51 pages • 1 hour read
Megha MajumdarA Burning
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “PT Sir”
It is PT Sir’s job to prepare his students for national celebrations at school. At one such event, Bimala Pal surprises the school with her attendance. PT Sir’s wife tries to tell him that Bimala Pal simply wanted to see where the “terrorist” went to school, but the next day PT Sir receives an invitation from the party to attend yet another gathering. He takes the train into the slums, around where Jivan used to live. He meets the other party members at a slum school, where they discuss current problems in Indian education. In PT Sir’s opinion, the issue is that students in India prepare to leave India instead of using their education to improve the nation.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Jivan”
Purnendu visits Jivan to continue recording her story. Jivan is eager for Purnendu to release the story; for her, time is of the essence. But Purnendu insists that it’s better to release the entire story at once, so Jivan will have to wait a while longer. Jivan then tells Purnendu about the aftermath of the battle with the police over the slums. Her father woke up in excruciating pain, but when they got to the doctor, he did not reveal that his pain was due to the police beating. The doctor grew frustrated with Jivan and her father and told her to get her father an X-ray so he could better diagnose the problem. After her second meeting with Purnendu, Jivan returns to her cell to find that Americandi has used the earnings from Jivan’s story, per their agreement. Jivan regrets giving the money to Americandi instead of her parents, who need the money for her injured father.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Lovely”
Lovely is at a bridal shower, performing for the guests and blessing the bride-to-be. Many people in attendance mock her, and Lovely warns the bride to be careful with her skin, lest she turn out dark like Lovely. Lovely’s constant public debasement of herself doesn’t take away from her personal self-confidence, but she does think of Azad, who hasn’t visited her since she told him to marry some other woman.
Chapter 22 Summary: “PT Sir”
Gobind visits Jivan in prison. She tells him she’s been trying to get in contact with him regarding her case, but with over 70 cases on his load, Gobind is busy and stretched thin. He tried to contact Lovely as a character witness for Jivan, but Lovely’s hijra leader told him she had moved back to her home village. Jivan is suspicious, unsure if Gobind truly tried to find Lovely. She tells him she can have her mother go find Lovely to testify for Jivan.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Jivan”
Gobind visits Jivan in prison. She tells him she’s been trying to get in contact with him regarding her case, but with over 70 cases on his load, Gobind is busy and stretched thin. He tried to contact Lovely as a character witness for Jivan, but Lovely’s hijra leader told him she had moved back to her home village. Jivan is suspicious, unsure if Gobind truly tried to find Lovely. She tells him she can have her mother go find Lovely to testify for Jivan.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Interlude”
Gobind deals with the stresses of his job and family life by seeking out his guru, a woman who sees into his future and helps him manage the present through talismans. Gobind is more stressed than usual with Jivan’s high-profile case, and he derives comfort from the guru when she tells him that his role in this case will be more significant than he thinks. She then sells him an amethyst ring, another talisman to ward off evils and bad luck. Gobind’s wife doesn’t believe in it, but for Gobind, the guru’s crystals and words have proven to be true.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Jivan”
Purnendu returns for his third visit with Jivan. She tells him about her family’s relocation to the government-sponsored apartment building, where the water ran dirty and residents had to go downstairs for fresh water to bathe in. Her father’s X-ray came back, revealing a broken bone and a slipped disc. The pain was excruciating, and the diagnosis serious. Her father could no longer work and had to stay on strict bed rest. This was a defeat for the family, both economically and for Jivan’s father’s sense of being. Jivan did win one victory for the family when she convinced the water office to fix the pipes in the building.
Chapter 26 Summary: “PT Sir”
PT Sir has lunch at Bimala Pal’s house, where she sets him up with a job in the party. PT Sir must go to the courthouse when called upon to act as a witness for the police against criminals. Bimala Pal explains that there are times when the police are more than 100% certain that the accused is guilty, but they don’t have enough evidence to convict. PT Sir’s testimony will help the police keep peace and order, even though he is lying to the judge. Every month he receives calls to go to the courthouse, and every month he receives a financial gift from the party.
Chapters 19-26 Analysi
Jivan is finally given the opportunity to tell her own story—the whole story—to a journalist. Jivan’s conviction that public opinion is more important than the justice system bureaucracy helps Majumdar advance her criticism of contemporary society’s fixation on media sensations. Jivan, who is tech-savvy and understands the interconnections made available by social media, has more faith in that world than in the justice system. Majumdar intends to alarm her reader with this idea that celebrity, notoriety, and public sympathy are more important in the pursuit of justice than an institutionalized justice system.
The stories Jivan tells Purnendu also highlight another criticism Majumdar seeks to bring to light: the desperate poverty that continues to alienate citizens from making empathetic connections with one another. The childhood trauma that Jivan endured due to her poverty plays on the reader’s perceptions in two distinct ways. For one, it suggests that a train of reasoning may have led Jivan from poverty to anger to action—perhaps she does harbor antinationalist beliefs due to the abuse and suppression committed by her own nation. It also suggests that Jivan’s story proves that she cannot escape suppression no matter how well she behaves.
It is notable that much of Jivan’s fear stems from the adult pressure placed on her as a young child. Far from enjoying the structured lifestyle that enables a child’s psychology to flourish, Jivan constantly dealt with responsibilities too mature for a child: her family’s displacement from their home, her parents’ physical and emotional degradation, and her guilt from not being able to support her family. These problems demonstrate the layers of Jivan’s psyche, which in turn emphasizes how tragic her unjust imprisonment truly is. No matter what Jivan tries to do, how hard she works, or how much she believes in upward mobility, she is continually struck down by her society. Majumdar therefore uses the dialogue between Jivan and Purnendu to confront the systematic harassment that Jivan, and by extension other Indians, continues to face.
Jivan’s commitment to higher aspirations is paralleled in PT Sir’s ambitions, and PT Sir’s intentions are a foil to Jivan’s. PT Sir is stirred by his sudden interest in party politics, but who among us doesn’t want to feel special once in a while? PT Sir doesn’t even have his own name; he is identified with a job he feels doesn’t respect him enough. Ironically, when PT Sir realizes his ambitions within the party, it is because he chooses to disrespect the very laws of the country he believes he is protecting. PT Sir convinces himself that acting as a fake witness to manipulate the court system is OK because he judges the defendants as less than him and his party. PT Sir’s belief that he is underappreciated and invisible is reenacted and projected onto the innocent people the party bribes PT Sir to help convict.
While Jivan is imprisoned for a crime she did not commit, PT Sir commits fraud with seemingly no guilt or consequence. He judges the cases he is assigned in the same way that Jivan is judged: The defendant is automatically guilty. Thus, Majumdar shows another example of how and why innocent people are oppressed in a society that doesn’t really care about justice. It is also notable how quickly PT Sir compromises his morals—it only takes Bimala Pal honoring him with a personal invitation to lunch. This demonstrates how easy it is to seduce people into propelling a corrupt cycle of political, social, and economic oppression.
