Parvati

Parvati is central to Prabaker’s story of love: he remembers her from the day they first met, worries that he may not be worthy of her, and eventually marries her. Their marriage gives their courtship a joyful public culmination, while the later death of Prabaker leaves Parvati a widow and makes their son, named after his father, a living link to him.

Courtship and Marriage

Prabaker’s love for Parvati is apparent well before their wedding. Driving with Lin toward Marine Drive, he repeats her name and asks whether love is the terrible feeling that can make a person happy, or the worry for a girl that can outweigh concern for his taxi. Lin confirms that what he describes is love. Prabaker also celebrates Johnny Cigar’s love for Parvati’s sister, Sita, and the two men plan an outing with the sisters. What Prabaker calls a triple date includes the girls’ mother, Mrs. Nandita Patak: she sits between the sisters while the men sit opposite, offering her food and drink as a pretext for looking at the women and exchanging winks. The elaborate arrangement makes courtship a family occasion rather than a private encounter.

Years later, Prabaker tells Lin that he first saw Parvati six years earlier, when she was sixteen. Before her father, Kumar, had opened his tea shop, she lived with her parents and sister in a small hut in the slum. One day she carried a water pot on her head along a rough track. The old clay pot broke, spilling its water over her as she cried. Prabaker recalls that this was when he first felt an attraction he never forgot; as their wedding approaches, he says, his powerful feelings have only grown. His memory is tender in its attention to an ordinary hardship, but his account is also disarmingly physical and direct.

On the eve of the wedding, the exuberance gives way to anxiety. Prabaker admits to Lin that he is not fine: he has loved Parvati for years, sees her as beautiful, and fears that his own short stature will prevent him from being a good husband. Tears interrupt his appeal for reassurance. Lin’s evidence of Prabaker’s devotion is therefore not only the repeated declaration of love but the vulnerability beneath his confidence and comic manner: the approaching marriage matters enough to expose his fear of inadequacy.

The wedding brings the two couples, Prabaker and Parvati and Johnny Cigar and Sita, together in a public celebration. Crowds surround the procession, while boys clear the path of stones and twigs and young men fan the dancers. Lin has hired the musicians accompanying them. At the wedding stage, Parvati sits beside Prabaker, while Sita sits with Johnny; Prabaker’s parents, Kishan and Rukhmabai, have travelled from Sunder and plan to spend a month in the city. They sit with Kumar and Mrs. Nandita Patak before a painted lotus and coloured lights arranged like vines. The dancers’ ordered movements give way to a popular film song and a cheering crowd, framing the marriage as both an intimate union and a communal event.

Family Expectations and Sudden Loss

The weddings were delayed by disagreement over dowry. Kumar wanted to present himself as a successful businessman by providing dowries for his daughters, while Prabaker and Johnny Cigar said they did not want one and regarded the practice as old-fashioned. Prabaker’s father, Kishan, had his own expectations: from Sunder he sent a list of gifts, including a Seiko automatic watch and a new bicycle. The bicycle he wanted was too large for his short legs, but he remained determined to have it. The ceremonies were scheduled for the last week of October, before Diwali, turning the marriages into a family negotiation as well as a celebration.

Widowhood and the Child Who Carries His Name

The wedding’s public joy is later broken by the taxi accident that leaves Prabaker critically injured. When Lin reaches the hospital, Kishan and Rukhmabai are weeping beside the bed, while Parvati, Sita, Jeetendra, and Qasim Ali stand silently nearby. Prabaker is unconscious, surrounded by machines and tubes; his jaw and teeth are gone, and the face once known for its radiant smile has been devastated. The doctor tells Lin that Prabaker may have only hours or minutes to live, and that nothing can be done except remain with him. Lin offers the doctor American hundred-dollar bills to cover further care; when the doctor refuses, Lin gives the money, along with his earnings from a courier run, to Parvati.

Lin stays at Prabaker’s bedside with the others for three hours before exhaustion overtakes him. In a dream he returns to Sunder, to the night when Prabaker’s father first put a hand on his shoulder. He wakes to find Kishan beside him, his hand again resting on Lin’s shoulder, and the two men sob together. The remembered village scene and the hospital vigil meet in that gesture: Kishan’s son had once helped draw Lin into a family, and now the two share the helpless grief of losing him. Later, the story identifies Prabaker as dead and Parvati as his widow, confirming the loss that the hospital scene leaves imminent.

The family continues after the loss. Johnny Cigar tells Lin that his own baby is fine and strong, and that Parvati’s baby is beautiful and resembles Prabaker in his face and smile. When Lin later encounters Kishan in Bombay, Kishan is visiting with Rukhmabai and Parvati. Parvati appears in widow’s white, and her son stands beside her, holding on to her sari for support. The adults share a look of wonder as Lin recognizes in the child not merely a resemblance but an exact likeness of the man they loved, most unmistakably in his vast smile.

Parvati lets Lin lift the boy, who comes to him without protest. Asked his name, she answers that they called him Prabaker. The name makes the child an explicit continuation of his father within the surviving family, while the repeated smile turns resemblance into a form of presence. Parvati’s final place in the story is therefore shaped by both bereavement and inheritance: she is the widow of the man whose love once filled his taxi journeys with her name, and the mother of a son who carries that name and recognizable face into the life that follows.

Parvati as a Figure of Continuity

Parvati’s place in the narrative is shaped by a marked imbalance of perspective: the account first makes her vivid through Prabaker’s ardent recollection and anxious devotion, while her later presence is seen chiefly through Lin’s responses and the family’s shared recognition. She is not given an extended account of her own thoughts; instead, the story lets the change in how others encounter her carry the emotional weight. The woman once spoken of as the focus of a courtship becomes a surviving member of the family, and the narrative’s attention shifts from anticipation to what endures after loss.

That shift also makes Parvati more than the object of Prabaker’s love. Her quiet permission for Lin to hold her child is a small but consequential act of trust, connecting the bereaved household to the friendship that joined Lin to Prabaker’s family. The narrative closes her arc not by resolving grief or explaining it away, but by locating her within a continuing network of kinship and care. In that structure, Parvati stands at the meeting point of remembered love and life carried forward.