The Vendor of Sweets Summary

Jagan, who was a follower of Mohandas Gandhi during the Indian struggle for independence when Jagan was a young man, is now an older man running a sweet shop. However, Jagan himself has given up added salt and sugar. In the sweet shop, his cousin asks him why he continues to work so hard when he lives an austere life. One morning, Jagan’s son Mali announces that he doesn’t want to attend college anymore. Jagan feels that he should order Mali to continue in school but, afraid of upsetting his son, doesn’t. That evening in the sweet shop, the cousin stops in. When Jagan explains his worries about Mali, the cousin suggests that Jagan have a frank conversation with Mali. Instead, Jagan manipulates the cousin into finding out for him why Mali wants to quit school. That night, Jagan and the cousin meet up, and the cousin shares a discovery: Mali wants to become a writer.

Later, Jagan asks Mali whether he needs a nicer table for his writing. When Mali asks how Jagan knows about his writing, Jagan dodges the question and asks what Mali is working on currently. Mali explains that he plans to write a novel for a competition, which closes at the end of September, with a 25,000-rupee prize. Mali is offended and insists he can write the novel in the few months he has left.

After September comes and goes, Jagan has no idea whether Mali finished his novel. When he expresses his concerns to his cousin, the cousin again suggests that Jagan has a conversation with Mali—and Jagan again convinces the cousin to find out the information for him instead. Later, the cousin tells Jagan that Mali wants to study creative writing in the U.S. He also reveals that Mali has stolen money from Jagan’s secret home stash to pay for his passport and plane ticket. Jagan is offended by Mali’s desire to learn writing in the U.S., yet he is oddly proud of the can-do spirit revealed by Mali’s theft. Mali sends Jagan many letters from the U.S.—all about American culture, with no personal details. After Mali has been in the U.S. for three years, he sends word that he is returning home with a guest.

When Jagan and his cousin meet Mali at the train station, Mali introduces them to his Korean American wife, Grace. Jagan is initially uncomfortable with Grace, whom Mali never mentioned in his letters. As Grace and Jagan get to know each other, Jagan learns that Grace, not Mali, wrote the letters that Mali sent from the U.S.

One day, Mali corners Jagan to have a business discussion with him. At the time, Mali is wearing socks with sandals—and Jagan, who thinks socks are an unhealthy Western peculiarity, becomes so distracted by Mali’s socks that he fails to hear anything Mali says. Later, at the sweet shop, the cousin asks what Jagan thinks of Mali’s business idea. Jagan, pumping the cousin for information, discovers that Mali plans to start a business selling story-writing machines. The next morning, Jagan goes to ask Mali how story-writing machines work; Mali points out that he already explained the machines to Jagan—but then shows one such machine to Jagan. Jagan mentions that the great Indian epics were composed orally, not written down at first—but Mali interrupts, saying that India needs to compete with modern countries’ art and literature industries. Then he says that he needs to raise $51,000 himself to get backing from U.S. investors.

At the sweet shop, Jagan discovers from the cousin that Mali expects Jagan to provide the investment money for his business. Jagan begins avoiding Mali and Grace at home. Meanwhile, Mali buys a used green car for traveling to his business ventures, much to Jagan’s displeasure. One morning, Mali and Grace corner Jagan at home and ask whether he has decided about investing in Mali’s business. Jagan claims not to have the money but offers Mali his sweet-shop business. Later in the day after Mali contemptuously rejects this offer, Jagan he abruptly tells the cousin that he’s going to lower his prices—he has enough money, and he wants poor children to be able to buy his sweets.

After Jagan lowers his prices, he begins selling out his wares every day. Shortly thereafter, he receives a visit from the owner of the Ananda Bhavan restaurant, the owner of the canteen near the law courts, and a strange bearded man. The Ananda Bhavan owner and canteen owner insinuate that they want Jagan to raise his prices again so that his erratic behavior doesn’t impact their businesses. Afterward, the bearded man introduces himself as the former disciple of a genius carver of Hindu gods and offers to take Jagan to his former master’s shrine sometime; Jagan agrees to the trip.

The next day, Jagan and the bearded man travel to the master image-maker’s remote shrine, where the bearded man reveals that his master wanted to carve the goddess Gayatri for a particular space in the shrine but died before the statue was completed. Jagan and the bearded man pull the stone the image-maker chose for Gayatri out of a pond near the shrine, and the bearded man reveals that his sole goal before he dies is to finish carving the statue of the goddess. Abruptly, he asks Jagan to purchase the shrine and help him install the statue. Jagan hesitates, though he would like a religious retreat.

When Jagan returns home, Mali corners him again and asks for a final answer about the story-writing machines. Jagan asks what will happen if he refuses to fund the business, and Mali says that Grace will have to return home, as she has nothing to do in India without the business. Shocked, Jagan says that wives must stay with their husbands. Mali contemptuously retorts that that was only true in Jagan’s day. A couple days later, Grace abruptly tells Jagan that Mali wants her to leave—and that she and Mali aren’t married, though Mali had promised to marry her once they came to India. Jagan, horrified that Mali and Grace are unmarried, flees to his shop. When the cousin stops in, Jagan tells him that Mali and Grace aren’t married and asks what he should do. Though at first the cousin tells Jagan that Mali and Grace’s marital status is their business, he eventually suggests that he can arrange a fast wedding for Mali and Grace.

Jagan, feeling unclean due to Mali and Grace being unmarried, locks the doors between his part of the house and theirs. Later, when Mali corners Jagan again about funding his business, Jagan says that Mali and Grace must marry. Mali claims that Jagan was too cheap to send Grace back to the U.S. and that Grace needs psychiatric help; then he leaves.

That evening after work, Jagan stops by a statue near his house and recalls his own arranged marriage to Mali’s now-deceased mother Ambika: how their first meeting was arranged by their families, how they fell in love at first sight, and how they were barren for the first 10 years of their marriage, until Jagan’s father insisted they go to the Badri Hill shrine to pray for fertility. While reminiscing, Jagan falls asleep on the statue pedestal.

When Jagan wakes up early the next morning, he decides to start a new phase of his life, going on a religious retreat until his death. He enters the house, packs a bag, and begins to walk away. As he’s leaving, his cousin rushes up and tells him that Mali has been arrested under the Prohibition Act for having alcohol in his car and that they need to prepare a defense for his trial. Jagan gives the cousin money to bail Mali out of jail and offers to buy Grace a plane ticket back to the U.S. if she asks. But he refuses to involve himself in the trial, insisting that he will go on a religious retreat to the bearded man’s shrine.