A River Sutra

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A River Sutra is a collection of stories written by Gita Mehta and published in 1993. The book's stories are connected by both a geographical reference (the Narmada River), and by the theme of diversity within Indian society, both present and past. Unlike some of Mehta's previous stories, the ones in A River Sutra feature only Indian characters.

A River Sutra

The novel A River Sutra, written by Gita Mehta, consists of a collection of independent short stories, which are connected by the narrator. The stories are set by India’s holiest river, the Narmada, which is an important place for pilgrims and is worshipped as the daughter of the god Shiva. The narrator in the book is introduced as the manager of the Narmada rest-house and he reproduces the stories of the people who goes on pilgrimage to this holy river. The first story describes the life of a man who becomes a Jain Monk. His father is a wealthy owner of a diamond company. As a result of this their life was carefree. The Jains’ cardinal doctrine teaches them the highest rule, the practising of non-violence. Wealth excised the father’s emotions and he does not comply with this rule, which disappoints his son, who then wishes to renounce the world and decides to become a monk by the act of renunciation. In “The Teacher’s Story” the narrator has been woken up by a man who is accused of murder and who tells him a story. Although the music teacher, called Master Mohan, is unhappy about his life, he has a gentle nature disposing him to small acts of kindness. He has been engaged in marriage to a rich woman by his father because he has lost his money. During a Quawwali concert with the singers from Nizamuddin he meets the blind boy Imrat, who has a voice like an angel, with his Islamic sister. Because his sister has to go to North India the boy has to stay with Master Mohan and signs a recording contract. The offer to sing for a rich man has been rejected by Master Mohan but in the end he is forced to sing for him by Mohan’s wife. The man is jealous because “such a voice is not human” and he cuts out Imrat’s tongue. At the end of the story Master Mohan commits suicide. The “Executive’s Story” begins by introducing a young executive in Calcutta’s oldest tea company, called Nitin Bose, who is a rich and well- educated man. The narrator has his diary and is reading the story. A description of his popular life follows. On the plantations he insults the workers and calls them “creatures” because he has invented a persona to conserve his image. He falls in love with the woman Rima. Nitin Bose can no longer resist his unilateral life because it seems primitive. The woman has taken possession of him by magic and only the Narmada River has been given the power to cure him. After the pilgrimage to the river and making a ritual, he recovers and regains his sanity. In the next story, “The Courtesan’s Story”, a woman is searching for her daughter, who was kidnapped two years earlier. After her seventeen-year-old daughter has been asked by the Member of the Parliament to perform at the election meeting in the capital and returning back to the bazaar, machine-gun fire bursts through the bazaar and she is kidnapped by Rahul Singh, the most wanted bandit. The narrator meets the daughter in the street and she tells him the rest of the story. The bandit asks for forgiveness for what he has made her suffer and they marry. While buying something for her to remind her of her childhood he is killed at the bazaar. The woman leaves with her daughter and the narrator lies to the police about the daughter saying that she drowned in the Narmada river for salvation.

The “Musician’s Story” is told by an ugly woman at the rest-house, who is a genius in playing the veena like her father. The pilgrimage to this river is part of her musical education to see the beauty of the world in the music. At home she is hated by her mother but loved by her father. Her father is only willing to continue teaching her if she is prepared to be a bride. A pupil wants to be his student but he will only teach him if he agrees to the condition of taking his daughter as his wife. After a while the father gives his daughter in marriage to the music and frees this young man from their bargain. After a messenger has delivered the message that the young man is betrothed in marriage to another woman, the daughter never touches the instrument again. Her father takes her to the river to meditate on the waters of the Narmada as a symbol of penance until she will have cured herself. The last two stories “The Minstrel’s Story” and “The Song Of The Narmada” are connected. Naga Baba, a martial ascetic minstrel, buys a young girl by rescuing her from a brothel and gives her the name “Uma”, which is another word for goddess. The child is taken to the river to become a daughter of the Narmada. Professor V.V. Shankar, a foremost archaeological authority on the Narmada, appears, criticising the river for being “not a sacred river”. At the end of the story it is pointed out that the professor is Naga Baba, who has re-entered the world and explains that the soul must travel through eighty-four thousand births in order to become a man. The novel ends with the narrator leaning over the parapet of the rest-house’s terrace, looking at the river.

During the novel the narrative perspective changes. The book begins with a first person narrator, commenting on the events that happen. The reader can identify with the narrator because his thoughts and opinions are shown. The point of view in the novel always changes when the stories are told by the pilgrims. When the stories are either in a spoken form, like meeting the pilgrims and talking with them or in a written form, like a diary, the narrative perspective changes into the protagonist of the stories. The reader can see that this novel is a story within a story because the collection of short stories are told in some kind of a frame given by the narrator. All the stories are connected by the Narmada river, which is the central point for all of the stories. Because the stories are based on the river, the Narmada could be seen as a leitmotif through the novel. The name of the river is not mentioned at the beginning of the book in the title. It is only mentioned that a river, aphoristic in nature, is an important place. The image of the river could be seen as the journey of life. It represents the idea of death which can be connected to the stories where pilgrims commit suicide to surrender to God. The beginning of life is also represented by this because a river has a source where it rises. In the Hindu religion it is believed that the river has been created by the god Shiva, who is also the Creator and Destroyer of the world, which fits into the representation of the river for life and death. On the one hand it is ironic that “Narmada” means a “whore” in Sanskrit, the classical language of India, because the river is one of the holiest rivers in India but on the other hand the river may perhaps be seen as a whore because so many people go on pilgrimage to it.

The book criticizes India by showing the reader the “fatal Indian disease of making everything holy”. In the centre of the criticism there is the Narmada river because it has too many sacred spots. The book questions the holiness of the river and the extreme belief in religion because people commit religious suicides, fast to death or drown in the Narmada in order to gain release from the cycle of birth and rebirth. The reader can infer that the people who suffer and harm themselves are going too far in their religious belief. The narrator’s newly chosen life as the manager of the rest-house house could be seen as a contrast to the pilgrims who meet him. His life is ,compared to the pilgrims’ lives, rather boring and is only going to be interesting because of the stories. While meeting many different types of people, the narrator learns what the river means to each of them. The people’s diversity provides the narrator with a constant source of interest and he falls into conversation with the pilgrims. While talking to a pilgrim on the steps of his house he discovers things about the river that he has never known before. The stories are connected by the theme of love. Every main character is interested in the beauty of love. The people give up the status they have achieved and live with all the material conveniences in order to live their dream of a better life like in the first story about the man who gives up his wealth to become a monk. In the first two stories the reader can infer that love of religion and love of music is more important than wealth because the aspiration to success and money change people. This change has the effect that people turn away from the rest of the world because they are afraid of losing their wealth and they are isolated from society.

The theme of love could also be seen in the next story about Nitin Bose, a rich man, who has everything to live his life apart from a woman and is searching for her love instead of setting his focus on making more money. In this story the gap between rich and poor is mentioned because the woman he falls in love with has a coolie as husbant who contrasts with his wealth. The cultural diversity and different races can be seen because Nitin Bose is probably a citizen of a Western European state who has come to India. In contrast to him there is a black Indian coolie and who lives in his own country as a coolie who does not earn as much money as a white person.

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