55 pages • 1 hour read
Anita DesaiFasting, Feasting
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A 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 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part One: India
Chapter 4 Summary
Chapter 4 relates two key events: 1) the relationship between Uma and the family’s senior servant, Ayah and 2), the periodic visits of, Mira-masi, a devout Hindu and distant relative of Mama’s. In the opening scene, Uma has her hair brushed by Ayah, who has served the family since Uma was three. Ayah, who helped raise her, calls her “Baby,” even though she is a grown woman; she complains ceaselessly about her daughter, Lakshmi, dismissing her as a ne’er-do-well and melodramatically laments her selfless sacrifice and suffering for an ungrateful daughter. When Uma responds by reminding Ayah that she is well-fed, dressed and taken care of in their household, Ayah points to her faded and torn sari, playing the martyr and manipulating Uma into giving her some of her own clothes.
The second scene of the chapter describes Mira-masi’s visits to the home. Mira-masi is the second or third wife of a distant relative who passed away. Now a widow, Mira-masi travels the country visiting her relatives. While Mama normally loves visits and the respite of family gossip they provide, she seems to resent Mira-masi’s visits for their inconvenience. Not only is Mira-masi devoutly religious, a piety that Mama finds distasteful, but she is also a strict vegetarian, refusing to eat the meat dishes that are often served at the family table. While Mama resents these visits, Uma finds them to be a joyful respite. She loves Mira-masi’s famous Ladoo sweets, and her trips with Mira-masi to the Hindu temples makes her feel closer to the romantic and spiritual dimensions of life that often seem far away in the purely superficial and material domain of the family compound. The chapter ends with Mira-masi ritualistically bathing in the Ganges River, so caught up in the ceremony that she fails to notice when Uma nearly drowns in the river. This scene reinforces the parents’ belief that Uma and Mira-masi are partners in trouble.
Chapter 5 Summary
Chapter 5 details the unannounced visit of another relative, Mama and Papa’s nephew, Ramu, and Uma’s trip to an Ashram with Mira-masi. Like Mira-masi, Ramu is a controversial figure within the family. Although Uma is overjoyed to see him arrive in a rickshaw, covered in dust and grime, Mama and Papa receive their nephew coldly, Ramu, according to the parents, is the black sheep of the family, a willful non-conformist who mocks conventional customs, and, allegedly, abused alcohol and drugs. To exacerbate this tension, Ramu seems to take great pleasure in ruffling his Aunt and Uncle’s pretentious and rigid feathers. He takes Uma out for dinner at the Carlton in spite of the parents’ protests, openly defying societal and cultural strictures against unmarried men accompanying unmarried women. At the Carlton, Ramu orders drinks, insists on making requests to the reluctant band and cracks jokes that send Uma screaming with laughter. The joy of this scene is contrasted sharply by their arrival home. Papa is furious and Mama shoves Uma into her room, calling her a hussy and a disgrace.
Uma enjoys another escape from the rigidity of her home in the chapter’s second scene. Mira-masi, seriously ill, insists on traveling to an ashram she believes will serve medicinal purposes. Because of her illness, she requests that Uma accompany her on this trip. While the parents are reluctant to let Uma leave, given Mira-masi’s condition, they relent and allow their daughter to accompany her.
On the bus trip, Mira-masi’s condition seems to improve. She is enthusiastic about the journey that she breaks out in a spiritual song, inspiring the bus crowd to echo her shouts in unison. Uma, on the other hand, has a miserable trip in the crowded bus. She gets carsick and has to vomit out the bus window, much to Mira-masi’s horror.
Arriving at the ashram, Uma is struck by the unguarded freedom and solitude of the grounds, where the pilgrims spend the entire day, apart from the morning and evening prayers, in complete silence. During her trips with her aunt to the temple for the evening prayers, Uma is struck by the contrast between the impassioned singing of the priest and pilgrims and the total emotional repression of her parents’ home.
Other than these trips, Uma spends her days wandering the river or hills picking berries and observing the natural scenery. Returning late one evening from these trips, Uma is startled, fearing punishment, when Mira-masi seizes her, holds her down, kneels in front of her and stares intensely into her eyes. Rather than punishing her, Mira-masi tells her she has been chosen and marked by the Lord, an utterance that only leaves Uma more terrified, and she launches into a violent fit, much like the scene with Mother Agnes at the convent school. Hearing the commotion, the priests discover Uma in what Mira-masi calls a “divine possession.” One of the pilgrims, a former doctor, seeing her turning blue and purple from a lack of oxygen, lifts Uma up and slaps her on the back much like a baby, and she begins to breathe again. Surrounded by a crowd of pilgrims and priests, Uma sends the crowd fleeing when she vomits all over the floor, once again mortifying Mira-masi.
After this scene, the pilgrims and priests become curious about and respectful of Uma. While they see her childlike immaturity and simplicity, they now view her with reverence. This reverence is reinforced by their next trip to the temple, where the head priest invites her in and gazes directly at her while singing a song about the “golden form” and presence of the Lord.
Ramu and Arun show up unexpectedly at the ashram, and while Uma is initially overjoyed by the surprise visit, it becomes clear that they have arrived, under strict orders from Mama and Papa, to bring her home. Mira-masi, angered by the disruption and reluctant to let them take Uma, engages in an intense standoff with Ramu, which Ramu wins by engaging in slapstick jokes and gestures that he knows will make Uma laugh. Uma joins them on the return journey, only realizing when it is too late that she is being taken home. Attempting to jump out the cart, Uma is placated with the offering of sweet samosas.
Chapter 6 Summary
Chapter 6 begins with the annual visit of the local jeweler, who tries to persuade Mama to buy his wares and makes customary jokes that humiliate Uma, wondering aloud if this is the year she will be married. Uma, now gray-haired, is well past marital age in this society, and everyone knows it.
The topic of marriage continues with the story of Mama and Papa’s niece, Anamika, the feminine jewel of the family. Anamika, like her own father, Papa’s brother, enjoys an animated rivalry with Aruna. Both are pretty and highly accomplished in school; however, Anamika is supremely diplomatic and socially graceful unlike her cousin, the edgier and ambitious Aruna. Whereas her brother Ruma is the black sheep of the family, she is the family ideal by which all the other children are measured. In spite of all her accomplishments, including a letter of acceptance and scholarship to Oxford University, Anamika is not allowed to attend college. Instead, her parents use the scholarship to elevate her status as a marriageable bride. They end up arranging for her to marry a man as accomplished as Anamika. While this man has prestigious medals and advanced degrees, these accomplishments only fuel his pride and arrogance. To the family’s shock, he is much older than Anamika and seems to ignore her and everyone else at the wedding ceremony. He is focused instead on his mother, who he looks and acts like. After the wedding, Anamika is abused verbally and physically by her husband and mother-in-law. Her husband beats her to the point of miscarriage, leaving her unable to bear future children and devaluing her in a culture that measures wives by their ability to bear children, particularly boys.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Chapters 4-6 develop our understanding of the complex relationships within the family through its multiple episodes. In the first scene, Ayah’s relationship with Uma, the daughter of her employers, is distinctly different than it is with Mama and Papa. While Ayah has served the family and helped raise the children, even coming out of retirement to help after Arun’s birth, she constantly has to prove her value around Papa, who frequently suggests that they would save money by replacing her with Uma. To placate Papa, Ayah makes sure she is always busy whenever he looks her way. To placate Mama, Ayah literally waits on her hand-and-foot, massaging her feet and treating her with the utmost care. Even though she has worked for this family for decades, she is kept on edge and feels she must constantly please her masters to keep her job.
Her relationship with Uma is a different matter. During the hair-brushing scene, she is casual and much less guarded, even referring to the grown Uma as “baby.” There seems to be much greater intimacy between the two, which makes sense given that Ayah helped raise Uma from early childhood. While she lives in fear of Mama and Papa, Ayah uses her intimacy with Uma to her advantage, melodramatically complaining about her selfless sacrifice to an ungrateful daughter and her own poor state of dress and appearance as a result. These complaints seem to be an oft-repeated ritual, much like the orange ceremony in the previous chapter. Playing on Uma’s sympathy and softness, Ayah receives new clothes from Uma. Though Uma is of higher social rank, the chapter reveals that she is manipulated and outmaneuvered by the servants as well as her parents.
Given the way the household structure entraps and controls Uma, it makes sense that Mira-masi’s visits are a welcome relief. Unlike her parents, Mira-masi centers her life around her Hindu faith, and not an obsessive adherence to maintaining a cloak of power and privilege. While Mama and Papa express contempt for her uncompromising adherence to faith, Uma admires Mira-masi’s piety, finding in it a more substantial, romantic, and soulful purpose than the frivolous world of Mama and Papa. Her parents, seeing her close relationship and attraction to Mira-masi’s spiritualism, lump them both together as “trouble-makers.”
Chapter 5 portrays dramatic tension between Uma and her parents. While they scorn Ramu’s anti-conventional and rebellious behavior, Uma adores him. He represents freedom and pleasure, taking her to the Carlton for dinner, alcohol and music and ignoring conventional rules that forbid unmarried men and women from going out unaccompanied. While the parents fear their simple daughter’s corruption at the hands of their corrupted nephew, the scene at the Carlton is a welcome and joyful escape from the joyless confines of the family compound. Here, Uma laughs at Ramu’s jokes, enjoys the music and takes pleasure from food and drink. Later, her return home to furious parents, who toss her forcefully and immediately back into her room and call her a hussy and a disgrace, symbolizes a return to the routine imprisonment of her domestic life.
While offering a very different sort of escape from the outing with Ramu, Uma’s trip to the ashram with Mira-masi is even more revealing in its characterization of Uma. In the silence, solitude and freedom of the ashram, Uma is the happiest she has ever been. Allowed to roam the grounds freely during the day, the ashram and the pilgrims are the antithesis of her family compound and parents. The priests and pilgrims sing and pray passionately, abandoning their self-awareness and allowing themselves to become completely unguarded and swept up in the spirit of prayer. Mama and Papa, on the other hand, live their whole lives in strict and constant obedience to maintaining complete self-control and the appearance of respect and propriety. So used to her parents’ punishments, Uma is shocked and terrified when her aunt seizes her and proclaims that she is marked and chosen by god. Much like the earlier scene with Mother Agnes, Uma’s terror leads to a disturbing and violent fit. The pilgrims and priests see this fit not as a sign of something unholy or disturbing, but as a sign of her blessedness. They treat her with reverence and respect, even directly acknowledging her during temple ceremonies. While Uma has never been happier, her retreat is short-lived, as her parents dispatch her cousin Ramu and brother Arun, to bring her home.
The standoff between Ramu and Mira-masi over Uma’s fate is fascinating on many levels. On one hand, Mira-masi genuinely admires Uma’s innocent faith and effortless piety. Her desire to keep her niece at the ashram illustrates her understanding of the healing powers of the ashram. Ironically, Mira-masi was brought here to heal, but it is actually Uma who is beginning to heal from the damage done by her parents. With the healing unfinished, she desperately wants to keep Uma at the ashram, knowing it will benefit her. Ramu, on the other hand, is only doing her parents bidding. While he is normally a non-conformist when it suits his needs, he is all too willing to serve her father and manipulate the simple Uma into coming back home. His jokes prove to be double-edged. They both make Uma laugh and entice her to his side. Ramu ultimately wins the battle of wills and brings Uma home from the ashram. Like most of her family, he is yet another character who manipulates and takes advantage of Uma’s childlike simplicity.
As in previous chapters, social customs like marriage reinforce the gross gender inequality prevalent in Indian culture. In spite of Anamika’s perfection—her beauty, academic brilliance, and social grace—all of her gifts are ultimately vulnerable to the whims of whomever she marries. Her parents choose pedigree over suitability and marry Anamika off to a cruel and arrogant man who cares nothing for her beauty or accomplishments. Neglected and over-worked by both husband and mother-in-law, she is ultimately beaten to the point of miscarriage. Unable to bear future children because of the savage beating, the family worries, not about her well-being but about whether she will be sent home in disgrace now that she can’t bear children. Ultimately, this chapter illustrates the relative meaninglessness of Anamika’s perfection in a culture that only values women for their ability to serve their husbands and bear them children. Anamika, who worked extremely hard and did everything right, ends up barren, abused, and disgraced.
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By Anita Desai
