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1. Describe the conditions in which Bakha's family lives.

Bakha, his father, and his two siblings live in a twelve-by-five one-room mud-walled house in a colony of outcastes outside of Bulashah, a cantonment town. The air is smoky and full of the odors of excrement and dead animals, and the ground is marshy with the polluted water that backs up from the nearby stream, which is contaminated by latrines and leather-working upstream.

2. What work do Bakha and his family do?

Bakha's father is the head "sweeper" for the town. This means that Lakha and his two sons clean up human and animal excrement from the latrines, streets, and temple courtyard. They are also in charge of disposing of this waste by burning it in a chimney near their house.

3. What is the "fashun" that Bakha and his friends adhere to, and why do they do it? (4)

Bakha and his friends Chota and Ram Charan mimic Western dress and customs as much as their circumstances allow them to. Bakha wears British military clothing and sleeps on a mat, under a blanket, instead of in a string bed with an Indian quilt, and Chota wears his hair oiled and parted in the English style. They smoke Red-Lamp cigarettes whenever they get the chance. Regardless of how impractical these choices are, they are important to the three young men, as this British "fashun" makes them feel more modern and sophisticated than the rest of the outcastes.

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