Summary
The cook sells liquor on the black market because Judge Patel refuses to raise his salary. Though the cook states that he needs money for Biju, he also wants to have modern luxuries and to fit in with other servants whose employers treat them well. Therefore, the cook embellishes Judge Patel's background and tells Sai fictionalized stories about her grandfather. In actuality, Judge Patel was born to a peasant family. During Jemu's childhood, his father owns a business acquiring witnesses to give false testimony, and Jemu attends the British Mission School. He excels and all his subjects, and his parents decide to send him to Cambridge University so that he can apply for the Indian Civil Service.
This mythologized history extends to the judge's romantic history. He initially explains that the judge and his wife were in love, but later recants, saying Judge Patel drove his wife to madness. In actuality, Jemu's parents marry him to Bela, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Bomanbhai Patel, a traitor to the British and a brothel owner, and collect Bela's sizeable dowry to fund Jemu's overseas education. Despite social and familial pressures, Jemu refuses to consummate his marriage, as Bela, renamed Nimi, is nervous. To help her become more comfortable with married life, Jemu takes Bela for a ride on his family's bicycle and notes how eagerly she looks at the world.
Noni and Lola advise Sai not to speak so much to the cook because they believe in strict class distinctions. To prove and complicate this point, Noni and Lola recall an incident where their servant Kesang explained her romance with her husband. Realizing that Kesang experiences love more deeply than either sister, Noni and Lola grow upset and self-reflective. Noni encourages Sai to pursue her dreams, as Noni gave up her dream of becoming an archaeologist. Sai dreams of travel, entranced by the photographs she sees in National Geographic and her travelogues.
When Sai is sixteen, Noni cannot tutor her further in physics, and Gyan, a recent college graduate, begins to tutor Sai in math and physics. Sai and Gyan are mutually attracted to one another. When monsoon season hits, Gyan and Sai pause their tutoring sessions, and Ghorkaland political activities cease. Still, the storm briefly abates, and Gyan visits Sai under the guise of resuming tutoring. He stays the night in Cho Oyu when the weather turns bad. While the judge tries to sleep, Gyan flirts intimately with Sai, who becomes overwhelmed and retreats to her room. During the pauses in the storm, they compare and examine one another's bodies and begin a romantic relationship.
The Judge hates the monsoon season because it is both uncontrollable and distinctive to the subcontinent. Over dinner, Judge Patel questions Gyan about his favorite poets and laughs at the tutor's selection. This interaction forces Judge Patel to recall his Cambridge examinations, during which his professors humiliated and failed him, and the realization that he was only accepted into the civil service because of attempts to "Indianize" it.
Upon entering the civil service, Jemu befriends Bose, a fellow Indian student who teaches Jemu more about English culture and sensibilities. Jemu cultivates a distaste for all things Indian but feels "ill at ease" around the British.
In New York City, Biju befriends Saeed Saeed, a Zanzibarian who came to America to work in a mosque and later became a local legend. Through this friendship, Biju begins questioning his prejudices against Muslims and people of different backgrounds. Bijou realizes that the Indian people he knows idolize white people and Western culture, though Western colonialism damaged India. Saeed Saeed tries to hide from immigrants from Stone Town who use him to get a job and a place to live. Biju empathizes with this pressure, as the cook continually asks Biju to house and assist young men from his village who immigrate to America. However, older immigrants advise Biju to return to India, as there aren't as many opportunities in America as popular culture and propaganda led them to believe. Biju wants to obtain a green card, not to stay in America, but because he cannot legally return home without one.
The Queen of Tarts Bakery closes after it dismally fails a health inspection. As Biju and his friends look for new jobs, he sadly recognizes that he will likely never see them again. As Biju goes to sleep, he reminisces about the beauty of his village and wishes he could go home. Later, he runs into Saeed, who explains he married a woman for a green card. The woman's family, anti-establishment hippies from Vermont, are happy to help him subvert the government.
Analysis
The text contrasts the cook's childhood and the judge's childhood by interspersing Judge Patel's origin story with the cook's remarks and the cook's origin story. For example, when the text describes Judge Patel beginning school at age five and graduating at the top of his class at age fourteen, the cook recalls working as a servant at age five and being hired by Judge Patel at age fourteen. The text tells these stories in quick sucession, highlighting the theme of social and economic inequality.
When Biju arrives in Harlem, strangers greet him and offer him beers. Surprised by their kindness and doubting his language skills, Biju cannot speak. Biju's experience is reminiscent of, and inverse to, Judge Patel's arrival in Cambridge. The English ignored and mocked Judge Patel until he went days without speaking, though he could speak English very well.
The text demonstrates how oppressive class systems are self-reinforcing through the judge's civil service. Jemu defines his time serving the public not by his travels or work but by his ability to exercise power over people of higher castes. The text outlines the judge's strict daily routine. This text highlights Judge Patel's rigid lifestyle, which he developed to protect himself from the mockery and insecurity he endured at Cambridge.
Traversing the Indian subcontinent, Judge Patel tried cases where the illiterate claimants spoke in Hindi, which the stenographer translated to Urdu, then Judge Patel translated into English. Therefore "nobody could be sure how much of the truth had fallen between languages." This observation is relevant to the themes of culture clash and colonialism. Just as the judge's weak understanding of Hindi and Urdu misrepresented the people in his court, many characters' inability to understand other cultures results in prejudice and tenuous cultural identities.
Biju's story is related in short scenes and bursts of observations, relying heavily on onomatopoeia and fragment sentences. These literary devices mimic Biju's constant anxiety over his illegal status, his father's well-being, and his attempts to navigate a foreign language and culture.
The characters experience and perpetuate racism and colorism. For example, when describing attractive women, the cook and the Patel family prefer a lighter skin tone. The Patel family is willing to "sacrifice" obtaining a lighter-skinned bride for a higher dowry. This example of colorism evidences the theme of internalized colonialism. Noni and Lola are also victims and perpetrators of internalized colonialism. Adherents of British etiquette and colonial class distinctions, they believe everyone is happiest when strictly obeying class divides. Ironically, when their maid, Kesang, describes her love story, the sisters realize that their adherence to class-appropriate etiquette prevents them from experiencing the richness of life and love. Additionally, by obeying her father and maintaining the appearance of respectability, Noni gave up her dream of becoming an archaeologist and wasted her life.
Food is a motif throughout the text; dishes take on different meanings in each character's narrative. For example, Saeed Saeed makes a plantain spread to cheer himself up when he is homesick. The banana scent is described as a "hope so ripe," reminding him of home and his future. Saeed's comfort food contrasts starkly with Judge Patel, who is disgusted and ashamed of the banana his mother gave him because he believes the smell of bananas is "vile and offensive," representing "undignified" and "unaesthetic" love. Judge Patel's survival strategy in the colonial era was to assimilate and hate their culture of origin, whereas people of Biju's generation find comfort in their family traditions while abroad.
Projecting his own insecurities, Judge Patel asks Gyan to recite a poem during dinner. Gyan chooses "Where the mind is without fear" by Rabindranath Tagore, a poem that optimistically envisions Indian nationhood and opposes British colonialism. Judge Patel, who romanticizes his colonial identity, laughs at Gyan. Later, Judge Patel recalls his humiliation when reciting Sir Walter Scott's "Young Lochinvar," an epic about romance and a hero's journey. These recitations parallel one another; both Gyan and young Jemu seek to prove themselves intellectually, but end up humiliating themselves by incorrectly predicting what their audience wants to hear.
