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Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Henna Artist, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Choice, Independence and Women’s Freedoms
Family and Responsibility
Societal Hierarchy vs. Unordered Intimacy
Care and Communication
Creativity vs. Possession
Summary
Analysis
By April, the Rajnagar house is nearly ready. At Malik’s urging, Radha agrees to hold a welcome ceremony. Though Malik is Muslim, like many Muslims who stayed after Partition, he often participates in Hindu festivals. To celebrate the new house, Malik hangs mango leaves, a symbol of fertility that makes Lakshmi a little uncomfortable.
Once again, the societal divides of public life (in this case, the religious divide between Hindus and Muslims) are less stark in private. Lakshmi’s anxieties about the mango leaves are likely a response to Hari’s abuse, which centered on pressuring her to get pregnant.
Themes
Malik has promised to get a pandit, and Radha—who is eager to stop sleeping on the stone floor of Mrs. Iyengar’s place—will cook. While the trio cleans every surface, the pandit arrives and begins unloading his supplies. Lakshmi can’t help noticing that he looks a little like Gandhi. Soon enough, the new neighbors all begin to arrive. Though they are strangers, Malik has invited them all to the party with a box of sweets, as is customary. The Iyengars also come, though Mrs. Iyengar tries her best to be snobby.
Though this is, as Lakshmi explains, fairly standard procedure for a housewarming party, even these basic steps (hiring a pandit, buying sweets) are tremendously costly. In other words, merely keeping up with social norms can imperil Lakshmi’s already-fragile place in the middle class.
Themes
Lakshmi has not invited any of her “ladies,” but Kanta shows up anyway, probably at Radha’s request. Kanta is feeling sick in this stage of her pregnancy, but she puts on a bold face for Lakshmi. As the ritual begins, Lakshmi flashes back to her own meager wedding, when there was not enough money for even the most basic supplies.
Lakshmi’s resentment of marriage and family does not stem purely from ambition: instead, at every celebratory juncture, Lakshmi is reminded of the pain and scarcity in her past (like at her wedding to Hari). Kanta’s sickness in these early stages hints that her pregnancy might not go as smoothly as she hopes.
Themes
Lakshmi had begged her mother for help, but looking at the groove where her mother’s gold necklace used to be, she realized that her requests were fruitless—her maa was raised “not to defy, question, or contradict.” At the same time, she knew that once she married Hari and had children, she would lose all of her own identity and independence. Inadvertently, Lakshmi’s thoughts drift to her parents, and she wishes they were there.
In this critical passage, Lakshmi comes to terms with the ways misogyny is passed down—even (and sometimes especially) by those most harmed by it. Her mother knew that her own life was unfair, but she was taught to internalize this inequality as par for the course, and then raised her daughters under this harmful framework, because it was the only one she had ever known.
Themes
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The pandit continues with his ritual, as Radha runs to the bathroom for the third time in an hour. Though it is not hot, she is sweating, and she relies on Malik to fan her. Radha looks more and more like a woman every day—especially in the Western dress Kanta has made—and Lakshmi feels pride that her sister is maturing so quickly. The pandit and his assistants circle the house with red thread, sprinkling holy water, and Lakshmi hopes that the ritual will keep the house (and its inhabitants) safe from harm.
Radha’s mysterious illness parallels Kanta’s sickness, and perhaps links to Malik’s earlier warning that Radha needed to “be careful.” The ceremony that the pandit is performing is called a griha pravesh: a Hindu ritual designed to bring all of the elements (sun, earth, wind, fire, and air) into a new house so that life there will be balanced.
Themes
After the move-in ceremony is over, they can actually move in—but Radha falls asleep right away. Lakshmi unpacks the house and wonders if she should make ginger tea for Radha, as it always helps women in the early stages of pregnancy. Suddenly, she realizes that Radha must be pregnant. And worse still, Lakshmi has a sinking feeling about who the father is: Hari.
Lakshmi’s discovery of Radha’s pregnancy relies on her deep intuition as a healer—as always, she struggles to find words even as she can instinctively discover remedies. Lakshmi has no evidence that Hari abused her sister, so she is perhaps projecting her own experience onto Radha.
Themes
With Malik in tow, Lakshmi rushes through the center of Jaipur, asking various street vendors about Hari’s whereabouts. Finally, they find him asleep in a small, smelly, windowless room. Lakshmi lunges at him, using obscenities she has only ever heard men use.
Malik has his own version of the servant network that Lakshmi relies on for so much of her news and gossip—and in this moment of crisis, that network proves necessary.
Themes
The other men try to intervene, but Malik holds off while Lakshmi continues to kick and hit Hari. He stumbles as she accuses him of having sex with a child (“she’s like your sister,” she says of Radha). At last, Hari rights himself and grabs Lakshmi, ending her assault. Lakshmi cannot shake the image of her sister with this man, nor can she let go of the feeling that she is somehow responsible.
Lakshmi’s feeling of responsibility for her sister’s pregnancy displays the extent of her belief that family members are accountable for one another. In this tense moment, Lakshmi also begins to imagine a definition of family that goes beyond blood relation, framing Radha as Hari’s sister even though the two are not genetically related.
Themes
Lakshmi crumbles to a ball on the floor: “what a mess I’d made of my life, my parents’ life, my sister’s,” she mourns, “and for what? So I could live a life of my own?” Malik comes over to Lakshmi, repeating the phrase “Auntie-Boss, it’s me” over and over again. Lakshmi tells Malik to go home, but he refuses, determined to protect her.
Lakshmi needed to build a life on her “own”—both for her mental well-being and as a basic question of safety. But that life did not come without a painful separation from the people she loved best. Lakshmi’s private journey to independence thus mirrors the nation’s complex independence, in which moments of separation (namely Partition) caused great pain despite their necessity. Even as Lakshmi bemoans the fact that she’s alone, though, Malik is there for her, suggesting Lakshmi’s family is broader and more present than she realizes.
Themes
Undeterred, Lakshmi pushes Hari to tell her how long he has been sleeping with Radha—but Hari is genuinely shocked at the suggestion. Instead, he explains that she “offered” herself as payment for his transporting her to Jaipur, but he refused. Lakshmi knows Hari well enough to know that if he were lying, he would be covering his scar, which he isn’t doing.
Like her sister, Radha understands the ways gender, sexuality, and class can intersect with and complicate each other. In addition to revealing Radha as more sexually knowledgeable than Lakshmi previously thought, this exchange also demonstrates just how desperate Radha was to leave Ajar.
Themes
Lakshmi then wants to know how Radha got her bruises, and Hari explains they came from the truck driver they hitch-hiked with. He had tried to assault Radha, but Hari had stepped in. Hari then asks Lakshmi a cutting question: “will you take her child like you took ours?” Lakshmi had, indeed, taken Lakshmi's saas’s treatments to prevent her own pregnancies—but she hadn’t known that Hari was aware of that fact. Still, Lakshmi reflects that “cotton bark could change a woman’s life: she could choose for herself.”
This passage, one of the most pivotal in the whole book, reveals why Lakshmi feels so passionately about her abortive and contraceptive offerings: because she, too, relied on them for her hard-won freedom. In Lakshmi’s eyes, a woman’s ability to “choose for herself” about what happens to her body is the ultimate key to personal independence—if she had given birth to Hari’s children, Lakshmi would never have been able to run away, much less to build her life and business in Jaipur.
Themes
Hari begins pacing, telling Lakshmi about the weeks after she left him. He had worried that she was with another man, while his mother had been permanently saddened by the loss of her daughter-in-law. Worst of all, when Hari’s mom learned Lakshmi had escaped, she’d congratulated her, proud of her for taking their money and running. Lakshmi realizes that all along, Lakshmi's saas had been rooting for her to leave—a fact that, to this day, hurts Hari deeply.
Lakshmi’s saas’s support for her daughter-in-law suggests that sometimes, female solidarity can be bigger than societal expectations or blood ties. This is exactly the kind of network Lakshmi hopes for from her ladies in Jaipur, even if her hopes are continually disappointed by women like Parvati.
Themes
Hari reveals that now, he has taken over from his mother, helping women to heal and prevent unwanted pregnancies. At first, Lakshmi is shocked, and Hari admits that he used to be furious at the idea of abortion. Over time, though, as he saw the domestic violence other women were subjected to, he’d realized why his mother’s services were so necessary. Eventually, he began to realize how gravely he had hurt Lakshmi, too.
Hari’s change in perspective shows how important communication is to caretaking—only when Hari listened to others’ pain and anxiety around childbirth could he reconsider his relationship with Lakshmi. For Lakshmi, Hari, and the other caretakers in the story, this kind of empathy will prove as essential as it is elusive.
Themes
Hari also tells Lakshmi that the only reason he had come to Jaipur was because Radha had lied about the contents of her sister’s letter. Instead of telling Hari the truth, she had said that Lakshmi hoped to fix their marriage. This story amazes Lakshmi, especially the fact that Hari is “trying” to change. Lakshmi knows that she will never forgive Hari, but that just as she has changed since they were together, she has to trust the same thing has happened to him.
Lakshmi now returns the favor, “trying” her best to see from Hari’s eyes just as he has seen from hers. This grace is especially important in Lakshmi’s time and place: the caste system might not leave room for people to transform their stations in life, but Lakshmi and Hari can have more flexibility in the way they view each other.
Themes
Lakshmi is so overwhelmed she can barely stand, but still, Hari continues. He reveals that he loved her long before they were married—the way she’d walk by the river, as if on a mission. Then, he asks for more money, though this time, Lakshmi is sure it is for the girls he helps. Malik peers out from behind the door and offers a solution.
The tension between independence and responsibility is, for Lakshmi, also a contest between her own material wealth and her desire to give generously to others. Only with Malik’s craftiness—his skill with under-the-table deals—can she perhaps manage a way to be both independent and responsible for those in need.
Themes
Lakshmi returns to the Rajnagar house, waking Radha as she rushes to find matches. In turmoil, Lakshmi apologizes to Radha—that she felt the need to offer herself to Hari, and now, that she is pregnant. But to Lakshmi’s surprise, Radha has not realized her own pregnancy. When she figures it out, “her eyes softened, as if recalling a memory, a pleasant one.”
Radha’s softening eyes suggest that her pregnancy stems not from assault or abuse but from a desired (“pleasant”) sexual encounter.
Themes
Frantically, Lakshmi looks for the cotton root bark, assuming they will abort the baby. While Lakshmi tries to figure out who assaulted her little sister, Radha pushes back, asking what might happen if she keeps her baby. It hits Lakshmi that Radha had consensual sex, and in the heat of this realization, Lakshmi runs at her sister. Though Radha believes that the father of the baby loves her, Lakshmi is firm that her sister was taken advantage of. Radha bursts into tears.
Lakshmi seems to have no consensual sexual encounters in her past, which perhaps explains why she did not ever suspect Radha could have wanted to have sex. Fascinatingly, in this moment, the cotton bark becomes not a tool of choice but a tool of force—Radha wants to keep the baby, but Lakshmi is insistent that she abort it.
Themes
As Lakshmi begins to prep the cotton root tea, Radha begins to insult Lakshmi’s practice (“how you make babies disappear”), her voice like a “dagger.” Radha is frustrated that Lakshmi seems only to prioritize her reputation, tying herself in knots so that the “ladies” she works for will not think less of her. Radha continues to insist that she will marry the baby’s father, though it is clear she has not thought any of the logistics through.
Though Lakshmi banned Radha from the palace because she felt her sister did not understand Jaipur’s “nuances,” it is clear Radha knows exactly how powerful rumor can be—after all, she has experienced the force of the “gossip-eaters” and their taunts firsthand, albeit back in Ajar.
Themes
Lakshmi explains that in order to build the wealth Radha would need to have a baby, she would need to work for years, timed filled with “Yes, Ji and No, Ji and Whatever you say, Ji.” Radha, parroting her lover, retorts that Lakshmi only sees her as a servant. If Lakshmi trusts her to make henna, why doesn’t she trust her to make decisions? The words pain Lakshmi deeply, “worse than any insult” from her ladies—especially when she considers all she has done to feed and clothe Radha.
In one of the great paradoxes of Lakshmi’s life, her own material and circumstantial independence can only stem from her willingness to depend completely on the will (the “yesses” and “nos”) of the fancy ladies she works for. Lakshmi is deeply hurt by the fact that her financial efforts—which come at no small cost to her—are not legible to her sister as love and protection.
Themes
Lakshmi finishes the tea, but instead of drinking it, Radha takes off through the night. Exhausted, Lakshmi collapses and tries to figure out who the father of Radha’s baby is. She considers Samir but decides that is not his pattern. Stuck, Lakshmi decides to call Kanta, and feels shame that her sister has run away from home. She reflects that this shame was probably exactly what her parents felt, years ago.
Lakshmi’s weary humiliation at having to call Kanta affirms her earlier comment that familial shame spreads like “oil on wax paper”—quickly, permanently, and in unpredictable ways. Again, Radha’s impulsive decisions begin to parallel her sister’s, even though neither Lakshmi nor Radha notice this alignment.
Themes
The next morning, Lakshmi searches for Radha; as she does, her mother’s old phrase (“men will eat even unripe fruit if it’s placed in front of them”) rattles around in her head. Lakshmi wonders if she should have stayed with Hari and his children, because maybe that would have protected Radha. Fortunately, when Kanta comes over she explains that Radha has been at her house all night.
Lakshmi does not think Samir is at fault, but she witnessed firsthand how this older man immediately (and openly) sexualized her sister. The fact that Lakshmi’s maa helplessly accepts the “unripe” (pedophilic) desires of so many older men represents another way in which patriarchy protects even the most debauched men.
Themes
Kanta has been crying all night. She blames herself for Radha’s predicament, believing that Radha was led astray by the Western books and movies Kanta exposed her to. Lakshmi reflects that Radha’s imagination “had been pried open,” while Kanta laments “all that talk of love and romance. Fine for English girls, but not for Indian ones.” Lakshmi looks down at her terrazzo floor, and her tears blur the pattern. Though she tries to be kind, she has no energy to comfort Kanta.
Kanta is by far the most Westernized woman in the novel, but even she struggles to separate her new ideas from the more traditional gender roles she was raised with. Interestingly, Kanta’s comment also reflects the power of art to impact how people see the world: just as Lakshmi’s henna can have healing impacts, Marilyn Monroe movies have proven tremendously influential (in a mostly dangerous way) on Radha’s psyche.
Themes
