Hello and welcome to the Discourse. “Jasmine” is the third novel that was written by Bharati Mukherjee and was published in 1980. Bharati Mukherjee always maintained that she is not an expatriate Indian, rather, she is an Immigrant Indian who willfully chose to accept and love the foreign culture and values. In this novel too, she expresses Indian culture and traditions as a bane that is very cruel to widow women. On the other hand, she expresses America as a land of freedom, promise, and fulfillment where one can attain a reward for each of his or her effort and where the relationship between man and woman is based on an equal and equal relationship.
Written from the first person point of view in a non-linear style, the novel tells the story of Jyoti, a young Indian woman who is a widow, and her journey and personal development as she attempts to assimilate into American culture.
Characters of Jasmine:
Jyoti is the main character of the novel who is also known by the name Jasmine, Jazzy, Jase, and Jane in different situations during her journey from a small town in India to big cities in America. She is a simple girl belonging to a middle-class Punjabi Hindu peasant family. Jyoti lives with her Mataji (mother), Pitaji (father), and Dida (grandmother). Masterji is her school teacher who encourages her to higher studies. In her youth, she marries Prakash Vijh, a young hardworking honest Punjabi Hindu man with her family’s consent. Dave Vadhera is an Indian professor who encourages Prakash to pursue higher studies in America. Later on, Professor Vadhera shifts to America with his wife Nirmala and his parents. Half-Face is the captain of the ship that Jyoti takes to Florida. Lilian Gordon is an activist in South Florida who helps Kanjobal refugees and other illegal immigrants in America, Kate is her daughter who is an NYC photographer and artist. Taylor Hayes is a physicist and researcher at Columbia University who employs Jasmine as the caretaker of Duff, the adopted daughter of Taylor Hayes and his wife Wyllie Hayes. Wylie leaves Taylor to live with Stuart, an economist. Bud Ripplemayer is a banker and landowner in Baden, Iowa. Jasmine works as a teller in his family bank. He develops a romantic relationship with Jasmine and they start living together. Jasmine becomes pregnant with their child. Bud persistently proposes to her to marry him but she continues to refuse him. Du Thien is a Vietnamese refugee kid whom Jasmine and Bud adopt as their son. Darrel Lutz is a neighbor of Bud who owns a farm. He needs a loan to save his farm but Bud refuses to help him. Karen Ripplemayer is Bud’s ex-wife who lives in Iowa
Summary of Jasmine:
The novel begins as Jasmine reminisces about her childhood. She used to be known as Jyoti at that time. She was living with her Mataji, Pitaji, and Dida, an elder brother, and a sister. When she was seven years old, she met an astrologer under a Banyan tree in Hasanpur who forecasted her eventual widowhood and exile. Jyoti feels offended and opposes the astrologer’s prophecy. The astrologer gets angry and hits her head and then he goes back to his trance. Jyoti falls down and her head hits a bundle of sticks which causes a scar. Jyoti believes that this scar whose mark may never go throughout her life is like her third eye which will help her in changing the bad future that the astrologer prophecized.
At school, Jyoti was a brilliant child. Her school teacher Masterji started tutoring her in English and encouraged her to pursue higher studies. While Mataji, her mother too supported Jyoti for higher studies, Pitaji and Dida were not in favor of Jyoti spending more time in school. Masterji convinces her father to let Jyoti work hard on her studies as he believes that she can overcome the traditional, conservative, feudal ways of Hasnapur. Her father agrees to her tutoring by Masterji. Just after a couple of days, her father is attacked by a loose mad bull and he dies on the spot. After her father’s death, Jyoti’s family shifts their home. A week later, a gang of Sikh militants attack Jyoti’s school and murdered Masterji in front of his students.
Though she is a brilliant student, Jyoti belongs to a middle-class family and after her father’s premature death, her family faces financial troubles. When Jyoti was just 14, she married Prakash, a friend of her elder brother. Prakash is a liberal young man who believes in equality in relationships. He respects Jyoti and encourages her to continue her studies. To break from the past, Prakash renames her as Jasmine. Prakash himself is a brilliant student. He works two jobs and studies for his diploma exams while Jasmine runs a Ladies' Group raffle and sells detergent to make money. Prakash is known for his liberal views and his opposition to the radical Sikh group the Khalsa Lions. Professor Vadhera of Prakash’s college is planning to shift to America where he has got a job as a professor in Florida. He encourages Prakash to pursue higher education in America. Prakash gets interested in this option and encourages Jasmine to attain fluency in English as he plans to go to America with his wife and settle there.
With the help of Mr. Vadhera’s recommendation, Prakash gets admission to a university in Florida and explains to Jasmine that he may be in the US for many months before he's able to bring her over to him, but that they will write and call each other frequently. To celebrate the occasion, he takes Jasmine to the market to buy a beautiful saree for her. He buys a suit for himself that he wishes to wear at the University of Florida. While Jasmine is trying on beautiful expensive sarees in a showroom, one of the radicals of the terrorist outfit Khalsa Lions attacks with a homemade hand grenade just outside the showroom. Jasmine listens to the deep frightening sound and runs out of the showroom and sees Prakash brutally injured. She takes him in her arms. The radical Sikh whose name is Sukhwinder starts hurling abuses at Jasmine while Prakash dies in her arms.
Jasmine is deeply hurt. After performing the last rites of Prakash, she looks at the suit that Prakash bought and decides to anyhow visit the US and visit the University where Prakash dreamed of studying. She wishes to go there and burn his suit in the same University as she feels it is the only way Prakash’s soul will get some peace. She gets a doctored passport and tickets and travels to Mumbai where she catches an airplane to the U.S. On the last leg of the journey to Florida, she takes a ship whose captain is Half-Face. Half-Face realizes that Jasmine is traveling on doctored papers and hence decides to exploit her. He drives her to an abandoned motel and rapes her. When he falls asleep, Jasmine thinks of killing herself. But as she looks at the face of Half-Face, she feels immense hatred towards him and slashes his throat with a kitchen knife. After killing him, she decides to burn the coat of Prakash along with his papers at the same site. After that, she becomes a paperless refugee in the U.S.
She continues wandering on the roads of Florida while facing infection and starvation and is about to collapse when Lillian Gordon notices her and takes her to her home. Lillian runs an asylum helping refugees. She already has sheltered some Kanjobal girls in her asylum and Jasmine starts living with them. Lillian offers some American clothes to Jasmine and teachers her American mannerism so that she may not get caught by INS. Lillian starts calling her Jazzy. Jazzy is already fluent in English and after learning enough of American mannerisms, she takes Lillian’s help in catching a bus to New York City where she expects to meet Professor Vadhera who has settled there with his parents and young wife Nirmala. Professor Vadhera allows Jazzy to stay at his home. While Professor Vadhera and his wife Nirmala both work at the University, Jazzy takes care of his parents at home. After some time, Jazzy requests Professor Vadhera to help her get a quality fake green card as she is afraid of being caught as an illegal immigrant. Professor Vadhera arranges a fake green card for her. Jazzy isn’t happy while staying with Professor Vadhera as he lives in a society in Flushing where everybody speaks Hindi and follows a lifestyle that resembles more Indian than American. Thus, she decides to explore the other parts of America and leaves Queens for Manhattan where she meets Kate Gordon, the daughter of Lillian Gordon. With the help of Kate, she gets a job as a caretaker at the home of Taylor Hayes and his wife Wyllie Hayes. Taylor is a physicist and professor at Columbia University and Wylie is a publisher and editor.
Jazzy’s job is to take care of Taylor and Wyllie’s adopted daughter Duff. Jazzy makes a close relationship with Duff. She notices that while Taylor feels responsible for Duff as her legal father, Wyllie is not interested in Duff. Taylor starts appreciating Jazzy and she falls in love with him. He starts calling her Jase. Meanwhile, Wylie leaves Taylor Hayes as she develops an extramarital affair with Stuart, an economist on Columbia's faculty. As Wylie leaves Taylor, he proposes to Jase to marry him. However, Jase is hesitant about the prospects of marriage for some reason unknown to Taylor. One day, while in a part with Taylor and Duff, Jase notices a hot dog vendor who appears an Indian Sikh. When she notices him carefully, she gets frightened as she realizes that he is Sukhwinder, the same man who murdered Prakash. She gets too frightened of Sukhwinder and her own fate and remembers the astrologer who professed her widowhood and exile. She gets a panic attack and feels like choking. Taylor brings her back home where she reveals her entire past to Taylor and informs how Sukhwinder, the hot dog vendor murdered her husband. As she wishes no harm to Taylor, she decides to run away from New York and reaches Iowa where Wylie and Taylor adopted Duff.
In Iowa, Jase accidentally meets an old lady Mrs. Ripplemeyer and develops a cordial relationship with her. Mrs. Ripplemeyer starts calling her Jane and introduces her to his son Bud Ripplemeyer who runs a family bank. Bud feels love for Jane at first sight and he offers a job to her as a teller in his bank. Soon he develops a sexual romantic relationship with Jane. While Bud is already married to Karin Ripplemeyer, he decides to divorce her and then Jasmine and Bud start living together at his home. Jane still misses Duff and thus, Bud and Jasmine decide to adopt a child named Du, who is a Vietnamese refugee. Du remains reserved and traumatized by his experiences at the refugee camp. Jane notices that he has an interest in engineering and electronics just like Prakash.
Because of economic turmoil, Bud’s bank faces many applications for loans that Bud cannot afford. He refuses most of the applications and one day, a disgruntled farmer in Iowa shoots Bud at his back for refusing his loan application. After that, the farmer shoots himself and dies. This renders Bud paralyzed below his waist. Meanwhile, Jasmine is pregnant with Bud’s child. She starts taking care of Bud in a wheelchair while maintaining the bank too. Bud requests Jasmine to marry him before she may give birth to their child but Jasmine refuses to marry him. Bud’s neighbor Darrel Lultz manages their family farm and he too is suffering economic problems. He asks for Bud’s help but Bud refuses to offer a loan to him because he feels Darrel is irresponsible. Darrel is a young man in his twenties. He gets infatuated with Jasmine and starts pursuing her. Jasmine too develops a friendly relationship with him. One day, Darrel proposes to her and ridicules her for maintaining a relationship with Bud who is paralyzed and unable as a man. He insists that Jasmine should move with him to New Mexico, where he plans to open a new franchise store. Jasmine feels offended but politely refuses him. She returns to Bud’s home and talks with him about Darrel’s loan application. She convinces Bud to offer a loan to Darrel. When Bud and Jasmine visit Darrel’s house to inform him that Bud has agreed to offer him a loan, they find that he has already succumbed to his frustrations and has hanged himself with the ceiling.
Meanwhile, Du is growing old and he is seventeen now. One day, he leaves Bud’s house abruptly as he finds the address of his sister in Los Angeles. Years have passed since Jasmine left New York. One day, she receives a letter from Taylor in which he informs her that he continued to search for her and now he knows that she is living in Badem, Iowa. The letter informs that Taylor and his daughter Duff are traveling and reaching to visit her in Iowa. Jasmine comes to know that Taylor has been appointed as a professor at the University of UC Berkley and he wishes to marry Jasmine and start a new life with her.
Taylor and Duff reach Iowa and meet Jasmine at Bud’s house. While they are waiting for her in the living room, Jasmine goes inside. Jasmine is torn between her love for Taylor and her duties towards Bud who has impregnated her and is dependent on her. She has to take a firm decision that she cannot change in the future. She decides to call Karren, the ex-wife of Bud who is still in love with Bud. Jasmine informs her that she is leaving Bud as she is going to California. Then she hangs up the phone and goes to the living room. Taylor, Duff, and Jasmine get in the car as Taylor starts their journey to California while Jasmine thinks of the astrologer whom she met at the age of seven, in her imagination, she challenges the astrologer again and says, "Watch me re-position the stars," as she decided to marry Taylor Hayes.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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