Describe how the grinding poverty of the family is depicted in Chapter 1 ?

In the beginning chapters of Village by the Sea, we can see that while the setting of Thul is an immensely beautiful place, the suffering that the family undergoes is severe. Father is a drunk, who can no longer work and support his family. Mother is very ill with an undiagnosed disease. The eldest children, Lila and Hari, are only thirteen and twelve, respectively, but it is up to them to eke out a living for themselves and their family. They do not go to school anymore because they cannot afford it, food is scarce, their hut is dismal, and their futures are uncertain. Desai based this story on a real family and decided to tell it to children, but later in life came to regret it; she told an interviewer that she made it a sort of fairy tale and “certainly [the real family’s] lives didn't end as happily as I made out in the book.”