51 pages • 1 hour read
Megha MajumdarA Burning
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “Jivan”
Jivan’s mother visits, but it is impossible for Jivan to quell her tears or truly explain what prison is like. At first, Jivan’s mother tries to bring food, but when the guards simply keep the food, Jivan’s mother is further devastated. Jivan takes on the role of caretaker and tries to comfort her mother, falsely saying that prison is not so bad. Jivan’s mother tells her about Purnendu Sarkar, a journalist, and so Jivan devises a plan. She has her mother bring in some spice, which she puts into the meal for Uma madam, the warden. In exchange for the spiced meal, Jivan asks Uma madam to approve a visitor named Purnendu Sarkar, whom she claims is her brother. Although Uma madam knows Jivan is lying, she accepts the bribe.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Lovely”
Lovely and her fellow hijras go out to look for babies to bless in exchange for money. While many people believe that hijras have a direct line to god, and even though the mother of an infant comes out into the street and hands over her baby for blessing, the mother still washes her hands immediately. Lovely is accustomed to these microaggressions, and the hijras are paid well for their blessing regardless of the prejudices they face. With her share of the blessing money, Lovely goes to the sweet shop and reflects, “I am giving thanks. It is no small thing to buy a sweet, and that is enough for today. That is how my life is going forward—some insult in my face, some sweet in my mouth” (62-63). She watches the news coverage of Jivan’s trial and wonders why the police haven’t asked her for an interview yet, since she knew Jivan as her English tutor. Her friends suggest that it’s perhaps best that the police have not come asking for Lovely’s experiences with Jivan, as the police often harass, abuse, and imprison members of the hijra community.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Jivan”
Rumors swirl that Sonali Khan, a famous film producer, will be held for killing an endangered rhino. Nothing comes of the rumors, and prison life continues in its monotony. Americandi and Jivan circle back with Uma madam regarding Jivan’s “brother,” but nothing comes of these conversations either. Jivan thinks about how much better life would be if she were not even rich but just middle class.
Chapter 16 Summary: “PT Sir”
PT Sir attends another Jana Kalyan Party rally, where he leaps to the stage to help fix Bimala Pal’s microphone. Later, he stands up to admonish audience members when they jostle over the food the party is giving out. Bimala Pal seems impressed by PT Sir and notes that more teachers should join the Party. She sends him a meal, which is better than what the other audience members receive. At home, his wife warns him about associating too closely with politicians, whom she regards as fake and untrustworthy. But PT Sir is inspired and thrilled by the exclusive yet momentary power he experiences at the rally.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Jivan”
Jivan is surprised by a new visitor: It is Purnendu, who promises to publish her true story. He gives her a bag of bananas and cookies, and Jivan begins with the story of her childhood. She tells him about growing up in a slum, about watching her mother toil to the point where only the lines in her hands were not blackened. Jivan went to school eager for the free meals, and she even had a teacher who completed tests for the students if they paid her. One day, Jivan and her neighbors found out that their slum would be torn down to sell the land for development. With nowhere else to go, the slum dwellers decided to fight back. They made bombs out of bags of their own feces, but they were no match against the powerful police force. The place Jivan called home for so long was completely destroyed, the residents evicted with no second thought. When visiting hours end, Purnendu promises to return until Jivan’s entire story is recorded.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Interlude”
Chapter 18 provides the perspective of one of the police officers who demolished Jivan’s slum. He admits his own problems with finding employment after the battle, but he is adamant that the nation needs protection. He recalls one night when, as a watchman, he and his fellow officers assumed that a truck dripping with water was carrying dead cows—a direct affront to his religion and his perception of the dignity of the nation-state. It turned out that the truck was only full of potatoes, but he still believes that not every person is worthy of a place in his society.
Chapters 13-18 Analysis
Chapters 13-18 reveal a new layer to Jivan’s complicated and sad childhood. Jivan is a young woman who is accustomed to displacement; just as her freedom was suddenly torn away from her as an adult, her first home was demolished without a thought by the government when she was a child. Jivan has continuously been the victim of India’s growth, a progress from which Jivan (and people like her) are purposefully excluded. The longer Jivan stays in prison, and the more the reader learns about her upbringing, the more hopeless her situation appears.
Majumdar uses Jivan’s character to criticize the inequities in Indian society. Although this is a book about Jivan’s loss of freedom, it is truly a novel about the millions who, like Jivan, are consistently at the mercy of a cruel government that does not care about them. While the institutions around Jivan remain ambivalent to her life and struggles, it is up to Jivan to try to comfort her mother. Prison has dehumanized Jivan, but not enough for her to project her pain onto her mother. Still, she acknowledges the deep division that now exists between them; her mother can never understand what prison is truly like, and Jivan will never be able to truthfully describe it. Even so, Jivan works hard to give her mother tiny pieces of comfort, no matter how false. With this scene, Majumdar criticizes prison and how the institution divides families and creates tragic voids in the lives of the prisoners.
These chapters also highlight Majumdar’s secondary point about Indian society: that societies are made of individuals who choose their narrative about right or wrong. The inclusion of the “Interlude,” which shares the perspective of a police officer involved in the destruction of Jivan’s first home, shows that continued support for the caste system perpetuates the inequities in Indian society and injustice in the Indian government. The police officer genuinely believes that there are people who are beneath him because of their different religious beliefs, and he actively suppresses any empathy he might feel for them. Majumdar suggests that this acceptance and acquiescence from citizens desperate to maintain their own station at the expense of others enables higher institutions to control and displace disadvantaged people.
PT Sir is yet another example of this criticism. While PT Sir has more options than Jivan due to his education and employment prospects, he still feels stuck in a thankless existence. When PT Sir tastes power and respect through the party, he is suddenly convinced of his own ambitions and hopes to move up in the world. PT Sir finds himself invited into an exclusive club, and this inclusion makes him rethink the beliefs he held to be true for so long. This is highlighted in the conversations with his wife, who is still weary of politicians’ intentions. Despite his wife’s warning, PT Sir is seduced by the small taste of influence experienced at his second party rally. Although PT Sir has freedom, he becomes “unreachable,” consumed by aspirations of power and success. His sudden belief in his own superiority, combined with his autonomy to act, foreshadows his obsession with the party at the expense of his moral code. Like the police officer in the “Interlude,” PT Sir is easily convinced that some people deserve a higher place in society, and his narcissism quickly erodes his empathy for people like Jivan.
