastical dreams, and this motivation will ultimately help them overcome adversity and take steps toward their dreams. Furthermore, by granting each of the characters diverse ambitions and personalities, Bajaj illustrates that the disadvantaged communities of Mumbai are places of hard work, ambition, and mutual support. Thirst is the story of one girl, but it is also meant as an introduction to India for many middle grade readers and thus seeks to offer as well-rounded a representation as possible.