Fasting, Feasting

Part I’s final chapters begin with two episodes that reveal the consequences of Mama and Papa’s strict and relentlessly disciplined control over their children. Uma’s desire to go to the coffee party reflects her desperate need for social freedom, a social freedom limited by Mama and Papa. Mesmerized by Mrs. O’Henry’s description of the beautiful mountain retreat at Ladour, Uma begins to idealize the place as if it were a symbol of the freedom she craves. Repeating the word “elsewhere” with longing, her hopes to visit Ladour are dashed upon arriving home.

Likewise, Arun’s own life is firmly regimented by Mama and Papa. He spends all of this day time hours in scholastic slavery, moving from school to hours of relentless tutoring. His only escape, a half-hour of comic book reading, is only allowed reluctantly. By the time Arun receives the golden-ticket of college acceptance, all the joy and celebration for this moment have already been drummed out of him by the relentless beat of a life lived for his parents. It is not surprising then that his letters from college in Massachusetts reflect only habitual duty. Since his life has never allowed him to develop expressions of joy and color, he is left as dour and as dispassionate as Papa. Arun and Uma’s lives reveal the consequence of a single-minded and relentless parental discipline, illustrating the lack of agency, balance and joy it ultimately develops and perpetuates in the children.

Chapter 11 presents a sharp contrast between the repressive atmosphere of Papa’s household and the joyful atmosphere of the Joshi household. This freedom is allowed to flourish because Mrs. Joshi’s tyrannical mother-in-law passes away, leaving her in charge of the household, and her marriage is built around genuine love in contrast to the business-like tone of Mama and Papa’s marriage. The genuine love and joy of the Joshi marriage trickles down to their children too. While Papa forces Arun into a Spartan, ceaseless, and joyless pursuit of scholarship that ultimately drains him of vitality and passion, the Joshi children are allowed to roam freely and play, a freedom that in no way diminishes their academic and social success. 

It is fitting then that Uma, the oldest child, and the one most firmly entrenched in the living conditions of Mama and Papa’s home, is incapable of imagining “a career” like the one Moyna, the youngest Joshi daughter, is allowed to pursue in Dehli. Thoughts of a career are “like seeds dropped on the stony, arid land that Uma inhabited” (131). This simile not only describes Uma’s inability to imagine an independent, self-determined path through life, but pictures the wasteland of the independent will and imagination created by her parents limiting and tyrannical authority. Having never been allowed to practice freedom or develop independence, Uma’s imagination oscillates between the simplistic natural paradise of the ancient banyan tree and the terror of Mira-masi’s revelation that she is chosen by Lord Shiva. In either case, she can imagine nothing beyond primitive play or a constricting, pre-ordained religious servitude.

Chapter 12’s three episodes portray the rising tension between Uma’s burgeoning desperation for greater freedom and escape from the limitations imposed by Mama and Papa. Uma finds moments of solace in the Carpe Diem poetry of Ella Wheeler Wilcox and in the story of Mira-masi finding her soul’s desire in recovering the lost idol and retiring to a temple in the Himalayas.

In Mama and Papa’s contempt for poetry, in their unwillingness to allow her a new job at the Nursing Dormitory, there is a refusal to offer her any role outside of the traditional role of housewife. Since their attempts to marry her off failed, costing Papa two dowries, they are determined to keep her confined to the home, as a sort of permanent indentured servant. While their reasons for confining her is difficult to discern. Is it a subconscious or conscious punishment for the failed marriages and schoolwork? Is it a culturally proscribed determination to have the destiny and choices of women decided like men (i.e. Papa)? Or do they, in retirement, lose in the potential loss of Uma, the last remnants of their domestic power and authority? Whatever their reasons, the parents are willing to lie to keep Uma in their home.

Part I ends in a symbolic oscillation and union between dark and light and sound and silence. In the opening episode of Chapter 13, the power outage and darkness sets the atmospheric tone for the revelation of Anamika’s death by alleged self-immolation and suicide. The literal fire that killed Anamika is shrouded in the black mystery surrounding the circumstances of her death, as the neighbors allege that her death was not suicide by self-immolation but murder, perpetrated by her husband and mother-in-law. Hearing all the noise surrounding these allegations, Uma is rendered speechless. Whether it was suicide or murder, there is nothing to say definitely that will make meaning out of such unspeakable horror. When Uma does speak, to remind the family of Anamika’s Oxford acceptance letter, she is instantly hushed. Thinking about that letter would force the family to consider their own part in squandering Anamika’s potential and their own complicity in her tragedy. Although Uma is silenced, her anger and sadness over the family’s complicity in Anamika’s demise continue to rattle her internally.

Later, during the funeral ceremony on the river, as the family begins to lower Anamika’s ashes from the boat and into the water, Uma wants to give voice to this rage, but instead, she remains silent, imagining the birds utter: “Did-you-do-it?”(155). In the cries of the birds, the image of the ashjar, Anamika’s worldly remains carried away and drowning in the current, it is almost as if the natural world give voice and picture to what the family and Uma cannot or will not say. In the final image of the chapter, an image of muddy water transformed by the sun into fire, Uma not only completes the proscribed funeral ceremony by pouring water over her head, but symbolically and silently repeats the act of Anamika’s alleged murder through liquid and immolation, a visual act that communicates not just the mystery surrounding Anamika’s life and death, but to all the other women, like Uma, who suffer the immolation of their dreams.