A River Sutra Study Guide & Notes

A River Sutra Plot Summary

Preview of A River Sutra Summary:

The Narrator's Story

The loose collection of stories that comprises Gita Mehta's A River Sutra are connected by three things: the Narmada River, the theme of love, and the narrator's inability to understand the various tales of the human heart he hears. Mehta gives very little information about this narrator. The reader never knows his name, much less the secrets of his heart. It is through this nameless man that the reader learns the stories of uncommon pain and joy that the narrator has collected during his tenure as the manager of a government rest house on the banks of the Narmada River.

The Monk's Story

Ashok is the first of many people to tell the narrator his story of love. The monk is probably only thirty years old, and yet he has already tired of a world that offered him anything he wanted: extreme wealth, a loving family, and the opportunity to better other people's lives through charity. The monk has willingly decided to become a monk in a religion where, as other monks tell him, he will suffer almost constant pain. Ashok believes these sacrifices are worthwhile because in his renunciation, as the same monks tell him, he "will be free from doubt."

The narrator cannot understand Ashok's adherence to a religious order where the highest level of enlightenment will probably come, as Ashok's father says, from "starving himself to death." The narrator shudders to think that one day he will see Ashok's body, just as he has seen so many other priests'...
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