Summary
Jasmine returns the narrative to Iowa, where she shows Du's aptitude for fixing electronics. He makes hybrid appliances, attaching light switches to radios, alarms to coffee makers, constantly tinkering with the circuitry of the electronics he hoards in his room. Paranoia plagues their rural community. Economic hardships are turning farmers against the banks. Some farmers are lashing out against their bankers, destroying their property and threatening their wellbeing. Other farmers are killing themselves.
Jasmine tells Du that she also knows how to repair electronics and that she's quite good at it. He dismisses her comment. Then she tells Du, "I've also killed a man, you know. There's nothing in this world that's too terrible." He says, "I know. ... So have I. More than one" (157). At 11:05 pm, Bud calls the house from his hotel room, where he's attending an agricultural banking conference. Jasmine describes how Orrin Lacey, a colleague in the industry, would have helped Bud into his pajamas and into his bed. When Bud calls, she can tell he's crying or has been crying. She says, "Crying comes over him suddenly these days. They call it posttraumatic syndrome. Small things, mildly depressing things, suddenly become too poignant to bear" (158).
We return to the narrative to New York, where Jasmine meets Kate Gordon-Feldstein, Lillian's daughter, in her enormous Garment District loft, to inquire about a job as an au pair. The loft is in total disarray, which is a stark contrast to the total orderliness of the Vadheras apartment in Flushing. Jasmine feels badly about leaving the Vadheras behind with nothing more than a note, but for her own sanity, she couldn't stay there much longer. She was losing her English; being in that neighborhood was almost the same as staying in India. Kate refers Jasmine to Taylor Hayes; he and his wife are seeking an au pair to look after their little girl, Duff. Before Jasmine leaves the apartment, she meets Sam, Kate's pet iguana. Holding and petting a reptile is a strange and liberating feeling for Jasmine because, in Hasnapur, reptiles were always reviled.
Chapter 23 covers Jasmine's time living with Taylor and Wylie on Claremont Avenue, right by Columbia University, where Taylor works as a particle physicist. Wylie works at a publishing house on Park Avenue. They hire Jasmine to look after their adopted daughter Duff. Kate makes the introduction, bringing Jasmine over to their apartment to meet Duff and iron out the details of her employment. Both Taylor and Wylie are extremely welcoming of Jasmine; she finds Taylor to be warm and goofy, while Wylie reminds Jasmine of Lillian Gordon, a bit cold and no-nonsense, but radically caring in her own way. Duff surprises Jasmine with her maturity and precociousness.
Despite the fact that Jasmine is given her own bedroom, she prefers to sleep with Duff. She doesn't like sleeping alone and had been fully under the impression that as a caregiver, she would be sleeping with the child. Duff and Jasmine quickly take to each other and form a loving bond. Duff considers Jasmine her "day mummy." Their relationship eventually drives a wedge between Wylie and Duff, but the Hayeses consider Jasmine like family, and they address the issues of family dynamics democratically. Jasmine is paid $95 a week. When Duff starts school, Taylor connects her with a job at Columbia, doing clerical work for departments. There, she finds even more work translating Punjabi and Hindi. She's able to pay Dave Vadhera back for her green card in one fell swoop, mailing him a check a few months after she moves in with Taylor and Wylie.
As soon as Jasmine meets Taylor, she feels herself falling in love with him. Apparently, the same is true for Taylor. Jasmine isn't used to the open way Taylor and Wylie talk about sex and love, and she's taken by surprise when Wylie tells her that she's fallen in love with another man, an economist at Columbia. She leaves Taylor for this man, Stuart. Jasmine stays on with Taylor and Duff, and for a short period of time, the three of them feel like a family. One day, while in the park with Taylor and Duff, Taylor confesses his love to Jasmine after he sends Duff off to buy herself a hot dog. When Duff returns, she says that the hot dog man asked her if Jasmine was her mother. When Jasmine looks over at the hot dog vendor, she sees that it is the man who murdered Prakash. Her throat closes up and she has what seems like a panic attack. She decides to flee New York and move to Iowa, choosing the destination solely because Taylor and Wylie adopted Duff from a student at Iowa State.
In Chapter 24, Jasmine recounts the attack that left Bud paralyzed from the waist down, as well as her early days in Baden, her few confrontations with Bud's ex-wife Karin, and the day she received a postcard in the mail from Taylor, two years after Bud is shot. Bud is shot by a farmer named Harlan Kroener. Jasmine blames herself in many ways, because she figures she should have seen the attack coming, should have read the signs on Harlan's face when he arrived at their front door in winter, holding a rifle, asking for Bud in his deadpan voice. But, she figures every farmer in Iowa has a rifle. She doesn't think about it at the time. It is Christmastime when Harlan shoots Bud. Jasmine recalls the way Taylor and Wylie heaped presents onto Duff, reveling in the spirit of the season. Bud regards Christmas with the same renewed joy after they adopt Du, with a big tree stocked with presents. The relationship between bankers and farmers in town could be tense, and the Christmas season is a time when the economic hardships and successes of neighbors are especially obvious. Harlan walks Bud out to his truck where he shoots him twice in the back before turning his gun on himself. Bud is lying out in the snow for thirty minutes before Du finally hears him screaming.
Jasmine recalls a time shortly after Bud divorces Karin when Karin calls her a gold digger at the grocery store. Jasmine responds, "Bud is gold ... and if digging him out of the sadness he was in when I met him was what she meant, then, yes, I was a gold digger" (196). Jasmine believes that Karin may have been able to talk Harlan down from shooting Bud, and in that way, she feels especially guilty for her inability to read the signs that afternoon. Karin calls Jasmine a "tornado blowing through Baden" (206) uprooting everything in her path.
Before Jasmine receives the postcard from Taylor, she describes her long-standing desire to hear from him. She feels isolated in Iowa in a way that was impossible to feel in New York, surrounded by humans and conversations, regardless of whether or not they were talking to her. There was life there, everywhere. And in Baden, there are expanses of silence. Taylor's letter comes as a shock. In it, he simply tells her that he and Duff are driving to Baden to see her. Du spots the letter and asks Jasmine about it. He suspects it's from a past lover. Jasmine says, "My wise son wants me to do the right thing" (210), which, in this case, is presumably staying with Bud.
Jasmine describes an evening when Bud is working late with state inspectors, auditing his loans for the year. It is something he used to enjoy, calling it "his private seminar in ag banking," but the inspections have because more brisk and impersonal in recent years. She makes a pot roast and gobi aloo. While she's waiting for Bud to return and keeping dinner warm, she calls Darrel to check in on him, mostly responding to Karin's concern. Darrel says that he's feeling crazy. "Crazy enough to hold up a bank, for instance ... Hijack a school bus. Take hostages. I feel ready for massacre and mayhem" (214). Jasmine suggests he call Karin's hotline, but Darrel says he'd like her to come over and try to calm him down first.
So Jasmine goes to Darrel's house where he's been preparing Indian food. He's made matar panir. Jasmine says, "The rice is crunchy. The tofu has crumbled. The spices sludge up the bottom of the pot. That I was prepared for. But Darrel the Romantic who begins to talk to me now is a mystery" (216). He begs Jasmine to leave Bud and come away with him. He tells her she can even bring Du along, that he would hire him to work at the Radio Shack he was planning on opening. He questions Bud's ability to perform sexually due to his paralyzation. Jasmine warns Darrel against saying anything more. He begins ranting and yelling in his kitchen, conspiratorial nonsense about Bud conspiring with "Eastern banks." Jasmine calls him crazy and bolts. She doesn't look back as she backs her car out of the driveway, afraid that Darrel may have reached for his shotgun.
Jasmine returns home to find Du in the living room speaking to another boy in Vietnamese. The boy's name is John, and he's writing down an address for Du. Shortly after Jasmine arrives, John is out the door. Du seems excited about something. She tries to ask him about John but he's cagey. After she presses him, he tells her that he knows John from the refugee camp, and that John has given him the address of his sister, who is now living in Los Angeles. Du plans to go to California and be with his sister. His mind is made up; Jasmine knows she cannot stop him. She feels a mixture of pride and betrayal at Du's departure. She says, "Du, my adopted son, is a mystery, but the prospect of losing him is like a miscarriage. I had relied on him, my silent ally against the bright lights, the rounded, genial landscape of Iowa. I want to say—to be able to say—you’re wrong, Bud loves you, he needs you like I do, but I know Du’s right. Du has practiced without a net; he knows his real friends" (221).
Du packs a suitcase and leaves that same afternoon. After he goes, Jasmine calls Karin out of concern for Darrel. Karin comes over and is confronted with a version of Bud totally unrecognizable to her. Even though he's not at home, still at work dealing with the inspectors, the strange house with its many additions and sparse furnishing, with Bud's medicines and medical tools arranged on shelves, are all evidence of the life he's built without her. Karin apologizes to Jasmine for calling her a gold digger. Jasmine sees that Karin is still in love with Bud after all these years. Together, they drive to Darrel's to check up on him. When they arrive, he's sober and rigging night lights to the rafters of his hog enclosure. He tells them he's busy and to come back by the next day.
Bud approves Darrel for his loan and he and Jasmine drive over to his house the next day to tell him in person, because he can't be reached by phone. As they approach his place, they hear the loud squealing of hogs in a frenzy. When they pull up, they see his dog Shadow mutilated and eaten by the hogs, and Darrel hanging by his neck from a rafter of the hog house, strung up on an extension cord.
In November, Taylor and Duff show up to Jasmine's house in the middle of the day. Taylor asks Jasmine to come with them to California; he's accepted a position at Berkeley. Jasmine is torn between her sense of duty to Bud and her desire to leave. She realizes finally why she always refused to marry Bud; she was holding out for this moment. While Taylor is waiting for an answer, Jasmine calls Karin and tells her she needs to visit Du. Karin immediately recognizes that Jasmine is planning to leave Bud. Jasmine says, "I'm not leaving Bud ... I'm going somewhere" (240). And just like that, she leaves with Taylor and Duff, "out the door and in the potholed and rutted driveway ... greedy with wants and reckless from hope" (241).
Analysis:
In these final chapters, Mukherjee returns to many of the themes and images brought up in the beginning of the book, such as fate, family, motherhood, and otherness. A pivotal moment of irony and self-reflection occurs in Chapter 23, when Taylor and Wylie tell Jasmine that Duff is adopted, and Jasmine narrates, "I could not imagine a non-genetic child. A child that was not my own, or my husband's, struck me as a monstrous idea. Adoption was as foreign to me as the idea of widow remarriage" (170).
Of course, at the time of narration, Jasmine has both adopted a child and lived with Bud in what was all but a widow remarriage. This paradox of how at one time the circumstances of her life could have seemed so monstrous and foreign to her returns to the theme of reincarnation brought up by Dr. Mary Webb's visions of her supposed past lives. Jasmine understood her past lives as lives she lived in the same body, but so radically different from each other that they attained separate identities. Each life even has a different name corresponding to it: Jyoti, Jasmine, Jase, Jane. Jasmine says, "I have had a husband for each of the women I have been. Prakash for Jasmine, Taylor for Jase, Bud for Jane. Half-Face for Kali" (197).
Kali is a Hindu goddess of, among other things, the destruction of evil forces in the world. At several points in the novel, Jasmine refers to herself as a goddess, or as a woman who has transformed into a goddess. The first instance of this occurs on page 12. She says, "I think sometimes I saved [Bud's] life by not marrying him. / I feel so potent, a goddess," (12). The other self-references as a goddess include describing the way she looks on her way to meet Prakash for the first time (71) and the feeling she has when shopping in Morningside Heights with her au pair wages (176), but that first reference, about saving Bud's life, takes on a special valence by the end of the novel.
Of course, she's referring to the fakir's prophecy that she will be a widow in exile—which, given Prakash's death, is arguably already fulfilled by the time she's in Iowa, before she even meets Bud—however, she's worried that she's cursed, and that any man she marries will die. But after we learn that she hasn't married Bud because she wants to leave herself open to the possibility that Taylor and Duff find her someday, we can understand the idea that she saved Bud's life by not marrying him in a more figurative sense. Had she married Bud, the process of leaving him would've been much messier, or perhaps Karin wouldn't have returned had he officially remarried. Perhaps the abandonment would have felt more intense had they been married.
In Chapter 23, Jasmine says, "In America, nothing lasts. I can say that now and it doesn’t shock me, but I think it was the hardest lesson of all for me to learn. We arrive so eager to learn, to adjust, to participate, only to find the monuments are plastic, agreements are annulled. Nothing is forever, nothing is so terrible, or so wonderful, that it won’t disintegrate" (180). This quote, besides giving the reader a gentle heads-up that she probably would leave Iowa before the end of the novel, gets at the center the novel's stance on what it means to be in America, especially for someone like Jasmine and Du, but even, it demonstrates, for someone like Bud, who loses his vitality in a financially-motivated attack. The chokehold of capitalism on agriculture led to a sweeping existential crisis among the farmers in Baden. Several killed themselves. Some took others with them.
At several points after Prakash's murder, Jasmine considers killing herself. Perhaps, in a way, by inhabiting a new incarnation of herself, by going from Jasmine to Jase or Jane, she killed a former self. This is similar to what Dr. Webb described of her guru, Ma Leela, who supposedly inhabits the body of a suicide victim from Alberta. The body is merely a revolving door for spirits. But what spurs her forth is hope. Hope is a complex feeling in Jasmine—not straightforwardly positive, but rather tangled in consequence. The last thought Jasmine leaves the reader with is that she is "greedy with wants and reckless from hope" (241). Greed and recklessness are generally regarded as bad, but hope and desire? One needs them to survive.
