Back to: Kerala Board Class 10th English Guide and Notes
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Introduction
“My sister’s shoes” is an extract from the screen play of the film”Children of Heaven” directed by Majid Majidi. The story revolves around two little siblings -Ali and Zahra, who belonged to a poor family and couldn’t even tell their parents about the lost shoes because of their family’s financial issues.
All the four scenes in the story depicts the hardships, poverty and the maturity of the children in a difficult time. Ali, presented as the protagonist of the play is hardworking, affectionate and full supportive to his family. One day he took his sister, Zahra’s shoes at a Cobbler’s shop for repairing and then with the repaired shoes he moved towards the bakery. Ali enters a bakery and collects some baked nan, stacks them on a piece of cloth and ties the cloth into a bundle.
The misfortune
Ali then visits to buy some potatoes at Akbar’s shop where he was informed and warned that his family’s credit was over the limit. The shop owner,Akbar, informed Ali that they should pay some money otherwise they would not get any more vegetable on credit. Meanwhile a junk collector comes and takes Ali’s bag of shoes thinking that it as junk. Ali comes out and searches his bag. He goes to the pile of boxes in front of the shop and picks the bundle of Nan and then looks for the bag of shoes. The vegetable boxes tumbled and vegetables got scattered on the ground.All these made Akbar extremely furious and he asked Ali to get lost.
Ali’s house
Ali’s mother was bed ridden due to a disk fracture and wanted to get recovery from her disk fracture. She asked Ali’s father about undergoing a surgery to which he rejected this idea as they had no money with them to afford any such process.
Ali and Zahra were aware of the poor financial condition of their parents, so they decided not to tell them about the lost shoes of Zahra as it could give them extra burden of buying a new pair of shoes. They were also afraid that if their parents will know about the loss of shoes, they will get punishment.
The conversation
While All and Zahra were doing their homeworks, they began their conversation through writing messages in their notebooks and exchanging between them. Zahra asked Ali what she would wear to school to which Ali suggested her to wear her slippers but later on seeing Zahra’s threatening words about informing about the shoes to the father, Ali replied that if she tells, their father will beat both of them. Finally he permitted Zahra to wear his sneakers when he is back from school.
