Healing
There are images of Ganesh healing the villagers. The novel beings with the narration about the narrator’s treatment by Ganesh. The narrator had a problem with his ankle and Ganesh massaged it. Although the massaging didn’t work and the narrator got well later on by his own, but his mother gave the credit to Ganesh. There are images of Ganesh, treating other people as well. There were no facilities of treatment in the village so most of the people used to come to Ganesh for relaxing their nerves or to get massage on their injured body parts. The author has demonstrated another incident when Ganesh performed a ritual on a boy, whose mother claimed that a cloud was following his son and later she became pleased that Ganesh healed his boy.
Religious Exploitation
Ganesh’s character represents the images of the exploitation of religion by an ordinary person. He is not the person who he depicts to be. He belongs to a poor family, but he wants to ascend his social class. He was a massager but later he decides to become a writer, despite of having no experience of writing. He was not a religious mystic, but he demonstrates himself as an enlightened person. After the publishing of his book, he is appointed as the president of religious denomination. He gets so much applause and respect by the religious authorities that they bestow him the seat of Legislative Council of Trinidad. His journey from being poor to an honorable and wealthy person of society, conveys the imagery of the continuous misuse of religion.
Profiteering
The book is replete with images of taking profit from others. Ganesh gets profit from public for healing them and Ramlogan takes more rent from people who go to visit Ganesh’s house. Although Ganesh did not heal anyone in the real sense, but the foolish villagers used to believe that he was healing them, so they gave him the credit. When Ganesh got the fame, the people from all corners of the village started visiting his house. Ramlogan got jealous of his son in law and started making his own money by charging more for his cabs. Ganesh not only made money by exploiting the simple villagers, but he also took the dowry of his choice from his father in law. He got a house and 1500 dollars for marrying Leela.
