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Grace
The cousin is a friendly busybody who claims to be related to nearly everyone in the southern Indian town of Malgudi, including Jagan. Each day around 4:30 p.m., he stops into Jagan’s sweet shop, samples the wares, and gives Jagan advice about ingredients and prices. Whenever Jagan is too afraid of offending his son Mali to ask Mali something directly, he asks the cousin—whom Mali calls “uncle”—to find out the relevant information for him. Though the cousin repeatedly advises Jagan to speak with Mali directly, he inevitably gives in to Jagan’s requests to play go-between because he likes being included in family matters. Unlike Jagan, who is suspicious of Mali’s story-writing machine business idea and horrified by Mali’s premarital relationship with Grace, the cousin has a more laissez-faire attitude, believing that commerce is generally good and that each generation has its own behavioral mores. As the novel ends, the cousin has just rushed to tell Jagan that Mali has been arrested for alcohol possession and is trying to convince Jagan to get involved with the legal case. Though Jagan refuses to get involved, insisting on retiring to a religious shrine instead, he gives the cousin money for Mali’s bail and leaves the cousin in charge of his sweet shop until such time as Mali agrees to take it over.
The Cousin Quotes in The Vendor of Sweets
The The Vendor of Sweets quotes below are all either spoken by The Cousin or refer to The Cousin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
“Conquer taste, and you will have conquered the self,” said Jagan to his listener, who asked, “Why conquer the self?” Jagan said, “I do not know, but all our sages advise us so.”
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Chapter 3
Quotes
“Writer” meant in Jagan’s dictionary only one thing—a “clerk”—an Anglo-Indian, colonial term since the days when Macaulay had devised a system of education to provide a constant supply of clerical staff for the East India Company. Jagan felt ghast. Here he was trying to shape the boy into an aristocrat with a bicycle, college life, striped shirts, and everything, and he wanted to be a “writer”! Strange!
Chapter 4
Quotes
“I hate to upset him, that’s all. I have never upset him in all my life.”
“That means you have carried things to the point where you cannot speak to him at all.”
“Did Valmiki go to America or Germany in order to write his Ramayana?” asked Jagan with pugnacity. “Strange notions these boys get nowadays!”
“They eat only beef and pork in that country. I used to know a man from America, and he told me . . .”
“They also take a lot of intoxicating drinks, never water or milk,” said the cousin, contributing his own bit of information.
Chapter 6
Quotes
“You are not one who knows how to make money. If you were unscrupulous, you could have built many mansions, who knows?”
“And what would one do with many mansions?”
Chapter 10
Quotes
“Our young men live in a different world from ours and we must not let ourselves be upset too much by certain things they do.”
Chapter 13
Quotes
“That’s why I discouraged his idea of buying that horrible green car!” He vented his rage against the green automobile until the cousin interrupted, “A bottle could be sneaked in anywhere . . .”
“You don’t understand. It’s the motor car that creates all sorts of notions in a young fellow,” said Jagan[.]
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Explanation and Analysis:
“If you meet her, tell her that if she ever wants to go back to her country, I will buy her a ticket. It’s a duty we owe her. She was a good girl.”
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The Cousin Quotes in The Vendor of Sweets
The The Vendor of Sweets quotes below are all either spoken by The Cousin or refer to The Cousin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
“Conquer taste, and you will have conquered the self,” said Jagan to his listener, who asked, “Why conquer the self?” Jagan said, “I do not know, but all our sages advise us so.”
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3
Quotes
“Writer” meant in Jagan’s dictionary only one thing—a “clerk”—an Anglo-Indian, colonial term since the days when Macaulay had devised a system of education to provide a constant supply of clerical staff for the East India Company. Jagan felt ghast. Here he was trying to shape the boy into an aristocrat with a bicycle, college life, striped shirts, and everything, and he wanted to be a “writer”! Strange!
Chapter 4
Quotes
“I hate to upset him, that’s all. I have never upset him in all my life.”
“That means you have carried things to the point where you cannot speak to him at all.”
“Did Valmiki go to America or Germany in order to write his Ramayana?” asked Jagan with pugnacity. “Strange notions these boys get nowadays!”
“They eat only beef and pork in that country. I used to know a man from America, and he told me . . .”
“They also take a lot of intoxicating drinks, never water or milk,” said the cousin, contributing his own bit of information.
Chapter 6
Quotes
“You are not one who knows how to make money. If you were unscrupulous, you could have built many mansions, who knows?”
“And what would one do with many mansions?”
Chapter 10
Quotes
“Our young men live in a different world from ours and we must not let ourselves be upset too much by certain things they do.”
Chapter 13
Quotes
“That’s why I discouraged his idea of buying that horrible green car!” He vented his rage against the green automobile until the cousin interrupted, “A bottle could be sneaked in anywhere . . .”
“You don’t understand. It’s the motor car that creates all sorts of notions in a young fellow,” said Jagan[.]
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“If you meet her, tell her that if she ever wants to go back to her country, I will buy her a ticket. It’s a duty we owe her. She was a good girl.”
