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Summary
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
In Ajar, a small village in the Uttar Pradesh state of India, a young girl named Radha carries everything she owns: her maa’s wedding sari, a book from her father, and a letter she has just received from Jaipur. As she walks, she hears the neighborhood ladies (“the gossip-eaters”) discussing her family’s history. Radha’s mother has just died, and her pitaji (father), who was a schoolmaster, passed away a few months ago. Radha is known as the Bad Luck Girl—in part because, prior to his death, her father was a known alcoholic who would abandon his family while drunk.
Right away, the novel establishes that family can be perilous just as easily as it can be protective. For one thing, neither of Radha’s parents has been able to support her, even long before their deaths. For another, Radha’s father’s struggles have a direct impact on the way she is perceived, as she is made to be responsible for his pain (because, according to the village gossips, the “Bad Luck” is her fault).
Themes
Once the “gossip-eaters” spot Radha, they go from whispering to shouting insults. They mock Radha’s blue eyes, saying that only white people have this coloring. And they recall Radha’s older sister, who mysteriously left the village 13 years ago—a few months before Radha was born. Different stories circulate about this sister, including that she dressed as a man to escape and that she works as a nautch girl (sex worker) in Agra, the nearest big city.
The blue eyes that Radha shares with her sister will become an important marker of identity—a thing the two sisters share that differentiates them from everyone else. It is also worth taking in the extent to which gender determines fate: if Radha’s sister was dressed as a man, presumably she had many possibilities, but as a woman, sex work was her main option for financial security.
Themes
Three days earlier, Radha consulted with Munchi, a disabled old man in the village. Munchi urged Radha to find her sister’s husband, whom she had abandoned long ago. He also gave Radha one of his leaf paintings, which depicts Radha’s namesake, a consort of the Hindu god Krishna. For good luck, Radha leaves the painted leaf at a shrine to Lord Ganesh, the Elephant God.
Radha’s sister now emerges as an increasingly central figure in the narrative—the north star by which Radha can navigate. Krishna and Ganesh are two of the most important Hindu deities; as is evident in the narrative, religion seems to play a bigger part in Indian rural life than it does in big cities like Jaipur.
Themes
Radha walks the 10 miles to her brother-in-law’s village. When she arrives, she finds him crouched in the bushes with a woman, listening intently. She wonders if he has remarried. Radha notices that this man has a big scar on his face. When the man notices Radha, his eyes widen in surprise—and out loud, he wonders if she is “Lakshmi?”
The novel’s fairytale logic, which embraces coincidences and happy endings, is on display here: just as Radha’s blue eyes tell readers something about her, this man’s big scar will also (later) externalize his traits. Importantly, this moment of the man behind the bushes could be read as a scene either of healing or of violence.
Themes
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