The Price of Survival: Violence, Kindness, And the Emotional Calculus of Selling Children in Rita Chowdhury's Chinatown Days

Abstract

This paper examines the harrowing scene in Rita Chowdhury's novel Chinatown Days where famine-stricken parents are driven to sell their children into slavery. By applying Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis and Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory, the study explores how the complex interplay of psychological and environmental factors shapes this agonizing decision. The parents' seemingly emotionless demeanour, particularly that of the mother, is analysed to reveal how famine, as a pervasive force, erodes societal norms and compels individuals towards extreme survival strategies. Ultimately, the paper grapples with the ethical ambiguity of their actions, questioning if selling their children, despite its inherent cruelty, can be rationalized as an act of love and sacrifice or constitutes an act of violence against them.