The Storyteller's Secret

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Part 14: “Ravi”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 14, Chapter 48 Summary

Deepak consults the village Brahmins about Amisha’s fever-induced hallucinations and delusions. The Brahmins say that dark energy has possessed her and plan to perform a ceremony to rid her of the spirits. Ravi arranges to have the children stay with Deepak’s sister Janna so that they won’t interfere with the ceremony.

Ravi contemplates his beliefs surrounding death. Before, he considered death “a gift given to them because, once dead, they no longer had to fear life” (348). Amisha’s illness has changed this belief and makes Ravi dread the possibility of losing his friend.

The Brahmin ceremony tries to smoke the dark energy out with an excessive amount of incense. When Amisha starts to choke, Ravi wants to intervene, but Deepak holds him back. Amisha screams in agony and Ravi runs out of the house, unable to cope with her pain.

Part 14, Chapter 49 Summary

The Brahmins and Deepak decide on another course of treatment: beating Amisha with leather whips to force the dark energy out of her. Ravi is horrified and claims that this is not what Amisha deserves, but Deepak is frightened for Amisha’s life and knows no alternative. Deepak insists that Ravi beat Amisha when she is tied to the beech tree in the school’s garden. Ravi has no choice but to assent, otherwise Deepak will have men from the mill come to beat Amisha instead.

Deepak refuses to be present for the beating. Alone with Amisha, Ravi removes his shirt and draws the whip in such a way that it first strikes his own back before snapping forward and hitting her, thereby lessening the hurt Amisha experiences. Amisha screams in pain, eventually falling unconscious, and Ravi stops the beating. He looks down at her “blood that mingled with his own in a puddle on the ground” (352) and begs for forgiveness.

Deepak and the Brahmins leave Amisha unconscious and tied to the beech tree for three days before she is pronounced dead. The family cremates her and spreads her ashes into the air, “at last taking Amisha to places of which she had only dreamed” (353).

Part 14 Analysis

With the shift to Ravi’s voice, Amisha’s character loses all independence, having sacrificed everything, including her life to the cycle of Indian woman eternally submissive to men. First, Amisha sacrificed her creative voice for motherhood when she said goodbye to Stephen. Here, with her narrative voice sacrificed to Ravi, Amisha loses even this final consolatory status.

When Ravi’s blood mixes with Amisha’s during the whipping scene, it binds them together—their blood touches in complete defiance of the social construct of caste. Ravi uses his body to protect hers, which allows the friends to share in the same suffering. Through the novel, Ravi has often reminded Amisha of his Untouchable status, staying within toxic societal structures that keep him at a distance. By having the whip to touch both his body and Amisha’s, and letting their blood to mix on the ground, Ravi finally accepts that he is not what society deems him to be—he is simply Amisha’s friend.