No Ordinary Day

By Deborah Ellis

Shortlisted for the SYRCA 2013 Diamond Willow Award, selected as an American Library Association 2012 Notable Children's Book, a Booklist Editors' Choice, nominated for the OLA Golden Oak Tree Award, and a finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Awards: Young Adult/Middle Reader Award, the Governor General's Literary Awards: Children's Text and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award

There's not much that upsets young Valli. Even though her days are spent picking coal and fighting with her cousins, life in the coal town of Jharia, India, is the only life she knows. The only sight that fills her with terror are the monsters who live on the other side of the train tracks -- the lepers. Valli and the other children throw stones at them. No matter how hard her life is, she tells herself, at least she will never be one of them.

Then she discovers that she is not living with family after all, that her "aunt" was a stranger who was paid money to take Valli off her own family's hands. She decides to leave Jharia … and so begins a series of adventures that takes her to Kolkata, the city of the gods.

It's not so bad. Valli finds that she really doesn't need much to live. She can "borrow" the things she needs and then pass them on to people who need them more than she does. It helps that though her bare feet become raw wounds as she makes her way around the city, she somehow feels no pain. But when she happens to meet a doctor on the ghats by the river, Valli learns that she has leprosy. Despite being given a chance to receive medical care, she cannot bear the thought that she is one of those monsters she has always feared, and she flees, to an uncertain life on the street.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3
Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3
Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.6
Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Release date: Aug 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781554981762

Deborah Ellis

DEBORAH ELLIS is the author of The Breadwinner, which has been published in thirty languages. She has won the Governor General’s Award, the Middle East Book Award, the Peter Pan Prize, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award and the Vicky Metcalf Award. A recipient of the Order of Canada, Deborah has donated more than $2 million in royalties to organizations such as Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, Mental Health Without Borders and the UNHCR. She lives in Simcoe, Ontario.

Book preview

1

The Best Day of My Life

THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE was the day I found out I was all alone in the world.

This is how it happened.

I was picking up coal.

No. I was supposed to be picking up coal, but I wasn’t. I was tired of picking up coal. I was tired of coal.

Being tired of coal in Jharia is no good, because coal is all there is in Jharia. There is coal in pits and coal in piles and coal in mines under the ground. There is coal on the roads and coal in people’s hair and coal in people’s chests that makes them cough and cough.

There is even coal in the air. It comes up through cracks in the earth from the coal fires that have been burning under the town for nearly one hundred years.

If you’re a man, you work in the mines or the pits, hacking at the coal with pickaxes and shovels.

If you’re a woman, you walk up the narrow steep trails with large heavy baskets of coal on your head.

If you’re a child, you run around and pick up any stray lumps of coal you can find. If the bosses see you doing this they’ll chase you, and they’ll hit you if they catch you. So you have to move fast.

On this very happy day I was supposed to be picking up coal. I had my coal bag over my shoulder. There was a bit of coal in it but not very much. Instead of running around the coal fields, I was trying to convince the shopkeeper that I had a coin in my hand.

Let me see it, said Mr. Bannerjee. He sat in his chair and flicked his horsetail fly swatter around.

Oh, it’s right here, I said, holding up my clenched fist.

What is it? Twenty paisas? Ten? You can buy one sweet, maybe two. Choose, and then pay and go.

I stretched out the moment before I replied. Mr. Bannerjee had a tiny television set in his shop, on a shelf next to the jars of skin-whitening cream. The picture it showed was fizzy, and it jumped up and down, but I could still see the Bollywood dancers. I waved my head the way the dancers did, trying to remember the steps to try later.

Choose. Then pay and go, he repeated.

Mr. Bannerjee’s shop was made of scrap wood and old cardboard boxes, and it was completely open on one side. He slept in it at night to keep thieves away. But he didn’t want anyone watching his TV unless they were customers.

What did you say?

You heard what I said! Mr. Bannerjee waved his fly swatter in bigger circles, but I wasn’t worried. He didn’t like to leave his chair. It was a bit of a game I played sometimes, seeing how long I could watch his television before he chased me away.

He knew I didn’t really have any money. I never had any money.

I managed to stay a few moments longer. Then the TV went to full fizz, and there was no point in hanging around.

I wandered down to the railway tracks, picking up bits of coal when I saw them but not putting any effort into looking.

Piles of trash lined the tracks. Ragpickers and goats poked through it.

I stayed away from the bigger piles of garbage. I didn’t feel like getting into an argument, and ragpickers sometimes guarded their territory.

I kept my eyes on my feet and shuffled garbage around with my toes. I wished I was a goat. Goats ate everything. If I was a goat, I would never be hungry.

Hey, there’s Valli. Valli, come and throw rocks with us or we’ll throw rocks at you.

I looked up. Some of my cousins were out on the tracks with their friends. None of them liked me. I didn’t know why.

She won’t. She’s too scared.

That was my cousin Sanjay. He was my size and never forgave me for the time I beat him up when we were younger. I wasn’t allowed to eat until he was finished, and then I was given whatever food was left on his plate. He started stuffing himself, just to watch me be hungry. I stood it for three days. Then I let him have it. Smashed the metal plate down on his stupid head. I got a beating from my uncle for it, but Sanjay always left at least some food behind after that.

He got back at me in other ways, though. Sneaky ways. Like kicking me at night so it was hard to go to sleep. He called me names like pig-face and dirt-brain. I tried to insult him back but my words didn’t have as much power as his. He knew he was worth more than me. We both knew it.

I was afraid to throw rocks but I couldn’t let him see that. And I couldn’t let his friends see that I was scared. If they did, they would be on me faster than a goat on garbage.

I walked quickly into the middle of the pack and picked up a rock.

Just looking at the targets made me shake.

On the other side of the tracks, a stone’s throw away, monsters lived among the garbage dumps and dung heaps. Their faces were not human. Some had no noses. Some had hands without fingers that they waved in the air as they tried to protect their heads from our rocks.

But I didn’t care, as long as they stayed on their side of the tracks. They were unclean, foul creatures. They carried the sins of a former life, and if you got too close, they would turn you into one of them.

That’s what my uncle said.

You eat too much! he would scream, when the pain in his chest got bad and he had no money for drink to make it better. I’ll break your arms and send you down the tracks to beg with those animals! You are a curse to me!

And then, in the night, his voice quiet and his breath in my ear, telling me to make no noise or the monsters would grab me in my sleep, drag me away and tear me apart. And I would tremble and bite my lip and pray to the gods for the sun to rise.

I slowly pulled my arm back to get ready for the throw.

I closed my eyes and let my rock fly. I didn’t know if it hit one of them or not.

One of the stones came flying back at us.

Sanjay bent down to pick it up.

Don’t touch it! You’ll turn into a monster just like them, one of my cousin’s friends shouted. That’s one of the ways they get their victims.

Sanjay picked up another rock instead. They were all too busy throwing and laughing to pay attention to me.

I slipped back until I was behind the group.

The boys had dropped their coal bags to free their arms for throwing stones. Their bags had coal in them. Coal that would look better in my bag than it did in theirs.

I crouched down. In an instant I grabbed one of the coal bags and started to run.

I managed to take a few steps before a kid slammed me with a thud into the dirt.

Thief! Coal thief! Coal thief!

The others piled on top of me. I swung my arms and kicked and tried to get away. But I couldn’t throw off so many kids.

They worked together, pounding me and pulling my hair. They lifted me up. I saw the ground fall away.

Throw her to the monsters!

Let them eat her. That will teach her!

I screamed. I tried harder to get away from their clutches. I pulled and twisted, but they hung on tight.

They carried me over the railway tracks, getting closer to the monsters with every step.

And then they threw me.

And I landed. Right in the middle of the monsters.

I landed on monster arms and legs and laps and elbows. I was smothered by rags and dirt and bodies.

I could feel them reaching for me, grabbing at me, bumping up against me. I knew they were getting ready to eat me or tear me apart.

I screamed. I breathed in filth and foulness and felt like I was going to throw up.

I could hear the kids laughing on the other side of the tracks. They would stand there and watch me be torn to shreds and devoured, and they would just keep on laughing.

I punched and kicked and twisted until I broke free and rolled away, hitting my head on the track rail. Then I jumped to my feet and ran.

I ran with my eyes full of tears. I stepped in dung and pushed people out of my way, but I didn’t care. I bolted across the tracks and screamed as a train whistle blew.

I left the tracks and walked back to the coal fields. I walked until the shakiness left me and I could feel a bit of victory.

I had escaped from the monsters. They hadn’t eaten me.

And then I kept walking because I had no

Reviews for No Ordinary Day

[sumin-326106 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I could relate to the frustrating feelings of the main character. It led the readers into the situations, and made it engaging. I personally enjoyed this book and recommend it to other teenagers of similar age.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

No ordinary novel! A heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful story thanks to compassionate strangers, and an insightful look at the most impoverished life imaginable from the POV of a young girl.

[mitzi.galvez · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thought this book was very educational yet entertaining. I thought the author did an excellent job in bringing forth truth in the education of a subject that could be swept under the rug or avoided because of the sensitivity and graphic information involved.No Ordinary Day takes place on the streets of India. Valli is a child who lives in a shack with her aunt and uncle and her five cousins. The town that they live is a coal mining town, and everyone’s job is either mining coal or loading coal. Valli’s uncle is sick from all the coal dust and cannot work, leaving her aunt as the bread winner. The uncle often drinks and this leaves the family with less income. Valli is forced to eat whatever is left on one of her cousins plate, this is how she lives day to day. Her uncle tells the children of the monster’s that live across the train tracks (people with deformities) with eat them and if anyone should touch them the would be like them. Elamma is Valli’s eldest cousin, and one day she is upset with Valli, and tells Valli that she is not really their cousin. She tells her that her family gave their family money to take Valli in. Valli is determined to find the truth and finds her aunt at the coal mine to confirm this information. Then her aunt tells her that this was the truth, and Valli is shocked. She decides to sneak on one of the coal trucks when no one is looking and hides under the coal to keep from falling off the truck. She is discovering a whole new world as she is seeing for the very first time anything outside Jharia. As she is leaving she sees Elemma and waves goodbye, as Elemma tries to stop the truck. Then she falls to sleep, and wakes up to two men talking, yelling at one another. They are arguing of what they should do with Valli. They discuss calling the police then are afraid that someone will think they stole “it”. Then they pull her out of the truck and discover that she is a girl. They attempt to take her to a brothel, looking to make a deal. Then the owner orders for the women in the house to clean her up so that she can see what she has. Then they discover white patches on her body. The owner is furious and throws her out on the street, the women giving her a kurta and trousers. She is baffled and doesn’t understand why they don’t want her. She begins to wonder the streets of India and meets up with an elder who gives her advice and wisdom. She wants to stay with him only to find out that he is living on the streets as well. Then she starts barrowing things from everyone passing on what she has barrowed to someone else. She sleeps in cemeteries, train stations, and sidewalks. She begs in the street for rupees, and makes few friends on her journey to survive. She is often hungry and is always on the move. One day she is diving for coins in the Ganges river, she is aware that people throw coins in the river for good luck. She is having no luck doing this, she spots a young girl with coins, and steals them. She swims far away from the girl and ends up in a place where they cremate bodies. There she sees a woman reading a bible and begins to quote verses from the bible. The woman notices that Valli is standing on coals and Valli tells her that it is ok because she can’t feel it. Then the woman explains that she is a doctor and would like to take her to the hospital. Valli refuses to take a cab with the doctor. So the doctor walks with Valli to the hospital. Dr. Indra begins to look at Valli’s feet and discovers they are in bad condition, with ulcers. She cleans and bandages Valli up. Then she offers Valli a home within the hospital so that she can recover. Valli agrees until she wakes up to discover that she is surrounded by monsters. She flees the hospital until she sees herself in a reflection. This is when she decides to return to the hospital. Dr. Indra tells her that if she stays that she cannot call the people monsters, and that she will have to live with them. Valli accepts the requirement and allows herself to see the people as people rather than monsters. Valli has Leprosy, and is expected to succeed in life by the people who donate to the hospital.