The Storyteller's Secret

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Part 10: “Jaya”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 10, Chapter 37 Summary

Jaya remembers her first miscarriage. Patrick supported her, but his reaction was to have faith in fate. Their different approaches to coping contributed to the growing emotional distance between them. Jaya compares her experience of adult womanhood to that of her grandmother’s, marveling in the multitude of choices she has had the freedom to pursue: “For the woman she was, I think of the woman I’m not” (276).

The Ashram, the local orphanage, is full to capacity, lacks running water, and is poorly funded; Jaya is horrified by the “stench of urine and feces” (277) she encounters inside. There are only two caregivers inside the Ashram, and many of the children have been abandoned for having cognitive or physical disabilities.

After the orphanage, Ravi arranges a guided tour of Madhya Pradesh, the “waterfall towns,” so that Jaya may experience the natural beauty of the area. Their guide is a young woman named Mona, who got a business degree at the University of Chicago and returned to India to start a guided tour business. Mona explains that India is “a country that’s trying to keep up with the westernized world [...] a country of opportunity” (282). Jaya reflects on how much Amisha would approve of Mona’s independence.

They have dinner at Ravi’s son’s house with several generations of Ravi’s family. During dinner, the family talks about the great-grandchildren’s future. Misha desires to be a teacher, while Amit has dreams of becoming a doctor, though he knows this would be impossible for him as an Untouchable. Ravi hopes that India’s cultural mindset will one day progress enough to afford children like Amit the kind of future they desire. But Amit doesn’t share this hope, joking that he will instead become a journalist like Jaya.

Part 10 Analysis

Jaya continues to grapple with the differences between her childhood in America and that of underprivileged kids in India, with the ability to actively choose the course of one’s life at the center of her thoughts. Jaya is presented with two examples of the extreme poverty in her ancestral village: the Ashram and Ravi’s family. On the other hand, Jaya considers the much different life and opportunities available for Mona, the successful businesswoman running guided tours of the waterfall towns. The salient difference between these examples is the businesswoman’s access to higher education in America. Mona sees India as “a country of opportunity” (282) that she was able to capitalize on with the skills she acquired in Chicago. Without attending school in America, it is doubtful that Mona would have had the resources and funding to establish her business in India.

This provides the first seeds for Jaya’s eventual dream of bringing children out of India to America for their education. Because Amisha’s story has begun to influence her to action, Jaya considers how she might extend her privilege to helping those she has the power to positively influence. Rather than succumbing to the intense, but purely self-focused, grief for her infertility, Jaya broadens her perspective to encompass the orphanage and the circumstances surrounding Ravi’s grandchildren with an eye to the future. She is moving forward with Amisha’s teachings in mind; her worries shift from internal loss to the external struggles of India’s poor, allowing her to begin taking steps to heal from her grief.