49 pages • 1 hour read
Balli Kaur JaswalErotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A 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 15-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Kulwinder is told that the light is on in her office. She arrives to find it vandalized, and she quickly realizes that papers with Nikki’s personal information have been stolen. Manjeet has returned to class unexpectedly. When she sees the empty classroom, she heads to Kulwinder’s office.
Chapter 16 Summary
Tarampal is waiting outside Nikki’s apartment. Still believing that Maya died by suicide, Tarampal helps a man gain access to Nikki’s apartment; she lies to Nikki, telling her that Kulwinder gave her Nikki’s address, and lets the man inside after her. The man is Jagdev, Maya’s former husband and Tarampal’s lover. Jagdev is the man who followed Nikki outside Sheena’s home. He begins beating both of the women and sets Nikki’s apartment on fire. The women from the class, including Kulwinder, have arrived outside. At first, they try to prevent anyone from entering Nikki’s apartment, believing she is with a man and they are defending her honor. When they smell smoke, though, they break in and rescue her.
Chapter 17 Summary
Nikki wakes in the hospital. Kulwinder, who was injured recuing Nikki, is in the hospital too. The police will open a case to investigate Maya’s death.
Chapter 18 Summary
Nikki’s mother, who now knows that her daughter’s classes produced erotic stories, is angry with her. Nonetheless, she allays Nikki’s fear about her father’s death. Nikki had argued with her father shortly before he died, and she long believed he had died angry at her. However, her mother confirms that he was not; Nikki’s father loved her. Nikki also learns that Jason is divorced.
Chapters 15-18 Analysis
This section of the novel contains both the climax and the beginning of the falling action. The tension in the previous section, built with the use of foreshadowing as well as shorter chapters, culminates in the climax that begins with Chapter 15, in which Kulwinder realizes that Nikki is in imminent danger. At this moment, Kulwinder realizes that the Brothers are not behind the threatening phone calls or even her own daughter’s death. The Brothers are unemployed young men who appoint themselves morality police; they focus on harassing community members who decline to follow religious norms, such as by smoking or wearing immodest dress. Whoever has vandalized her office, however, has also urinated in it. The Brothers would never have desecrated a space within the gurdwara, or temple. Part of Kulwinder’s capacity to make this connection is thanks to the power of Erotic Storytelling as Female Empowerment. Having reconnected with her partner and with her instincts, Kulwinder is no longer blinded by an unjustified distaste for Nikki or her fear of the Brothers.
The following scene in Nikki’s apartment reveals the extent to which society conditions women to obey patriarchal authority and further emphasizes the importance of empowerment. Tarampal, who was married off by her family at the age of 10, is fully indoctrinated in the worst of patriarchal norms. In contrast, in the previous chapters, both Nikki and Sheena manifest the empowered they have gained since finding their voice through the stories. This empowerment allows them to make decisions about their relationships with men: Sheena chooses to pursue one, and Nikki chooses to end a relationship. This empowerment is also part of Nikki in particular finally facing The Challenges of a Hybrid Identity, as she integrates fully into her community while still retaining, in her own way, the Westernized values most important to her. Nikki’s transformation is rewarded by the loyalty of her new community of women; Kulwinder and the other women, also now empowered, barge into Nikki’s apartment and rescue her from burning alive.
In the falling action, the tension and action of the preceding climax declines. Chapter 17 finds Nikki and her chief rescuer, Kulwinder, both in the hospital. The police have agreed to open an investigation into Maya’s death, something Kulwinder has been trying to accomplish since her daughter’s death. In Chapter 18, Nikki also resolves a point of guilt that has been troubling her since her father’s death. He did not die angry with her, nor was their fight the cause of his death. Nikki’s mother’s reassurance, despite her own frustration with her daughter, provides Nikki with an opening for a reconciliation with her family. Taken together, these moments of familial healing across generations provide closure to the theme of Inter-Generational Tension Among Immigrants. Finding out that Jason has actually been divorced while they were dating also provides Nikki with an opening for a reconciliation with him.
