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    A Study Guide for Gita Mehta's "A River Sutra"
    A Study Guide for Gita Mehta's "A River Sutra"
    A Study Guide for Gita Mehta's "A River Sutra"
    Ebook47 pages32 minutes

    A Study Guide for Gita Mehta's "A River Sutra"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Gita Mehta's "A River Sutra," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literature of Developing Nations for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literature of Developing Nations For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateNov 3, 2016
    ISBN9781535817141
    A Study Guide for Gita Mehta's "A River Sutra"

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      A Study Guide for Gita Mehta's "A River Sutra" - Gale

      1

      A River Sutra

      Gita Mehta

      1993

      Introduction

      In A River Sutra, Gita Mehta took a new direction in her writing. In her previous works, Karma Cola (1979) and Raj (1989), Mehta had focused on the interactions between India and the Western world. In A River Sutra, Mehta changes focus and explores the diversity of cultures within India. To accomplish this, Mehta presents seemingly unconnected stories in her novel, stories about Hindu and Jain ascetics, courtesans and minstrels, diamond merchants and tea executives, Muslim clerics and music teachers, tribal folk beliefs and the anthropologists who study them. What binds these stories together are two things: the Narmada River and a sutra. Sutra, as Mehta explains in the glossary to her novel, means literally, a thread or string. In the case of her novel, the sutra is the theme of love that runs through all the stories, threading them loosely together. The Narmada River stands for another type of sutra. This river, known as the holiest in India, threads together the diverse people who live on its shores or who come to worship at its waters. The term sutra also refers to an Indian literary form, so in the novel, each story is in itself a sutra that presents a message. Every time the nameless narrator tries to tease out the meaning of one sutra, he encounters another pilgrim or lost soul with another story to tell.

      Critics have responded positively to A River Sutra. They remark on both the simplicity of the storytelling style—a style as old as India—and the complexity of the themes the novel explores. As the reviewer from the Washington Post Book World noted, the stories leave the reader with the sense that things are richer and more meaningful than they seem, that life is both clear and mysterious, that the beauty and the horror of this world is both irreducible and inexplicable. Critics further praise how Mehta introduces Western readers to a world they have not fathomed. A River Sutra, however, suggests that the sutra, or the theme of love, running through the stories can connect all people together.

      Author Biography

      Gita Mehta was born in New Delhi, India in 1943 to parents who were very involved in the movement for Indian independence. In 1943, India was still a British colony. Three weeks after Mehta was born her father was jailed for supporting the nationalist cause. At the age of three, Mehta was left to be raised in a convent in Kashmir so that her mother could better aid her jailed husband. After India gained its independence, Mehta’s father went into

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