Summary
The chapter opens with Ayah washing Lenny with soap and a bucket. They play around and Ayah gets drenched. Then Mother comes in and massages her leg, something she has done ever since the Colonel pulled at her tendon at the prayer service. Mother is wearing a white scarf because she has been praying. Lenny looks at her facial features, which she finds both beautiful and cold. She is overwhelmed by the “motherliness” of her mother, described as “all-encompassing, voluptuous.” Lenny craves this motherliness but is upset that it gets turned on and off. It is also given to others, something that Lenny resents. She wants her mother to love only her and her brother.
Then Lenny describes their neighbors, the Shankars. This newly married couple is “fat and loving.” Shankar comes home from work excited each day, shouting out his greetings to his wife Gita like a “mating call.” Theirs is an arranged marriage and they are deeply in love. They are constantly having sex. Gita makes delicious food for him: “mixed up with the fumes of vegetables and lentils is the steam of their night-long ecstasy.” Gita tells her the story of famous lovers, from Heer and Ranjah (a tragic romance from Punjab) to Romeo and Juliet.
While in the garden with Ayah, Lenny asks her to tell the story of Sohni and Mahiwal. This is also a Punjabi folk tale. The couple has a strong love but their families are enemies, so they are not allowed to meet. A river between their villages separates the lovers. Yet one day, Sohni risks punishment by floating on an inflated buffalo to reach her lover. She comes to Mahiwal, but he is upset because he has no food to offer her in the house, and all the markets are closed. He cuts a piece of flesh from his thigh and barbecues it like a kebab. She eats it, but in the end, they both die.
A scuffle occurs in the servants’ yard. The gardener Hari is being teased by Yousaf the odd-job man, Imam Din the cook, the sweeper Moti, and even the sweeper’s mischievous daughter Papoo. They are all pretending to try and yank off Hari’s dhoti or loincloth. Then Papoo’s mother Muccho comes out and yanks Papoo by the hair. In a rage, she calls her lazy and a “slut.” She knocks Papoo down and the friends all tell her that she is too rough and violent with her daughter. Lenny especially is upset by this cruelty. Faced with these protests, Muccho relents and tries to revive Papoo, who appears to have passed out. When she makes her daughter drink water, though, Papoo spits it out in a stream on her mother’s face. Muccho flies into a rage again as Papoo begins running around. As she runs, Papoo imitates Lenny’s limp: “Papoo, recognizing the manipulative power of my limp—and perhaps empathizing with my condition, sometimes affects it.”
Analysis
This chapter begins with one mother and ends with another. Lenny’s mother is overwhelmingly maternal, but Lenny does not like that she shares this care and kindness with so many people. There are more reflections on femininity when Lenny describes the “involuntary female magnetism” of her mother. This resonates with descriptions of Ayah and other women in the novel. Femininity is described as a source of power. In contrast, Muccho is angry and bitter. She has none of the motherliness or magnetism. Lenny hates Muccho: “I cannot understand her cruelty to her own daughter. I know that someday she will kill her.” Yet Lenny appreciates that Papoo’s spirit is so strong: “Papoo is not like any girl I know. Certainly not like the other servants’ children, who are browbeaten into early submission. She is strong and high-spirited, and it’s not easy to break her body…” Later chapters will show Papoo finally being broken by her family.
