The Guide: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Continuing to tell his tale to Velan, Raju speaks of the two days he was forced to spend in lock-up after his arrest for forgery. Rosie visits him at the jail and cries when she sees him. When Raju is released and returns home, he finds everything different. Mani, his secretary, is silent. Rosie has stopped practicing. There are no visitors. As Raju had never been careful with money, Rosie had been forced to scrape up 10,000 rupees to secure his bail. Raju suggests that Rosie take up engagements to earn more.

Back in the house after his two days in jail, Raju realizes that he is now a “hanger-on,” and “that mastery ha[s] passed” on to Rosie. She treats him with disdain, and Raju, absorbed in self-pity, fails to see the predicament he has put her in: they are poor, in spite of all her tireless dancing.

Rosie wants to repay their debts. She considers going back to Marco. She says that she never wants to perform publicly again, after Raju’s disgrace. She also considers a suicide pact with Raju, but doesn’t trust that he will carry out his side of the bargain. Raju tries to convince Rosie to dance again, but she says she is tired of her circus existence. Finally, Rosie says that she will help Raju, but that when everything is over she wants him to leave her alone.

With Mani’s help, Rosie busies herself with booking engagements. Watching her, Raju becomes jealous of her self-sufficiency, realizing that she did not need him, and had never needed him nor Marco all along.

With the money that Rosie raises from her performances, she hires a reputable, but expensive, lawyer to defend Raju against Marco in the upcoming trial.

At the trial, Raju’s lawyer presents the chief villain as Marco, who, he argues, wanted to drive Rosie mad. It was Raju, the lawyer contends, who saved her from her cruel husband. He even goes so far as to argue that it was Marco himself who orchestrated the forging of the signature, but Mani’s testimony about Raju’s obsession with the arrival of the insured parcel, as well as the testimony of a handwriting expert, who deduces that the signature is in fact in Raju’s handwriting, seal Raju’s fate. Raju is sentenced to two years in prison. In the meantime, Rosie continues her dancing engagements to pay for the expensive trial.

In jail, Raju is a model prisoner, getting on well with both warders and prisoners. Raju adjusts himself to life in prison, content to take care of the prison superintendent’s garden and to stroll the 50 acres of the prison grounds.

The prison superintendent transfers Raju to his office to act as his personal assistant. While organizing the super’s newspapers, Raju comes across news of Nalini. He sees photos of her in the papers and reads reports of her engagements. She is growing more and more in fame and stature as a dancer, and he is affronted that she should have managed so well without him.

Raju wonders whether Mani, his old secretary, has taken his place in Rosie’s life. Mani had been his only visitor during his first months in jail. He had given Raju the news that Rosie had moved to Madras, and that a huge crowd had gathered in Malgudi to see her off. She had discharged all of the debts that Raju had accumulated. Mani further informs Raju that, after the trial, Marco and Rosie never met, going their separate ways.

On the last day of the trial, Raju’s mother had appeared. She had refused to let Rosie speak to her, and, directing her fury at Raju, told him that he has brought great shame on the family, and that it would have been better if he had died.