Previous
Chapter 6
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
When the cousin comes to the shop two days later, Jagan has lowered the price of every sweets packet to “25 paise.” Many people buy from the shop, and the store runs out of sweets by 5 p.m. Jagan tells his alarmed employees that they can go home now that the sweets are sold—but that the shop won’t lower the number or caliber of sweets it produces. When one employee asks how they’ll manage, the cousin interjects that the shop is experimenting with new practices to stay competitive. The employees asks whether they should start making more sweets to meet increased demand now that the prices are lower, but Jagan says they’ll act as usual for the next 15 days and see how things go.
As there are 100 paise in a rupee, Jagan has set his prices very low. He expresses more idealism than economic logic when he declares that the shop will keep selling sweets at extremely low prices while maintaining extremely high product quality. Notably, in this scene both the cousin and Jagan fail at direct and honest communication: the cousin lies to Jagan’s employees about his purposes, while Jagan delays giving his employees any actionable information about his long-term plans for the shop. Presumably, both men are motivated by fear of upsetting or angering the employees.
Themes
Jagan tells his employees that he’ll teach them how to spend their increased free time profitably and announces that he’ll read them the Bhagavad Gita for an hour every day. After reading the first few lines, Jagan says that Gandhi read the Gita to his followers daily because it is a book to be read continually, not just once—as the fight against England was continual.
When Jagan suggests that his employees ought to read the Bhagavad Gita in their free time, he is implicitly claiming that unnecessary commercial activity eats up time that would be better spent in religious contemplation. The comparison he draws between reading the Gita and fighting British colonial rule, meanwhile, may suggest that Jagan sees practicing Hinduism as a form of asserting an Indian cultural identity in the face of global capitalism.
Themes
Jagan keeps reading, boring his employees, until three visitors unexpectedly arrive: the owner of the Ananda Bhavan restaurant, the owner of the law courts canteen, and a bearded man whom Jagan doesn’t know. After some polite introductory chitchat, the Ananda Bhavan owner asks why Jagan has lowered his prices. When Jagan says it’s so more people can enjoy sweets, the Ananda Bhavan owner implies that Jagan is harming other food vendors.
The implicitly hostile visit from the Ananda Bhavan owner and the canteen owner shows that Jagan is bucking economic cultural norms by setting his prices so low—and, as such, confusing, frightening, and angering other businesspeople.
Themes
Jagan says he’ll send his customers to his visitors’ shops if his visitors adhere to “pure quality.” The Ananda Bhavan owner says that he was able to purchase good ingredients at reasonable prices back in 1956, but not anymore. Jagan, quoting the Gita, says that determined people can find what they’re looking for and offers to help his visitors get good ingredients. The canteen owner quotes the Gita in return, saying that it tells people to do their duty “in the right spirit and the right measure”—then he asks straight out whether Jagan is doing that. Jagan can’t answer. Then the Ananda Bhavan owner says in a dead-serious tone that if Jagan lowers his prices, the others will be expected to as well—does he want that?
Jagan insists that he will only cooperate with the other businessmen if they sell food of “pure quality,” a caveat that reminds readers of how Jagan’s quasi-spiritual obsession with healthy eating ironically coexists with his fried sweets business. When the canteen owner alludes to the Gita and says it instructs people to act “in the right spirit and the right measure,” he is criticizing Jagan’s behavior as improperly motivated and extremist. Jagan’s inability to answer this accusation suggests that he may, in fact, be acting out due to his hostile feelings toward Mali and Grace rather than genuinely following his personal or religious values.
Themes
Get the entire The Vendor of Sweets LitChart as a printable PDF.
Jagan, confused, asks an employee to fetch sodas for his visitors. The Ananda Bhavan owner suggests that they finish talking business first. He says that the assembled businessmen are so beset by problems that it would make sense to close down their shops, but they can’t do that to their poor customers. When Jagan asks what these problems are, the incredulous Ananda Bhavan and canteen owners complain about tax inspectors, health inspectors, and government regulations about announcing their “frying medium”—when substitutes for “pure butter-melted ghee” are now barely less expensive than ghee itself. Jagan asks why they don’t just use ghee, then—massively annoying the owners.
The Ananda Bhavan owner and the canteen owner both see themselves as victims of an oppressively regulated economic system who only continue in business out of charity toward their clients. Ironically, then, they may be conceding Jagan’s point: that it is better not to chase wealth and business success than it is to subject oneself to fruitless anxiety in search of profits.
Themes
Jagan’s employee comes back with the sodas. When the Ananda Bhavan owner asks why Jagan isn’t having one, Jagan says that he only drinks four ounces of water daily. He is beginning to explain how he began this practice while in jail when his visitors interrupt him. The Ananda Bhavan owner and canteen owner suggest that it’s fine if Jagan wants to temporarily lower prices, but if he intends to do it for a long time, that’s another thing entirely—and they’re planning “on [his] cooperation.” Jagan, not understanding, says he’s all for cooperation. The visitors leave.
The restaurant owners’ lack of interest in Jagan’s ideas about health and their threatening demands for “cooperation” show how a focus on success in business makes people narrow-minded and unkind. Jagan doesn’t understand that he’s being threatened, which shows his naivete and lack of cutthroat business instincts.
Themes
A bit later, the bearded man comes back into the shop. He introduces himself to Jagan; he used to be called “Chinna Dorai” to distinguish him from his master “Peria Dorai—the small master and the big master.” When Jagan asks him about his master, the bearded man asks how many temples Jagan has visited. Jagan claims to have visited many, and the bearded man tells him that the gods in “temples all over the south” (that is, sculptures of the gods) were produced by his master. Jagan feels abruptly sorry that he’s been too busy with business to visit a temple for a long time. He assures the bearded man of his piety and sings some hymns by Sambhandar.
Sambhandar (also spelled Sambandar) is an ancient Tamil poet (c. 7th century C.E.) who composed numerous hymns to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. Jagan regrets how his business interests have diverted his attention from visiting temples and sings hymns by Sanbhandar to prove his piety, showing his embarrassment at his own inconsistent religious devotion.
Themes
After some further chat, Jagan asks the bearded man where his master lived. The bearded man says it’s relatively nearby, offers to take Jagan there sometime, and then asks whether Jagan crosses the river. Jagan regretfully considers how many years he has spent going only between his house and the sweet shop and thinking only about Mali, the cousin, and his business. He remembers how, in his youth, he listened to Gandhi give inspiring speeches and tells the bearded man that Gandhi was his master. The bearded man, apparently uninterested in any master but his own, asks when Jagan can come with him to his master’s place. Jagan says he’ll come tomorrow.
Jagan’s worldly and familial cares have distracted him from both his religion and his patriotic political ideals, represented in this passage by his youthful devotion to Mahatma Gandhi. His decision to visit the image-maker’s shrine may be an attempt to make up for neglecting more intense religious practices.
Themes
Jagan asks the bearded man whether he carves his own images at his master’s place. The bearded man, laughing, explains that he now fashions hair-dyes—and the Ananda Bhavan owner is his most regular customer. When he says he’s glad to have met Jagan, Jagan says he’s glad to have met “an image-maker”—and the bearded man says Jagan hasn’t met one now, “only a blackener of white hair.” He asks whether Jagan needs his hair dyed, and Jagan—alarmed at how Mali and Grace might react, supposing they even noticed—gently declines. Then, remembering his book, he tells the bearded man that diet determines whether one’s hair ever grays.
Though the bearded man has trained to carve religious images, he now considers himself “only a blackener of white hair”—that is, someone who practices cosmetic deceptions and caters commercially to others’ vanity. The bearded man’s self-deprecation suggests that he would prefer to be an image-maker but that he feels he needs to make money—another instance of commercial needs or motives interfering with religious practice.
Themes
