Death by Bull is the soundest way to go.

For this blog entry I decided to use the example on pages 59-60 in Bharati Mukrajees’ novel “Jasmine” where Jasmine speaks to her friend Taylor about fate and destiny. This concept has a lot to do with the novel and involves the struggle between free will and destiny that surfaces various times throughout the novel.

What the episode also touches on is the western form of thought versus a more traditional, and in a lot of ways a more cultural form of thinking as well.

It’s obvious that we as Americans have grown up in a society that preaches freedom and free will in everything from Hollywood movies to educational systems. I think this is also why topics that have to do with the confrontation between free will and destiny are analyzed and studied so much in school. It’s as if were fascinated by the concept that there is another way of doing things, when really it’s just another way people grow up.

The conversation I am using as my example takes place between Jasmine and Taylor and what Jasmine’s concept of fate has to do with explaining her father’s death – it happens. But her father’s death doesn’t just happen, according to Jasmine, it happened for a reason.

“Perhaps my father’s assignment was to be just that: my father, to die in a freakish accident before he could marry me off so that I could be free to fall in love with Prakash.”

Her spin to the theory, everything happens for a reason. I mean you have to admit that it’s a bit more powerful than “death is just a part of life”, which I consider to be a more western mode of thought. I mean the concept that everything happens for a reason leaves a mystified atmosphere to the whole situation.

Jasmine also explains her backing for the theory by saying “we have no husbands, no wives, no fathers, no sons. Family life and family emotions are all illusions. The Lord lends us a body, gives us an assignment, and sends us down. When we get the job done, the Lord calls us home for the next assignment.”

The funny part about the placement of this episode is that it is relatively early in the novel, only chapter 9. So right off the bat your described Jasmine’s form of thinking, that all that’s happened in her life, with her father’s death, her mother’s solitude, and even with Prakash – it’s all part of the same assignment. I mean she find herself countless years later living with a handicapped boyfriend and an adopted son from Hong Kong in the Midwest part of the U.S. So if anyone could have really predicted, particularly jasmine, that her life would take that drastic of a turn then I seriously doubt free will plays a major role in the scheme of things.

On the other hand I find Taylor’s response to Jasmine’s comments a bit refreshing, he’s predictable – says what western thinker would say and hides within his own naivety especially when he says “don’t call me a bigot.” It’s as if the title scares him more than the realization of another form of thought.

This episode is really pivotal to me in the novel, because as I said it occurs early, and really lets you know that although Jasmine isn’t living in India, the eastern hemisphere of the world, she still has tendencies in her form of thinking. And after all you are a direct representation of where you’ve grown up.

“you can take the boy out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the boy.”