Summary
Chapter 5
A bicycle rickshaw stops before the house. Mama and Papa are disconcerted, as no one is expected, and even more disconcerted when they see it is cousin Ramu. Uma is elated at seeing this “black sheep of the family who has the bad manners to turn up without notice” (46). He has a clubfoot and an orthopedic boot, but wears a wide smile.
He tells them he has been traveling all over, having gone to Trivandrum with a friend to visit a guru. Uma bustles about, saying she will draw a bath and will make puris, the latter announcement which shocks Papa since they only have those on special occasions.
Ramu tells ribald stories and eventually passes out. Uma has heard the rumors—drugs, drink—but loves him anyway. She asks about Bakul Uncle, Lila Aunty, and cousin Anamika, but he has little to say. He asks Uma if she wants to go out to dinner. She has never done this before and is speechless. Mama and Papa do not approve but she agrees.
The two go to the Carlton Hotel dining room and stay past closing. Ramu pays the bandmaster to continue playing music while he sings loudly along. Uma is giddy with the experience and the shandy. Finally they are kicked out and have to go home. Mama and Papa are furious with them, and Mama scolds her for being a hussy and a disgrace to the family.
Mira-masi continued to visit and Uma did not see how old she was looking. She was also less energetic and enthusiastic, and one day she was quite melancholy when she told Uma her Shiva was stolen. Her pilgrimages were less lively, and more grim. On one visit to the house on the way to an ashram in the hills, she became quite ill. She said she would only improve if she went to the ashram with Uma, and Mama had to agree.
On the bus Mira-masi revived, being in her element, but Uma found it crowded and unsettling to her stomach, and she vomited out the window. They arrived in the late afternoon at a bazaar, where Mira-masi hailed a tonga to take them out of town to the ashram. Uma loved the rickety, wild ride. At the ashram the gatekeeper recognized the old woman and opened the gates and carried their bundles. They went to the building where their room was located, and settled in.
All day after the morning prayers there was silence. Uma was never “more unsupervised or happier in her life” (57). She was expected to join the priests, pilgrims, and widows for meals, though she would have rather eaten alone, and sometimes went to the evening prayers and listened to the priest with “blazing, fanatical eyes” (58) lead the singing. Most of the days, though, she was left to herself and she wandered down to the river or picked berries on the hillside.
One day she returned later than usual, and expected a reprimand from Mira-masi, but instead the old woman looked at her as if she did not recognize her and proclaimed that she was the Lord’s child, that He had chosen her and she bore His mark. This was terrifying to Uma, and suddenly she found she could not move. She became rigid and cold and fell to the floor, and rolled and thrashed around. The priests heard and came in, and Mira-masi said the child was taken by the Lord. Uma heard this and became ever more frightened, trying to get her breath back. Another pilgrim who lived there came in, and recognizing she could not breathe, gave her a hard thwack on the back and shocked her into breathing again. She gulped in air, then vomited.
After this people were respectful of Uma and watchful around her. She did as she wanted. But her time was up, for one day the gates to the ashram opened and Ramu and Arun were there. Ramu told Uma sourly that he came to take her back, that her Papa had sent for her. She had been there a month and was only supposed to be there for a week, and her parents were howling mad that she had been “kidnapped” by priests.
Mira-masi and Ramu battled silently all afternoon, “conducted by grimaces and gestures” (63), and Ramu won and took Uma away. It struck her that she was leaving and did not want to, and she tried to jump off the rickshaw but Ramu stopped her. She became silent and morose, but there was nothing she could do.
Chapter 6
The old jeweler who came around every year always asked Uma if he would be making her wedding jewelry, and she always blushed and told him not to talk nonsense.
It seemed like the time when every girl in the family was ready for marriage. The first, as anyone could have guessed, was Anamika, who lived in Bombay. She was the most beautiful, thoughtful, and kind young woman. Uma and Aruna always vied for her attention when she visited. She was also very smart and won a scholarship to Oxford, but was not allowed to go because she was to be married. Even though she wanted to go, she would not contradict her parents or bring them grief.
At Anamika’s wedding, Uma and Aruna and the other girl cousins were shocked to see Anamika’s husband was old and very snobbish. He also seemed not to notice or care about Anamika at all, caring far more for his mother and family than his new bride.
Over the next years Uma and Aruna heard gossip of how cruelly Anamika was treated, how she never went out of the house except to temple with other women, how she had never been out with her husband once. They also heard she had a miscarriage and could bear no more children. Uma hoped she would be sent back to her family but Mama scoffed that she would not be happy and people would talk. Aruna replied that it should not matter what people say, shocking Mama with her “modern ideas” (71) that she must have learned from the convent.
Chapter 7
Uma is sent to the neighbor, Mrs. Joshi, with a message. Mrs. Joshi is having a servant boy make ice cream and gives some to Uma. After Uma leaves, Mrs. Joshi sighs that Uma is a grown woman who acts like a child of six.
After Anamika’s wedding, it was time for Uma to marry. The family was full of suggestions and sent photos of eligible men they knew. Aruna and Uma looked at the pictures and Uma was startled to see how glum they all looked. Mama and Papa picked one young man and arranged a visit; his family knew Mrs. Joshi, so it seemed fortuitous.
It was a painful, awkward afternoon for Uma. Mrs. Syal was pleasant enough, and the young man not terrible, but there was never any response from the Syals afterward. As the weeks passed, their hope decreased. One day, though, Mrs. Joshi came over and said that the Syal boy actually liked Aruna and wanted to marry her. Mama was horrified, as it was offensive to ask for the younger daughter when they showed them the elder, and remained angry about it for some time.
By the time Aruna was thirteen she possessed an undeniable “power of attraction” (79). She was also rebellious and mostly got what she wanted, traipsing around in silks and hanging out with her friends when she pleased. Marriage inquiries came for her but Uma had to marry first, so the parents responded to a newspaper ad in search of a girl with a decent family to marry their son. It was a cloth merchant’s family building a new house on the outskirts of the city. The land needed work, and they could only proceed with money from a dowry, they told Papa, but the young man was presentable and the engagement went forward. The family did refuse visits, though, and finally the father came and said the son was pursuing higher education and they were free to break off the engagement. Papa and Mama were horrified, since they had already given the dowry and the family had already spent it, but there was nothing they could do. Mrs. Joshi commiserated but said they should have come to talk to her first because she could have warned them that the Goyals had played that trick before. There is nothing they can do.
Chapter 8
It became even more embarrassing that Aruna was “visibly ripening on the branch, waiting to be plucked” (85) while Uma could not be married off. Aruna was starting to treat Uma differently as well, with a note of mockery creeping into her voice. Uma’s face began to look less childish and took on an expression of perpetual care. She missed Aruna’s “sympathy and solidarity” (86) and young Arun’s teasing, as he too sensed something different in the household and became more aloof.
Mama worked diligently to get rid of Uma, advertising in the matrimonial columns in the paper. Finally someone appeared, and though he was married before, he had a decent income and accepted Papa’s modest dowry.
The families agreed to have a wedding right away without needing the ritual courtship first, and Mama began feverishly preparing. The man, Harish, looked about as old as Papa, but it was his sullen expression that was the worst for her; he “resembled all the other men who had ever looked her way… she relinquished all her foolishly unrealistic hopes” (88).
The long ceremony began and the groom mulishly asked for it to be cut short, offending the priest and mortifying Uma. Afterward Uma returned with his family, and in the new town where Uma was to live, she was handed over to the female relatives. Her husband told her she could rest and he was going to work. The women came and surrounded Uma, looking at her and talking about her but not to her. She wished they would, but when they did it was only instructions about cooking and housework.
When the men came home, her husband was not among them and she was too afraid to ask where he was. Finally she got up the nerve to ask his mother, who told her he went to Meerut. Uma wrote to her family that Harish was away at work and had not returned.
One day Papa arrived, aflame with rage. It turned out Harish was already married with four children, and they lived in Meerut. He had wanted another dowry, and it was all a swindle. Papa ranted and raved and Uma hid away, but afterward he took her home. Taking the same train back seemed to reverse the entire experience. Papa had no control over himself, telling everyone of her shame and their humiliation. What happened to his personality bothered her as much as the sham marriage.
At home Mama looked through the luggage and bemoaned what was lost. Aruna asked Uma at night if Harish touched her and she yowled no in embarrassment. Aruna reported this to Mama and ayah, who were pleased. The marriage was annulled and Uma did not quite know how or if she was considered divorced. Mama did not let her talk about it. After this, “Uma was considered ill-fated by all and no more attempts were made to marry her off” (96).
Once Uma overheard Mama and Mira-masi talking about her. Mira-masi claimed Lord Shiva claimed Uma for his own. Uma was uncomfortable with this, but grimly realized that even He was elusive, like the other men she was supposed to marry. She was simply an outcast from the world of marriage. But she did wonder what it would have been like if Lord Shiva had touched her the way Aruna meant when she asked if Harish had touched her.
Analysis
Uma continues to grow up in a household that undervalues her because she is a girl, and which makes it very clear that as a girl who cannot secure a proper husband, she is not fulfilling her familial and societal roles. It is no wonder, then, that she occasionally has “fits,” which may very well be a manifestation of her frustration and impotence. They could also be epilepsy or some other health issue, due to spiritual possession (not likely, but this is what the devout Mira-masi claims) or heat and an upset stomach, but Desai gives us reason to speculate that they may be emotional in origin.
The first fit Uma has is at the ashram after Mira-masi tells her the Lord has chosen her. She “found she could not stir… [she] turned quite cold. She clenched her teeth together and bit her tongue so that the blood ran, lurid, scarlet. She began to roll on the floor” (59). The next one is at the cocktail party for Aruna, right as Uma is “sent to fetch a fresh trayload of party snacks” (101). Perhaps the celebration of her sister’s wedding after her own courtships and marriage were so disastrous leads to a build-up of tension and repressed emotion. There is almost a third one, or at least Aruna thinks there might be while the family is at the river, but Uma assures her she is not going to have one; this makes sense given the fact that Uma feels comfortable in water.
Uma does eventually stop having these fits, as if it were a choice she made because she had come to terms with her life, however disappointing it is, and though we cannot know for sure why they happened, Arun’s remembrance of Uma—“the contorted face of an enraged sister who, failing to express her outrage against neglect, against misunderstanding, against inattention to her unique and singular being and its hungers, merely spits and froths in ineffectual protest” (214)—gives credence to the supposition that the fits are psychosomatic.
The main theme in this set of chapters is Uma’s marriage attempts. The entire process is demoralizing and demeaning for and to her; her suitors either reject her outright (and focus on her sister) or steal her dowries under false pretenses. She becomes familiar with men’s sullen, unenthusiastic expressions when they see her, and has little hope for any future happiness. Her family is unsympathetic throughout the entire process—not only her parents, but also her sister and her brother. Uma observes of Aruna that “a certain mockery was creeping into her behaviour… Uma’s ears were already filled to saturation with Mama's laments, and Aruna’s yelps of laughter were additional barbs” (87), and of Arun that he was no longer “teasing” (86) with her but instead “appealed to her more as an adult now, then became impatient because she could not help him with his multiplication and division exercises, or throw a ball so he might practice his batting” (86).
Aruna and Anamika are foils to Uma, both of them marrying legitimate men with money and influence. While Aruna’s marriage seems to go mostly well (more on that in the next analysis), Anamika’s is a disaster. Her beauty, kindness, and intelligence do not save her from a husband and mother-in-law who abuse, berate, and despise her—and, as is most likely, even kill her. Adriana Elena Stoican sums this up well: “Uma and her cousin… are characters whose experiences illustrate the traumatic effect of arranged marriage on Indian daughters.”
