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Elective English—III

Notes of Mali’s estrangement, is very vivid, subtle, delicate yet insinuating and intoxicating.
His present life as the vendor of sweets concerned with Mali’s education etc., is already given in
the beginning. Finally, there are the last exciting glimpses of Jagan’s future life as a completely
retired person, retiring from the galling chains of samsara. Thus, here, we have at one point,
somewhat midway as we proceed with the novel, a triumph of art and symmetry, the meeting
of the three points of climax, a confluence of exciting and charming narratives and we get at this
point a thrilling vision of the past, the present and the future of the entire novel. Moreover, as a
work of art, The Vendor of Sweets has sweetness and sadness, charm and chagrin, ‘old’ morality
and the ‘new’ bumper business and Bhagavad Gita, the strings of samsara and struggle for
salvation.

5.4 Main Themes

It is possible to read The Vendor of Sweets as a merely amusing story, which depends for its
comedy on the improbable and fantastic. However, there is much more in it than is apparent on
the surface. While it seems to tell the amusing story of an eccentric and obscurantist father and
his upstart son, and the game of hide and seek they play with each other, in fact it is built on a few
inter-related themes of which the most readily obvious is the father-son motif. The others are
youth versus age, the generation gap, tradition versus modernity, East versus West, and search
or quest. The quest motif is the most meaningful in the novel and encompasses all the others.
Jagan the protagonist of the novel, by virtue of the circumstances of his life, engaged himself in
different kinds of search. However, he is not a deliberate and self-conscious quester, nor is he
capable of sophisticated intellectual inquiry. What is more, he is hardly aware of some of the
searches he is involved in.

Identity and Self-renewal

In The Vendor of Sweets, once again the theme is man’s quest for identity and self-renewal.
The protagonist Jagan is a sweet-vendor by profession, follower of the Gita in thinking and
talker of Gandian principles but he indulges in double-dealing in matters of money, and also
cheats sales-tax authorities. He comes to realize that money is evil when his son, Mali, comes
back to India with a Korean girl, Grace and asks for money for his business. Jagan finds new life
or a new birth in his retirement, when he surrenders his business to his cousin. His fragile
Gandhian self-regard collapses before his much-loved son’s strange actions; and after Mali ends
up disastrously in prison as a result of driving drunk around Malgudi, Jagan has no option but
a Hindu-style renunciation of the world, bewilderment and retreat to a simpler life. Nevertheless,
even here his ideal of Sanyasa is spurious as he still holds the purse string.

East-West

East-West conflict is the major theme of the novel. It is the conflict between a genuine Indian or
Eastern father and his Western-bred son. The relationship between Jagan and his son Mali might
be read as the clash between Eastern and Western cultures. As characters, Jagan and Mali are
contrasted in many ways: while Jagan keeps a strict, religiously founded diet, Mali has begun
eating beef and drinking alcohol after his stay in America. While Jagan prefers to walk everywhere,
Mali insists on getting a car. While Jagan’s labour is manual, he is a vendor of sweets, Mali want
to go into industrial business.

Generation Gap

The conflict between the old and young generation, their ideals and the generation gap makes
‘Vendor of Sweets’ a memorable story.

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