Kasturba

Kasturba is a former ayah and the wife of Vallabh, whose death preceded the final illness of his employer, Changez Chamchawala. In the closing family scenes, she is present both as a companion to Nasreen II and as one of the people gathered around Changez. Her actions are spare but consequential: she joins the women in mourning, attends Changez during his last hours, and later alerts Salahuddin Chamchawala to the unexpected arrival of Gibreel Farishta. Through these moments, she becomes a witness to the novel’s converging stories of old intimacy, bereavement, and danger.

Identity and Background

Kasturba is identified as an ex-ayah. The narrative also establishes that Vallabh, her husband, had died almost a year earlier, peacefully in his sleep and, as the account presents it, of old age. His death is set against Changez’s grave illness: the signs of Changez’s decline had been attributed to age, although his weight loss over the preceding two years and complaints of aches and pains now seem more ominous. The contrast makes Vallabh’s death appear comparatively gentle, while Kasturba faces the approaching loss of a man whose illness is consuming him.

Her past is further bound to Changez through the account of him as her employer and the man who seduced her. The narration places that history beside Vallabh’s death and Changez’s present condition, but does not elaborate on the circumstances or spell out how Kasturba understands the past. It is enough to make her presence at Changez’s bedside more complicated than that of a household attendant: she is part of the household’s history, and the approaching death gathers several old attachments into the same room.

Kasturba still wears Nasreen Chamchawala’s old saris, including, on the day she joins the others in the garden, a striking black-and-white Op-Art print. This concrete detail marks her connection to the household and its past without making her a mere background figure. Her clothing carries the trace of another woman’s life into the present scene, where the women’s shared attention is directed toward the impending loss of Changez.

Intimacy with Nasreen II and Changez

When Kasturba comes out to the garden, she greets Salahuddin warmly, with embraces and tears. Nasreen II then embraces Kasturba, and the two women rest their heads on each other’s shoulders. Their closeness is described as spontaneous and free of resentment. The nearness of death seems to suspend the quarrels and jealousies that had marked life between them; in this moment, they console one another over the anticipated loss of the person each loves.

The scene gives Kasturba a relationship with Nasreen II that is not defined by rivalry. Their comfort is mutual: neither woman simply tends to the other, and neither is presented as untouched by grief. Kasturba’s place beside Nasreen II makes visible a shared vulnerability that their earlier disagreements had obscured. When Nasreen II decides that Changez should see Salahuddin, Kasturba is part of the small group moving from the garden toward the sickroom.

The next morning, Kasturba and Nasreen arrive in clean saris, looking rested, though they explain that sleeping away from Changez had been unbearable and that they had not slept. They fall upon him with tender caresses. Salahuddin quietly leaves the room, feeling that he is intruding on an intensely private moment, as he had at the wedding of Mishal Sufyan. The account describes the three as lovers embracing, kissing, and weeping. Kasturba’s affection for Changez is thus shown directly, but without reducing the scene to a simple account of the household’s relationships: it is at once intimate, sorrowful, and witnessed from the edge by Salahuddin.

Changez’s Death and Shared Grief

When the doctor asks for privacy to make another effort, Salahuddin leads Kasturba and Nasreen a few steps away from the curtain. With Changez hidden from view, the women weep. Nasreen’s grief breaks through the control she had maintained earlier: she cries because Changez had sworn he would never leave her, yet now he is gone. Kasturba is beside her as that loss becomes immediate.

Salahuddin watches through a gap in the curtain as the medical staff attempt to revive Changez and the monitor registers a brief pulse before the effort fails. Kasturba is not given a separate speech or action during this moment; her presence with Nasreen is the significant fact. The preceding scenes have established their closeness through a shared embrace and their attendance at Changez’s bedside, so their removal behind the curtain does not divide their grief. The barrier instead separates them from the medical effort and its final outcome, while Salahuddin becomes the witness to both the women’s mourning and Changez’s death.

Warning Salahuddin

Later, on the night after his participation in the making of the human chain, Salahuddin is looking from the window of his childhood bedroom toward the Arabian Sea when Kasturba knocks urgently. She tells him that a man has come to see him and appears plainly frightened. Salahuddin has seen no one enter through the gate; Kasturba explains that the visitor came by the servants’ entrance and identifies him as Gibreel Farishta, whose name has appeared in the papers. Her voice falters, and she nervously chews at the nails of her left hand.

The scene gives Kasturba a different kind of importance from her role in the sickroom. There she shares in intimate care and grief; here she is the person who detects and communicates a troubling arrival. The servants’ entrance, rather than the gate, makes the visitor’s approach seem concealed from Salahuddin, while Kasturba’s urgent warning ensures that the encounter cannot remain unnoticed. The novel does not explain the full source of her fear in this moment, so her alarm is best understood as a reported response, not as proof of a specific motive. Across the two episodes, Kasturba remains a witness and intermediary: she is present when private bonds are exposed by impending death, and she alerts Salahuddin when an old and dangerous connection returns.