A Burning

“Nothing is simple for a person like me, not even one hour on the train. My chest is a man’s chest, and my breasts are made of rags. So what? Find me another woman in this whole city as truly woman as me.”

This quote captures Lovely’s characteristic self-confidence and optimism. Although she is seen as strange, and though she was born in the wrong body, she is proud of her identity. Lovely doesn’t see sex or gender in normative terms, which allows her to look past the judgment of her society and focus on her own self-exploration.

“You can be burning one train, but you cannot be stopping our will to go to work, to class, to family if we have them. Every local train is like a film. On the train, I am observing faces, body movements, voices, fights. This is how people like me are learning.” 

In referencing the terrorist attack on the train, Lovely takes on the much-needed voice of a spiritual warrior, one who continues believing in the value and beauty of life despite numerous and tragic challenges. For Lovely, every moment is an opportunity to observe and learn more.

“The doddering police van meant nothing to those boys. They did not slow down. They were not afraid. Their fathers knew police commissioners and members of the legislature, figures who were capable of making all problems disappear. And me, how would I get out of this? Whom did I know?” 

Jivan identifies the true issue with her arrest and foreshadows one of Majumdar’s main criticisms of society: Those with money and privilege do not fear social institutions and can live freely, while those without money and power are forced into a life they cannot control.

“When he thinks about it, an old anger flickers to life. He had begun to dream of her as a mentee, but she had not considered him a mentor. She had considered him perhaps no more than a source of occasional free food. She had fooled him.” 

PT Sir’s immediate judgment of Jivan’s new predicament as a suspected terrorist demonstrates two fundamental issues. The first is PT Sir’s inability to see past his own experiences without taking things personally; he feels slighted by Jivan’s perceived lack of appreciation for his work and therefore is happy to believe that she is a bad person. Second, it because of is this insistence on believing his personal experience while discarding empathy that Jivan is unjustly found guilty and executed. PT Sir’s quote represents the petty cruelty human beings can enact against others and the grandiose self-importance we tend to place on our own experiences.

“Behind me is one-eyed Kalkidi, half of her face burned, laughing hard when I turn to look, the gaps in her teeth showing. Her husband threw acid on her face but, somehow, she is the one in jail. These things happen when you are a woman.” 

This quote captures the injustice inherent in India’s prison system, an injustice Majumdar criticizes throughout her novel. Many of the women in this prison are there for crimes committed due to financial pressure, highlighting the lack of economic support and the desperate lengths people will go to in order to survive. That Kalkidi is imprisoned after her husband committed a horrifying, violent act highlights misogyny that prevents these women from receiving fair trials. The emphasis on Kalkidi’s imprisonment foreshadows that there is no way out for Jivan, for Majumdar uses Kalkidi to show how far society will go to find and keep a scapegoat.

“The party is feeding them when the market is not. But the man’s cries make the hairs on PT Sir’s arm stand up, and what is false about that?”

This quote captures the beginning of PT Sir’s political ambitions. Although PT Sir realizes that the poor masses cannot live on rhetoric alone, he still feels the significance of inspiring hope. Although PT Sir loses his morals in this hypocritical world of politics, his original motivation was genuine, which demonstrates how susceptible all of us can be to grand promises and strong messaging.

“For the rest of the day, we fall and die from knowing, but never being able to say, especially to our mothers, that the inside of a prison is an unreachable place.” 

This quote highlights the dehumanization that occurs inside prison and emphasizes the lonely experience Jivan is unjustly enduring. Jivan’s mother suffers from not knowing the unknowable and from not being able to help her daughter. But because the truth of having your natural human freedom taken from you is too difficult to explain, the prisoners must console their mothers that prison is not as bad as it seems. In calling the inside of prison “an unreachable place,” Jivan (and by extension Majumdar) reveals that she as a human being has become unreachable.

“The houses fell. Walls and roofs of our shelter turned enemy, wreckage coming down on our heads, the rising dust making us cough, paint and brick in heaps on the ground. The policemen, finally calm, bamboo limp by their sides, looked frightened. Maybe the houses looked too much like their own. In the end, one policeman pleaded with us, ‘Orders came from above, sister, what will I do?’” 

The dark reality of Jivan’s life in India paints the picture of her constant struggle and story of displacement. Even the policemen who fight to evict Jivan’s family and neighbors acknowledge the cruelty of the situation, yet no one stops it. The stark truth here is that the social structure in India prevents someone like Jivan from having a structured childhood, a safe home, or trust in the government. This helps the reader understand Jivan’s frustration with the police response to the terrorist attack and demonstrates the institutionalized violence that Jivan has always struggled against. While this is a story of Jivan’s childhood, it also symbolizes the millions of people who struggle in permanent poverty in India.

“I watch him go, past a door which magically opens for him, and I turn back. Inside, a woman beats her head on the wall. Once, I might have felt that way too, but now I don’t. Now I float beside her, her scrape only hers, not mine. I am on my way out. As soon as the newspaper publishes my story, the door will begin to open for me. Where public feeling goes, the court follows. Freedom will result not from boxes of papers and fights over legality but from a national outcry.”

In juxtaposition with Jivan’s childhood story of unrelenting strife, she feels the beautiful prospect of hope that her luck will change. She understands, as does Majumdar, that the Indian justice system will never exonerate her; instead, Jivan must rely on public opinion to free her. Rather than depending on her country to seek the truth of the terrorist attack, Jivan must put her faith in the trifling opinions of millions of people. Although Jivan feels hope, Majumdar’s presentation of this desire is tinged with pessimism, as all other context clues foreshadow that Jivan will never leave prison a free and vindicated woman.

“Afterward I held the large envelope in my hand, within it a ghostly image of Ba’s back and shoulders. I carried it home, like a parent carrying their child’s schoolbag, the weight too heavy for the young one to bear.” 

This quote captures the stress Jivan endures as a poor Muslim girl in India. She is forced to take care of her parents, a responsibility that wealthier children do not bear. She sees how her parents suffer without much argument, and she wants to improve her life for herself and for her family. That Jivan must support her family is also a source of shame for her father who, although poor, is accustomed to working and fulfilling the role of provider. This part of Jivan’s childhood story demonstrates the lack of structure and security in her young life.

“That does not mean school was easy. I kept my distance, or others kept their distance from me, and from their faces I knew they found something physically unappealing about me: my hair, often knotted and chalky with dust, or my smell, like metal. But it did not keep me from laughing at what they said, accepting a glance thrown my way as a kind of friendship.” 

In reflecting on her childhood and adolescence for Purnendu, Jivan reveals that on top of being poor, she was also very lonely. She did not make friends at school, understanding even then her role in society as paralleled in a smaller community: the classroom. But the loneliness does not seem to bother Jivan; instead, she focuses on small moments of happiness. This quote demonstrates Jivan’s resilience but also her need for friends (which is probably why she ended up on Facebook talking to strangers who turned out to be terrorists).

“I am always learning from the train. Here is a mother sitting cross-legged with her baby sleeping in her lap. Her head is tilting on her shoulder and she is sleeping also, dead to the world. She is not hearing any of our words. Next time when I am having a role as a tired mother, I will be thinking about her.” 

Lovely describes the valuable lessons she learns in observing the world around her. Though she doesn’t have much formal education, Lovely has a sharp mind that absorbs her environment to learn about people. Ironically, Lovely demonstrates a deep level of empathy for people who nearly refuse to look at her. Lovely doesn’t let others’ unsympathetic attitudes keep her from pursuing her personal education or her dreams.

“I wondered sometimes if he paid attention to me because he felt like an outsider too. He was a father, I imagined, and all the other teachers were mothers. When the principal spoke about morals at the morning assembly, and the microphone began to screech, the ladies looked around for PT Sir. Such was his place in the school, a little apart from everybody else.” 

This quote captures Jivan’s capacity for empathy. Even as a lonely and struggling adolescent, Jivan tries to consider what other peoples’ lives are like with care and gratitude. This is ironic given PT Sir’s automatic judgment of Jivan when she is arrested for terrorism. While PT Sir is rewarded for his lack of empathy, Jivan is punished for hers. This quote becomes even more tragically ironic when Jivan discovers that PT Sir testifies against her character.

“I am glad for this small triumph. I have done nothing, I have done nothing, but nobody in this courtroom believes that. Only my mother. My mother is sitting somewhere behind me, but I have no courage to turn around and face all the other eyes.” 

When the judge refuses to allow Jivan’s coerced signed confession as evidence, Jivan and Gobind feel a flutter of hope. But Jivan’s acknowledgement that nobody but her mother believes in her innocence foreshadows the inevitable conclusion: Jivan’s sentencing to execution. Despite the hope and resilience that Jivan tried to hold on to earlier, reality sinks in during her trial. She knows, even though she still can’t quite believe, that everyone is choosing to believe in her guilt instead of seeing her for who she truly is.

“And Azad has not come to see me even once. I am wiping my tears on my dupatta. I was forced to, my heart, is he not knowing that? It was not me who was throwing him out. It was this society. This same society which is now screaming for the blood of innocent Jivan, only because she is a poor Muslim woman.” 

In a dark mood, Lovely reflects on the people she has known who have become victims of her society. This quote perfectly captures Majumdar’s main criticism of societies that rob individuals of their free will and potential. Azad, Lovely, and Jivan each represent different stories about oppression, but the source of their hardship is the same.

“When I am thinking about it, I am truly feeling that Jivan and I are both no more than insects. We are no more than grasshoppers whose wings are being plucked. We are no more than lizards whose tails are being pulled. Is anybody believing that she was innocent? Is anybody believing that I can be having some talent?” 

Lovely emphasizes the dehumanization she and Jivan endure throughout their lives. The comparison between humans and bugs is paralleled in later chapters when Jivan is placed in solitary confinement below ground, with only cockroaches to keep her company. Just as people flick bugs away, so too are Jivan and Lovely dismissed from the care that people are capable of showing one another in a community.

“All these men are lecturing on me! They are having different opinions on whether I am right or foolish, whether Jivan is innocent or evil, but at least they are all discussing me on what they are calling prime-time news!” 

Lovely’s sudden notoriety is partly due to her role in Jivan’s trial. What Lovely learns early on in her new position in the public eye is that even bad publicity can be good publicity, as it puts your name out there for everyone to see. Even though Lovely is on Jivan’s side, she ultimately benefits from Jivan’s trial, demonstrating how influential social media is in influencing and defining public opinion.

“What did he witness today? With each turn of the ceiling fan’s blades, he knows, and he refuses to know. He pulls a blanket up to his chin, and covers his ears in the warm cloth. He knows what he watched, and in watching and not lifting a finger, condoned. He is no less than a murderer.”

This quote depicts the first time the reader sees PT Sir’s vulnerability. He is finally shocked by the depths of immorality that people can succumb to. After witnessing the heinous murder of the Muslim family, PT Sir feels real guilt and horror. Although he does think of his own career, ultimately nothing Bimala Pal tells him comforts him. Here, Majumdar reveals PT Sir’s actual humanity.

“PT Sir is no longer a PT Sir. At this thought he feels mournful. The defiant and silly girls were children, after all. Walking down the lane, he looks back at the building one more time. In the barred windows, ponytailed heads appear. He feels a tug of nostalgia for his old life, and then, in a moment, it is gone.” 

PT Sir has desired to walk away from his thankless job as a PT teacher at an all-girls school since the beginning of the novel. But when the moment finally arrives, PT Sir is surprised that he is not as happy as he thought he would be. This highlights the integrity of PT Sir’s previous job in contrast with his morally bankrupt but lucrative job working for the party. Things were simpler and kinder when PT Sir was a teacher, but in the end, he does get what he wants: glory, power, and respect. This quote emphasizes PT Sir’s humanity, which he buries deep to keep up with the party’s gaslighting.

“Her words are feeling to me like Azad’s embrace when we were falling in love, like a tub full of syrupy roshogolla whose sugar is flowing in my veins, like Mr. Debnath accepting me to his acting class. It is feeling like Ragini’s hands in mine, our laughter during the national activity of watching TV together in the evening.” 

When Lovely’s dreams comes true, she equates the feeling with falling in love, being with her best friend, sweet sugar, and her first acting opportunity with Mr. Debnath. This quote emphasizes the incredulous turn of events for Lovely, who has been disappointed and heartbroken by nearly every happy moment in her life. But now, in a reflection of what used to make her happy, Majumdar foreshadows Lovely’s future success and permanent happiness.

“This child is having the face of Jivan, daughter of those poor parents, donor of pencils and textbooks. How is she living, alone in some dark cell? Even if she is not feeling the knife at her neck, I am feeling myself holding it. Now, my face thick with makeup, my hair stiff with gels, I am knowing what Arjuni Ma was truly telling me: In this world, only one of us can be truly free, Jivan, or me. Every day, I am making my choice, and I am making it today also.” 

This quote captures the essential conundrum of the novel’s plot: Not every character can win. Not every person’s dream comes true. Furthermore, in order for one person to succeed against all odds, there is a required sacrifice of other people who will fail. Though Majumdar doesn’t view this as fair, having Lovely achieve success somewhat lessons the blow of Jivan’s opposite fate.

“‘Don’t treat me like I am stupid,’ I shout. I don’t know why I am shouting. I have a voice, I remind myself. This is my voice. It booms. It startles. ‘The country needs someone to punish,’ I tell him. ‘And I am that person.’” 

Even at her lowest point, Jivan tries to keep her humanity. She reminds herself that she has a voice, that she can fight, that she can be angry, even when all hope is lost. This quote acknowledges that Jivan is a scapegoat and demonstrates the rage she feels, the same rage that Majumdar invites her readers to feel.

“But the letter lands on an indifferent desk. Days pass. Weeks too. Maybe the minister’s assistant glances at it, no more. Maybe they are overwhelmed by letters from prison. Who am I except one of many? My pen grows feeble. What can words do? Not very much.” 

This quote highlights the layered symbolism of Jivan’s character. She is not just a scapegoat but also a warning to others. What happened to Jivan could happen to anyone, and in fact did happen to many women who came before her in the same prison. Who is she except one of many? This question is Majumdar’s real challenge to her reader, who is invited to wonder about the futility of Jivan’s journey and death, and about the individual’s struggle to fight for justice against a society.