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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Vendor of Sweets, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Communication vs. Fear
Generational Difference
Commerce, Taste, and the Good Life
Religion
India vs. the U.K. and the U.S.
Summary
Analysis
Jagan, anxious and preoccupied, goes through his workday in a daze. While he counts his cash, he internally compares his inability to understand Mali to the warrior Arjuna’s inability to comprehend the entirety of God in the Bhagavad Gita—though he knows the comparison is rather sacrilegious.
While Jagan may feel that comparing his relationship with Mali to Arjuna’s relationship with God in the Bhagavad Gita is blasphemous, the spontaneous comparison nevertheless shows how Hinduism helps Jagan interpret important aspects of his life, in this case his repeated failures to communicate with or understand his son.
Themes
That evening, sitting on a colonial statue pedestal near his house, Jagan recalls traveling to a village called Kuppam to meet a possible bride suggested to him by older family members. In a flashback, Jagan’s older brother comes along as a chaperone on the trip. When they arrive at the possible bride’s house, her family greets him in an outer area of the house and asks Jagan polite questions about his journey while Jagan tries to cultivate the quiet mystique appropriate to a bridegroom. The whole time, Jagan looks around trying to get a glimpse of the possible bride, of whom he has only seen a poor-quality photograph.
By explaining how Jagan got married, the novel is implicitly contrasting the romantic and sexual mores of Jagan’s generation with those of Mali and Grace’s generation. Jagan’s older family members selected a possible bride for him, and Jagan’s older brother accompanied him to meet her—in stark contrast with how Mali met Grace, by chance and unchaperoned in the U.S.
Themes
When the possible bride’s family serves food, Jagan wants to eat it all—he hasn’t yet given up salt and sugar—but his brother gives him a stern look, so Jagan eats little, pretending that he is only eating out of courtesy to his hosts. Afterward, his possible mother-in-law invites the party into the house proper. Jagan knows he shouldn’t act too eager to see his possible bride—he has ruined four previous visits to possible brides by staring at the girls, hence his older brother’s presence as a chaperone on this trip. Yet he feels impatient.
Mali resents whenever Jagan tries to get involved in his life—perhaps especially when Jagan tries to get involved in his dispute with Grace. By contrast, Jagan is excited and impatient to meet the possible bride that his older family members have selected for him. This contrast shows the difference in cultural attitudes between Mali’s generation and Jagan’s.
Themes
The party sits in the home’s central hall. Jagan hears a harmonium playing and a rather deep woman’s voice—Ambika’s—singing inside. Then, after several people urge the shy Ambika to emerge, she does—only for Jagan, vision “clouded with a happy haze,” to miss most details of her appearance. Yet she shoots him a “lightning glance” that makes his heart race. Then, abruptly, the visit ends.
The “happy haze” that Jagan experiences in Ambika’s presence and the “lightning glance” she sends him suggests that they become infatuated with each other at first sight. This immediate infatuation implies that quasi-arranged marriages aren’t necessarily less romantic than spontaneous romances of Mali’s generation—and indeed may be more romantic, given Mali’s commercial and exploitative attitude toward Grace.
Themes
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As Jagan and his brother begin their journey home, Jagan is thoughtful and silent. At the rail station, Jagan admits he likes Ambika, and his brother says he hopes Jagan hasn’t been “a fool” and hasn’t “cheapened” himself by saying as much to her relatives. Jagan assures his brother that he hasn’t—though he was longing to exchange another look of love with Ambika before he left.
Jagan’s brother believes that Jagan would have “cheapened” himself and acted like “a fool” by admitting to Ambika’s relatives that he liked her. This belief shows how sexually modest the mores of Jagan’s generation were, in sharp contrast to Mali’s.
Themes
Jagan and his brother get back to Malgudi early the next morning. Soon the whole family is involved in cementing plans for Jagan and Ambika’s wedding. Jagan’s father writes to various older relatives to get their consent; after getting their consent, he consults with Jagan’s mother. Jagan—who as the involved party isn’t supposed to show interest—hears tidbits about how things are proceeding from his sister. When she tells him that Ambika’s family wants the wedding in September, Jagan is shocked and nervous to think that he could be a husband in three months.
The involvement of Jagan’s whole family with his marriage sharply contrasts with Mali’s behavior with Grace: he introduced Grace to his father while claiming already to have married her, completely cutting Jagan out of his courtship process. This difference shows how badly communication has broken down between Mali and Jagan as well as exemplifying the different marriage customs of Jagan’s generation and Mali’s.
Themes
Finally, Jagan’s father sends a letter approving the marriage to Ambika’s family. A multitude of letters pass between the families—and then, one night, Ambika’s family arrives, as do priests, relatives, and neighbors. An elderly priest reads a painstakingly prepared wedding notice stating that “Jagannath” will marrying Ambika on September 10th. Ambika’s father gives Jagan’s father a dowry of $2,500 rupees and politely insists that Jagan’s older brother counts it to make sure the sum is correct. Then the whole assembly has an enormous meal together. Jagan is shocked that so many people are celebrating.
The presence of priests at the wedding announcement emphasizes that Jagan and Ambika’s wedding is a religious affair as well as a social one. The religiosity of Jagan’s marriage implicitly contrasts with the secularism of the younger generation that Mali represents. Meanwhile, the scene involving the dowry shows that commerce and money concerns already impinged upon Jagan’s family’s interpersonal relationships before money-obsessed Mali was even born—though Mali’s Americanized obsession with capitalist wealth accumulation is framed as being on an entirely different level.
Themes
September approaches. Jagan’s father tells him to take time off college to help with the preparations. Jagan is fitted for a tweed suit, though he’d rather wear a dhoti and jibba, while his mother goes to buy saris for Ambika and other members of the wedding party at Universal Saree Emporium. Meanwhile, Jagan’s father tries to make sure that everyone “remotely connected” with Jagan is invited, not forgotten.
Jagan’s preference for traditional Indian garments over a British-style tweed suit shows his nascent anti-U.K. sentiment, while the decision that he wear a tweed suit for his traditional Hindu wedding shows the impact of British culture on India due to the UK’s colonial rule. Meanwhile, Jagan’s father’s insistence that everyone “remotely connected” to Jagan come to his wedding shows the importance of social ties to earlier generations, in contrast with the relative social isolation of Mali’s generation.
Themes
Ultimately, 3,000 people are invited to Jagan and Ambika’s wedding, which takes place in Kuppam. Jagan feels that he spends the whole celebration greeting various people, though in fact he and Ambika also go through a series of sacred rituals, and the “sacred thali” that Ambika is wearing makes him feel a tremendous sense of duty. He longs to be alone with her, but people keep dragging him back to his guests when he tries to snatch a moment with her.
In Tamil Hindu weddings, a thali is a religiously significant gold wedding necklace that the groom gives to the bride. The reference to Ambika’s thali in this passage emphasizes that Jagan feels a religious and social as well as a personal responsibility to be a good husband to Ambika. Jagan’s feelings of responsibility to Ambika implicitly contrast with Mali’s cavalier attitude toward Grace and with his more secular, freewheeling attitudes toward romantic partnership and sex.
Themes
There are two unfortunate incidents during the wedding. First, a highly respected 75-year-old relative of Jagan’s is accidentally seated with the children—but Ambika’s father apologizes and is forgiven. Second, the “gold waist-belt” in the list of jewelry that Ambika’s family was supposed to leave with their daughter turns out not to be solid gold but a mix of gold bars and silk cords. When Jagan tries to defend Ambika, he is called “hen-pecked” and “obsessed.”
Notably, the two unfortunate incidents at the wedding have nothing to do with Jagan and Ambika’s relationship. Instead, the incidents have to do with their families. That these incidents nevertheless seem highly important to the wedding’s outcome shows how embedded in a larger familial and social context Jagan and Ambika’s relationship is—in implicit contrast with Grace and Mali’s, where Jagan is the only older relative with whom the young pair seem to have a relationship. Meanwhile, when Jagan’s relatives ridicule him for being “hen-pecked” and “obsessed” with Ambika, it implies that Jagan is deeply infatuated with her and thus that romance can spring from quasi-arranged marriages.
Themes
After the marriage, Jagan and Ambika get a room in the middle of the family house. Jagan spends all the time he can having sex with her, neglecting his classes and failing his exams, until Jagan’s father suggests they send Ambika back to her family for several months while Jagan gets his degree. Ambika, meanwhile, points out that she has household duties and can’t spend all her time with Jagan. Various family members comment on how Jagan is only interested in spending time with her, not anyone else.
Jagan’s family comments disapprovingly on how wrapped up he is in Ambika, and Ambika herself is annoyed at him for distracting her from her household duties. These details shows that for Jagan’s generation, a marriage was part of a larger web of familial relationships rather than an isolated bond between just two people.
Themes
Yet after almost 10 years of marriage, Jagan and Ambika still have not had a child—and meanwhile, Jagan has failed to get his B.A. Jagan’s older brother moves with his family to their own house, while Jagan’s sister gets married and moves to her husband’s house. Jagan’s mother begins to complain that the house is empty, and that Ambika is not providing grandchildren. Alone in their room, Jagan jokingly suggests that Ambika should pretend that she has stopped getting her period—but of course, he’s joking, as menstruating women have to self-isolate in an “orthodox household with all the pujas and the Gods.”
In some versions of Hinduism, menstruating women are supposed to avoid religiously significant places and items. Ambika would have to avoid the house’s puja room while menstruating, which would make clear to everyone in the household when she had her period. This fact shows both the enmeshment of Jagan and Ambika’s marriage in a larger familial context and the importance of religion in their lives—again in stark context with the secular, socially atomized younger generation Mali represents.
Themes
Ambika argues that the infertility doesn’t come from her family, as all her sisters have had children. Jagan, stung, argues that his family is very prolific too. The couple, frustrated, starts having less sex, and Jagan takes to sleeping out on the veranda. Yet Ambika herself very much wants a child and begins mocking Jagan for sleeping outside.
When Ambika and Jagan begin fighting over their infertility, Jagan starts sleeping out on the veranda rather than with Ambika—showing that his avoidant, passive-aggressive behavior long predates his communication problems with Mali.
Themes
One morning, Jagan’s father abruptly announces that Jagan and Ambika will be traveling to a temple on Badri Hill with him the following week. He tells Jagan to take several days off college. When Jagan asks why, his father says the temple cures barren women. Jagan wants to defend Ambika but feels unable to talk about her family’s fertility to his father. He has recently started trying to study harder to at least keep his family from blaming her for his educational failures. Yet when Jagan asks his father whether they can postpone the Badri Hill trip until after his exams, his father refuses, saying they have to make the trip before the rains come and prevent it.
Jagan’s father can order Jagan to take a pilgrimage and miss school—another stark contrast with Jagan and Mali’s relationship, where Mali is the one who bullies (or tries to bully) his father. Readers see another example of Jagan’s early avoidant behaviors when—rather than defend Ambika directly from his family’s accusations—he tries to study harder so they at least won’t blame her for his failure at various college exams.
Themes
On the appointed day, Ambika, Jagan, and Jagan’s parents take a bus to the base of Badri Hill. Jagan has to sit with his father, who looks like “someone going out to negotiate a contract,” while Ambika has to sit with Jagan’s mother. The bus is overfull and very loud; Jagan, seeing that the chaotic atmosphere is wearing Ambika down, wishes that he could sit with her and tease her—though even after years of marriage, he can’t anticipate whether she would tease back good-humoredly or snap at him. A couple weeks ago, when Jagan’s mother criticized Ambika for oversalting a sauce, Ambika snapped, hid in her room, and refused to eat. Since then, Jagan’s mother has refrained from criticizing Ambika too much.
The novel usually portrays religion and commerce as opposed activities. Yet Jagan’s father’s expression of “going out to negotiate a contract” suggests that he sees prayer as a kind of commercial trade: you give prayer to a deity, and in exchange they give you what you want—in this case, a baby for Jagan and Ambika. Thus the novel complicates its representation of religion and commerce as opposites by showing that some people take a fundamentally commercial attitude toward religion while still practicing it.
Themes
When Ambika, Jagan, and Jagan’s parents disembark from the bus, Jagan’s father goes to buy food from a coconut-seller and complains about the inflated tourist prices. Jagan wishes he could tell his parents that they have sufficient grandchildren and so can leave him alone, but he doesn’t. The coconut-seller tells Jagan’s father not to whine about the price—he’ll be compensated with a grandson soon. And sure enough, Mali is born, after which the family delivers offerings to Badri Hill to fulfill the oath they made.
Yet again, Jagan fails to tell the people around him what he’s really thinking, agreeing to his parents’ desires rather than announcing that he doesn’t want to go on the pilgrimage. Meanwhile, the coconut seller’s language of trade and compensation in reference to the pilgrimage emphasizes that some people have a fundamentally commercial and transactional attitude toward their god or gods.
Themes
Ambika goes with Mali to visit her own parents, who give her many gifts and hold a feast in honor of her first-born child. Her father and Jagan’s father agree to start a savings account for Mali, and Ambika and Jagan feel proud and happy to be parents.
Readers know that Jagan and Mali’s relationship will deteriorate dramatically after Ambika’s death both due to failures in communication and unavoidable generational differences. As such, Ambika and Jagan’s joy at parenthood in this scene is sadly ironic.
Themes
