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 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Kulwinder prepares for a visit to India. She and Tarampal, one of Nikki’s students, used to be friends, but there’s bad blood now. Tarampal is annoyed by the stories and laughter of the other women in class, as she only wants to improve her English skills. The chapter embeds another erotic story, “The Shopkeeper and His Customer,” which introduces the use of fruit and vegetables in sexual innuendos. Tarampal storms out of class. In her absence, the women gossip about Kulwinder’s daughter, Maya, who was caught alone with a man. Manjeet does not know all the details; when it happened, she was in Canada visiting her son and pretending to mourn for her not-dead husband. Jason, the young man Nikki met smoking a cigarette outside the temple, comes to visit her at work. Nikki begins a friendship with Sheena, who is closest to her in age. Sheena has a budding romance with a Hindu colleague but holds back due to community pressures. The issue of colorism emerges, as well as foreshadowing of the Brothers, a group of young, self-appointed “morality police” (145).
Chapter 7 Summary
Kulwinder’s husband announces that he does not want to join Kulwinder on her trip to India this year. Feeling bad that Tarampal has quit the class, Nikki visits her home with a tape recorder and audio books, offering to continue her English studies. Kulwinder, suspicious about the nature of the class, lies about when she’ll return from India, planning to spy. Meanwhile, more women join the class, even studying an old Playboy magazine for inspiration. When it becomes apparent that Arvinder cheated on her husband, her recently widowed daughter and fellow student, Preetam, confronts her. Jason and Nikki go on a date and kiss. They discuss the family pressures of being the children of Indian immigrants.
Chapter 8 Summary
Nikki begins to enjoy Southall. She recalls how, in her childhood, she loved dressing the same as her sister. Some of the women dislike the story “Meera and Rita,” which features lesbians, but others point out that these kinds of relationships exist in India too. Socio-economic differences among the women become clear, and the women compare the life of Nikki’s urban and privileged mother, who went to university in India, with their own lives in villages. Tarampal, for example, was married at just 10 years old; even now, she maintains a patriarchal approach to life, bringing each of her teenage daughters in turn to India to secure a husband. Nikki’s relationship with Jason becomes intimate, although he only wants to stay at her place, using his flatmate as an excuse. Maya was married to a friend of Tarampal’s family, Jagdev, and the couple lived at Number 16 across the street from Maya’s parents. However, rumors suggest that Maya was involved with a white British man and pressured to marry the Indian man to save her reputation. Maya died by suicide, allegedly; the story is that she doused herself with petrol and set herself on fire. Tarampal is having renovations done to her home.
Chapter 9 Summary
Nikki has nightmares about Maya. She’s further disturbed as Jason keeps receiving phone calls that cause him to mysteriously leave, once even in the middle of a date. Sam, the pub owner, has hired a new worker, so Nikki has to work in the kitchen with the Russian workers, who are convinced she and Sam are having an affair. The women write a new story, “Dancing in the Rain,” but it turns out that Preetam plagiarized it from an erotic television show that aired late at night. They decide instead to revise the “Rita and Meera” story to give it a more empowering twist ending. Marjeet visits her sick husband, whose girlfriend has abandoned him. The erotic stories circulate to friends, and more and more women want to join the class. The women also discuss Tarampal’s extorting prayer business, which is how she has money for renovations. Sheena goes on a secret date with her Hindu friend. Nikki grows suspicious that Tarampal is not telling the truth about Maya’s past.
Chapter 10 Summary
Kulwinder returns from India and hears from her husband that the writing class has grown in popularity. Kulwinder accepts full blame, including from her husband, for Maya’s death. Jason tells Nikki that they need to talk. Nikki spots someone on an old newscast wearing a necklace now worn by one of her students; she thereby learns of Sheena’s connection to Karina and Karina’s friend, Gulshan, who was also killed. Sheena suggests that Maya was in fact murdered.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
As the women’s discussions and stories become more varied, the novel explores new aspects of the Inter-Generational Tension Among Immigrants.
For example, the stories in these chapters show the influence of Western magazines and television, and one features two women. The former is a nod to globalization, which has contributed to the gap between generations. Western influence is now present throughout the world, even in insular neighborhoods like Southall; the older generation did not grow up with such a ubiquitous presence of Western culture. The story featuring two women, in turn, challenges some of the more traditional women in the class. These older women attempt to attribute any gender or sexuality nonconformity to that Western influence. However, other women in the class rightly point out the power structures that merely silenced LGBTQ+ people; in much the sense that these women are silenced by their community, forced to hide parts of themselves for the comfort of others, many people in India are doing the same. These conversations build bridges and empathy between the women, helping to ease tensions. The class returning to the story of the two women to rewrite the ending parallels the women’s growing solidarity and capacity to use their voices for change.
Storylines that initially appeared separate begin to connect in these chapters. This interweaving of seemingly disparate storylines reflects the theme of The Challenges of a Hybrid Identity, which also involves bringing together seemingly disparate parts of oneself. For example, Tarampal and her damaged friendship with Kulwinder have a connection with the tragedy of Maya’s death. Nikki also discovers that Sheena has a connection to Karina Kaur’s murder. Sheena, in turn, tells Nikki that Maya was likely been murdered as well.
The concept of an “honor killing” is an important one in these chapters, and it forms a dark undercurrent throughout the novel. In an honor killing, a woman is killed by her family or community members for having brought dishonor or shame. Honor killings often relate to engaging in what the community views as inappropriate behavior. Such behavior may include engaging (or being suspected of having engaged) in premarital or relationships with members of the same sex or even refusing to accept an arranged marriage. While honor killings do occur throughout the Middle East and South Asia, the Punjab region has a high occurrence rate compared to other areas of India (Grewal, Puneet Kaur. Killings for Honour: A Culture of Silence. Bookwell Publications, 2021).
The narrative also starts to reveal other secrets in this section, hinting at the real nature and complicated depth of the female characters. Tarampal, who presents herself as a serious and conservative woman of high moral standing, extorts others. While she quits the English course, appalled by the women’s stories, she has followed in her deceased husband’s footsteps and extorted desperate members of her own community who shared secrets in the hope that she would perform prayer intercessions. Rather than supporting or empowering other women, as the erotic stories do, Tarampol has maintained a self-serving patriarchal control over their lives. It’s therefore ironic that she views the erotic stories with such disdain. By supporting the patriarchal system, Tarampol supports her own oppression and that of other women; her behavior is not unique, especially in more conservative or religious societies. Nonetheless, the author strives to write Tarampol as fully human. Tarampol, married at age 10, has been conditioned to believe in the system from birth. Tarampol’s example augments the revolutionary nature of the women’s discussions surrounding Meera and Rita’s story, exemplifying Erotic Storytelling as Female Empowerment. Namely, the story about the two women initially inverts the power balance; once rewritten, the two women even get what they each desire.
