The Remains of the Feast| Githa Hariharan

About the Author

Githa Hariharan

Githa Hariharan was born in 1954 in Coimbatore, India, She was educated in Bombay, Manila, and the United states. She worked as a staff writer in WNET-Channel 13 in New York, and from 1979, she worked in Bombay, Madras and New Delhi as an editor, first in a publishing house, then as a freelancer.

• In 1995, Hariharan challenged the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act as

discriminatory against women. The case, Githa Hariharan and Another vs.

Reserve Bank of India and Another, led to a Supreme Court judgment in 1999 on

guardianship.• GithaHariharan's published work includes

novels, short stories, essays, newspaper articles and columns.

About the Author

• A collection of highly acclaimed short stories, The Art of Dying, was published in

1993, and a book of stories for children, The Winning Team, in 2004.

• Githa Hariharan has also edited a volume of stories in English translation from four major

South Indian languages, A Southern Harvest (1993); and co-edited a collection of stories for children, Sorry, Best Friend!(1997).

About the Author

• Hariharan's fiction has been translated into a number of languages including French, Italian,

Spanish, German, Dutch, Greek, Urdu and Vietnamese; her essays and fiction have also been included in anthologies such as Salman

Rushdie's Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997. Hariharan wrote, for

several years, a regular column for the major Indian newspaper The Telegraph.

About the Author

• GithaHariharan has been Visiting Professor or Writer-in-Residence in several universities, including Dartmouth College and George Washington University in the United States, the University of Canterbury at Kent in the UK, and JamiaMilliaIslamia in India, where she is, at present, Scholar-in-Residence.

Analysis• The treatment of Indian women has recently

come to light with the exposure of the revival of the old traditions of widow burning. The Brahmin tradition of purity, which includes the fasting of the body and soul, has often been overlooked and has never been considered abuse of any sort.

Analysis

• This lifestyle has always been seen as a source of internal peace and has been called a path to true happiness. However, The Remains of the Feast tells the story of a dying woman, Rukmini, who asks her great-granddaughter, Ratna, to fulfill her dying wishes of breaking from the tradition and eating what has been forbidden her for the entirety of her life.

Summary

Summary

• Rumkini starts small, going after epicurean curiosities that she has seen enter her household throughout the years. Eventually, she becomes more adventurous, asking for food that has not been prepared by cleansed hands. Ratna obliges her great-grandmother, finding no harm in granting the wishes of a dying woman.

Summary

• In Rumkini’s final hours, she screams for a red sari—a clear cry to

break from the tradition of simplicity that she has lived with for most of her life. She dies

before Ratna has the chance to gather all that she has

asked for, but her wishes remain within the

young girl’s memory.

SummaryRatna, against her mother’s wishes, takes a beautiful red sari of her own and lays it across Rumkini’s lifeless body. Her mother immediately tosses the sari away, as if disgusted by the mere idea,

dismissing Rumkini’s final wish as the ranting of a crazed, dying woman. But Ratna, throughout the weeks that she had spent smuggling Rumkini all that was forbidden, knows better. Her great-grandmother sought to break from tradition, and live the last moments of her life enjoying what she truly wanted.

SummaryThe story ends with Ratna placing books of

her own in the old bookshelf of Rumkini —an indication that she intended to

continue her great-grandmother’s endeavor for her ownself: to live as a free woman, not subject to the outdated traditions and culture

that she did not have a stay in. It is assumed that Ratna would continue on to be an educated, forward

thinking woman, unafraid of taking her own personal journey in the world.

Theme Song

All Dead, All Dead

by Queen