Summary
Chapter 1
Mama and Papa sit together on the veranda swing, rhythmically moving back and forth. Sometimes they speak, right now to ask their oldest daughter, Uma, about what to send to Arun in America, where he is studying; to tell cook what to make; and to have Uma take down a letter. This intrusion of ideas is enough, and, flustered, they retreat into their silence.
Mama and Papa are practically one, “MamaPapa. PapaMama. It was hard to believe they ever had separate existences” (5). They rarely even talk of times when they weren’t one. They loom large in stature and authority and do not need their separate histories. During Uma’s childhood, though, Mama would occasionally sneak over and play rummy with her friends when Papa was at work, but would come home before he did and immediately return to her “guarded restraint, censure and tired decorum” (7).
There were occasionally social situations required by Papa’s job before he retired, and the children witnessed them, but they were always uncomfortable—they could tell Papa’s jokes were directed at others and he was easily rattled by any glimmer of challenge to his status.
Chapter 2
Papa sends for the car. He is taking Mama and Uma on an outing to the park, thinking the women need exercise. The park is very busy on this Sunday afternoon, and Mama and Papa look around disapprovingly. Papa strides ahead of the women, not looking at anyone or anything. He is able to do three laps while they do one, and then tells them they are going too slowly. Uma wonders why they are hurrying.
Mama and Papa’s opinions rarely diverged from each other, though they occasionally had routine squabbles. Uma and her younger sister, Aruna, only remembered one major dissonance in their childhood—when Mama found out she was pregnant at a late age. This somehow seemed risqué, inappropriate in their parents’ reckoning, and the girls knew it had something to do with sex. Mama wanted to terminate it but Papa said he had to have a son, so the pregnancy went forward.
Mama did indeed bear a son, and Papa was elated. He named him Arun, which was always the name he’d wanted and had to give to Aruna on the occasion of her disappointing birth. Uma always found her father’s high-spirited reaction more memorable than the birth itself.
Uma was quickly pulled into help with the baby even though she was unwilling, clumsy, and nervous. She wanted to continue to go to school but Mama snapped at her that she was not going back to school because she had to help with Arun. Uma hoped Papa would support her, since he was the one who sent her to the convent school in the first place.
Uma loved the convent school for a myriad of small reasons, many of them having to do with cleanliness and order and routine. She did not understand why other people loathed the school, such as her sister Aruna. Unfortunately, Uma was a terrible student and failed every subject no matter how hard she tried, which gave credence to Mama’s assertion that she would no longer attend. She told Uma that she was a big girl now and it was time to arrange a marriage for her.
Chapter 3
Uma planned her next move carefully. One day when Mama and Arun were shut up, sleeping, and Aruna and Uma were playing cards with a cousin, Uma said she had to get water and left. She procured her money, slipped past the mali (a gardener) at the gate, and hired a rickshaw to take her to St. Mary’s. It was a gamble to bother Mother Agnes and she was not even sure she could find her, but to her luck, Mother Agnes appeared. Uma ran to her, weeping, and told her about her despair over not being able to continue school.
Mother Agnes said she knew, as Papa had written her, and then lapsed into an explanation of how it was important to learn to change nappies for later in life and how the Virgin Mary was a mother and so on. Uma was shocked, not expecting this, and knew she was being dismissed from the school. Suddenly she went limp and fell to the floor in a seizure, and Mother Agnes had to call for help.
After they brought Uma home, Mama raged to Papa that the nuns filled the girls’ heads with ridiculous ideas and she always wanted to keep them at home. When she calmed down, she showed Uma how to take care of Arun. Uma wondered why the ayah could not do it as she had for herself and Aruna, but Mama said Arun needed proper care.
As time passed it seemed that Arun was “the glue that held [Mama and Papa] together even more inextricably” (31). Their social life continued apace, of course, but now Mama had an extra air of achievement at being the mother of Papa’s son. Papa looked at Arun all the time with an expression like a “kind of nervous, questioning, somewhat doubtful but determined pride” (31). But Arun shocked Papa when his tastes became clear—he was a vegetarian. Papa had implemented a meat diet years ago and thought it revolutionized his life, claiming his and his own brother’s lives were improved by meat and “cricket and the English language” (32). He could not comprehend why his own son wanted to “return to the ways of his forefathers, meek and puny men who had got nowhere in life” (33). Indeed, Arun had a constant parade of illnesses and infections.
Chapter 4
Mama and Papa are at a wedding reception and Uma is happy to be on her own. She has looked at her card and bangle collections and now ayah volunteers to brush her hair. She had come to take care of the girls and then returned at Arun’s birth and never left. She does little things around the house because Mama likes having her around, though she is not exactly needed.
At regular intervals Mira-masi would send a postcard saying she was stopping by for a visit on her way from one pilgrimage place to another. She was a very distant relative of Mama’s but Uma thought of her like an aunt. In her widowhood she traveled all over the country in her widow’s whites, visiting pilgrimage places “like an obsessed tourist of the spirit” (38). Uma did not know why Mama did not like her, as she tended to love visitors with whom she could gossip about the family, and Mira-masi visited the most family so she had the most stories. But she was also very religious and “her day as ruled by ritual” (39) and she did not have much time to relate the things Mama wanted to hear, and Papa resented Mama being diverted by someone else.
Uma loved to listen to the ancient myths of Hinduism that Mira-masi would tell her, seeing the gods and goddesses like family. Uma followed Mira-masi through the day’s rituals, such as the evening visit to the temple for the puja. She also loved, even preferred, the private worship Mira-masi arranged for herself, such as the arranging of the little brass Shiva, an oil lamp, an oleograph, and a copy of the Ramayana. Uma picked flowers and brought them in to spread on the altar while Mira-masi recited Shiva’s name. Uma would think of how the nuns would never actually let her into the chapel and that was where she had wanted to go, “sensing this was the heart of their celebration” (43), but Mira-Masi did let her in.
The best part of the visit was Mira-masi’s trip to the river for the ritual dip, but Mama and Papa did not like this, considering the river too hot, dirty, dangerous, and diseased. They could not refuse Mira-masi taking the children to watch, though, which is what Arun and Aruna did. But Uma waded into the water with “thoughtless abandon” (43), necessitating the priests and boatmen calling out warnings and grabbing her before the river swept her away. She did not know she needed to know how to swim, for “she had been certain the river would sustain her” (43).
As a result of Uma’s behavior and Mira-masi being oblivious to the whole thing, “an idea grew within the family that Uma and Mira-masi were partners in mischief” (44).
Analysis
Fasting, Feasting is structured in two books, the first focusing on Uma in India, and the second focusing on her brother, Arun, studying abroad in Massachusetts. In Uma’s section, the present day features Uma as a middle-aged woman, but there are frequent flashbacks to her childhood and young adulthood. The themes of fasting and feasting permeate both sections, as we will see throughout these analyses, but generally critics associate “fasting” with Uma and “feasting” with Arun.
From the first pages of the text we can see that Uma, who is unmarried and lives with her parents, has very little autonomy. She is constantly being told what to do by her parents, and has to abide by certain codes of behavior. This does not mean she is completely placid and pliable, as she often shows little sparks of discontent, irritation, or anger, but her role in the household is practically that of a servant. It is almost impossible for her to push back against her parents, who have seemingly fused into one all-powerful entity—MamaPapa or PapaMama—and as a result, her personality seems stunted, childish.
The “fasting” of the title manifests itself in Uma’s inability to access education or any sort of independent life for herself, whether of the mind or out in the world. Adriana Elena Stoican notes that Uma sees going to school as a release from the prison of her family, and that her “appeal for the universe of the convent school expresses her quest for a meaningful existence outside family control.” When she and her sister are the only children, her parents reluctantly let them attend school, but when her brother is born, that opportunity shrivels up immediately. Uma is forced into preparing for her eventual role as wife and mother, no longer allowed to inhabit the public sphere when her true domain is supposed to be in the private.
Mama’s reaction to Arun’s birth reflects the way in which Indian women are conscripted into upholding patriarchal norms. Stoican writes that “traditionally, Indian women’s self-respect, authority and economic security (in their old age) have been conditioned by the birth of a son,” and that Mama’s “complicity in the hierarchy of power within the Indian family is illustrated by [her] approach to child-rearing practices that entail the privileging of sons.” Desai writes that Mama feels “honour” and “status” (31) due to Arun’s birth, that now more than ever “she was Papa’s helpmeet, his consort. He had not only made her his wife, he had made her the mother of his son” (31).
Uma’s main respite as a child is her time with Mira-masi, an older, distant relative who is like an aunt. Mira-masi lives the sort of independent life Uma dreams of, though it is important to note that she only has that freedom because she is widowed; it is likely she would not have been able to travel and speak freely were she still married. Uma finds solace in her time with Mira-masi for a few reasons. The first is in the stories of Hinduism, of which “she never tired of hearing” (40), one of them making her feel like “here was someone who could pierce through the dreary outer world to an inner world, tantalising in its colour and romance” (40). It is worth noting that Uma doesn’t consider herself particularly spiritual, and likes these Hindu stories as much as she likes the convent school and Mrs. O’Henry’s Christmas cards; for her, any religion is appealing if it offers escape. The second is the ritual trip to the river; as we will see, Uma finds solace in the water several times, though she cannot swim. The third is when she is allowed to go to the ashram. There, in her near-complete freedom, she is “never… more unsupervised or happier in her life” (57). Mira-masi is thus one of the surrogate mother figures—Mother Agnes, Dr. Dutt, Mrs. O’Henry, and Mrs. Joshi are the others—that offer Uma an opportunity to go beyond her limited circumstances.
