Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

First published: 1975

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: 1920’s and 1970’s

Locale: Satipur and Khatm, India; London

Principal characters

• Unnamed narrator, a young British woman
• Olivia Rivers, the narrator’s stepgrandmother
• Douglas Rivers, Olivia’s husband, a British colonial officer
• The Nawab, a Muslim Indian prince
• Inder Lal, an Indian government official
• Harry, the Nawab’s houseguest

The Story:

The stepgranddaughter of Olivia Rivers has long been fascinated by the letters of her late stepgrandmother. The young woman travels to India in the 1970’s to discover the reason why Olivia had deserted her husband, the narrator’s grandfather, for the Nawab, a Muslim Indian prince.

The narrator is initially overwhelmed by the heat, poverty, and exoticism of India. She travels to Satipur, where Olivia once lived, and sublets a room from an Indian government official named Inder Lal. She finds Olivia’s former residence, where she had lived with her husband, Douglas Rivers, and which now houses several local government offices. The narrator quickly acclimatizes herself to India, studies Hindi, starts wearing Indian clothing, and develops a friendship with Inder Lal, who takes her to Khatm to see the Nawab’s palace, which has fallen into neglect.

Olivia’s story goes back to the early 1920’s, when she first meets the Nawab, in 1923, at a dinner party at his palace. She has been in Satipur for several months and is becoming progressively more and more bored by her life in India. Her husband is absorbed with his onerous duties as an assistant collector, so her days are very long and uneventful. The only people she is in contact with are the medical superintendent Dr. Saunders and his wife, the Crawfords (Douglas’s supervisor and his wife), and Major Minnes (a political officer attached to the Nawab) and his wife. Consequently, Olivia is excited by the Nawab’s dinner invitation. The occasion is grand, and she feels, for the first time, that she has come to the right place in the country. While she is quickly bored by the conversation of the old Indian hands, Olivia immediately likes Harry, the Nawab’s English house guest, and the mysterious Nawab. Soon after the party, Harry and the Nawab start visiting Olivia.

It is now the 1970’s, and on one of her walks, the narrator encounters three young English backpackers who are trying to get an Indian watchman to open an old British bungalow that is used as a travelers’ rest house. Two of the tourists are thoroughly disgusted with the country because of their numerous experiences with dishonest Indians; the third tourist, Chid, is dressed like an Indian ascetic and is on a pilgrimage. The three eventually convince the watchman to open the bungalow, which is dark and musty. The narrator suddenly realizes that the house once belonged to Dr. Saunders and has a view of the old British cemetery.

From her letters, it becomes clear that Olivia had always been greatly moved by graveyards. She loved wandering through them, reading the inscriptions, and soaking up the atmosphere. Most of the graves in the British cemetery in Satipur are of children who had died of different diseases. Olivia had discovered the newest grave was that of the Saunders baby. Olivia is overcome.

The next day, as the story goes, Olivia visits Mrs. Saunders, who is sick in bed; she suddenly starts shouting irrationally about the behavior of her servants. Olivia then pays a visit to the Nawab’s mother with Mrs. Crawford. One day, the Nawab shows up with his retinue at the Rivers’s residence to take Olivia on a trip to the countryside. They visit a shady grove around a small stone shrine called Baba Firdaus, which had been built by one of the Nawab’s ancestors. The Nawab is very attentive to her, and they have a long talk. Olivia never tells Douglas about the picnic.

The narrator has gotten into the habit of meeting Inder Lal after he finishes work and then taking walks with him. She also starts joining his mother on some jaunts with her friends.

Olivia, the narrator learns, gets into an argument with Douglas and Dr. Saunders when she defends the ancient Indian practice of suttee, in which a Hindu woman is cremated with her dead husband on his funeral pyre.

The narrator finds a sick and starving Chid while she is on one of her walks with Inder Lal, and she decides to let him live in her room so that she can take care of him. However, Chid turns out to be a demanding guest. The narrator learns that the shrine to which the Nawab took Olivia is now believed by Hindu women to cure infertility.

Olivia is reassured by Mrs. Crawford and Mrs. Minnes when some rioting occurs in Khatm on Husband’s Wedding Day. The Nawab then visits the Rivers to take a distraught and homesick Harry back to the palace. Ritu, Inder Lal’s wife, has become quite psychologically ill, so she is taken, by Inder Lal’s mother as well as Chid and Majji, a holy woman, on a pilgrimage to help her. Olivia has started regularly to visit the palace after Douglas goes to work. She and Douglas also decide to try to have children.

Inder Lal and the narrator visit Baba Firdaus’s grove for a picnic. She soon seduces him there. Meanwhile, the narrator discovers she is pregnant, and Inder Lal now visits her room at night. She has elected not to tell him about the pregnancy.

The Nawab invites Olivia for another trip to Baba Firdaus’s shrine. There he tells her about his colorful ancestor, Amanullah Khan, and they make love under a nearby tree. Olivia finds out she is pregnant, but she puts off telling Douglas. Harry informs her that the Nawab is having financial problems and that Major Minnies is criticizing some of his political decisions. She tells the Nawab that she is pregnant. He is delighted by the news, and that night she also notifies Douglas, who also is happy. At a dinner party with Major Minnies, it is revealed that a gang of dacoits, associated with the Nawab, has been raiding villages and stealing cash and jewels.

Olivia decides not to have the baby over concerns that it will be obvious when it is born that Douglas is not the father. She finds a local Indian abortionist with Harry’s help and undergoes the procedure, but complications develop, and she is forced to seek medical attention from Dr. Saunders. The doctor immediately comprehends what has happened and is outraged. The truth about the abortion quickly comes out, and all the British residents believe that the Nawab had used Olivia as a means of revenge against their community. As soon as Olivia is released from the hospital, she goes straight to the palace.

Little is known about Olivia’s later life, and she eventually spends her remaining days in the mountains in a house the Nawab had bought for her. The Nawab ultimately has his power taken away from him and ends up spending most of his time in London with Harry.

The narrator resolves to leave Satipur in an attempt to find Olivia’s former mountain home. She finds the isolated dwelling on a mountain ledge and decides to have her baby and live in a nearby ashram.

Bibliography

Booker, M. Keith. Colonial Power, Colonial Texts: India in the Modern British Novel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. This study places in context Jhabvala’s contributions to India’s prominence in British literature.

Chakravarti, Aruna. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: A Study in Empathy and Exile. Delhi: B. R., 1998. Discusses Jhabvala’s work as well as that of other European authors who have written about India. Examines Jhabvala’s role as an expatriate. Useful for scholars and students approaching Jhabvala’s fiction for the first time. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Cronin, Richard. “The Hill of Devi and Heat and Dust.” Essays in Criticism 26, no. 2 (1986): 142-159. Discuss the influence of E. M. Forster’s book.

Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. “Moonlight, Jasmine, and Ricketts.” The New York Times, April 22, 1975. In this important journalistic piece, Jhabvala explains her feelings and thoughts about India.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Out of India.” Interview by Vincent LoBrutto. In Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970’s and 1980’s, edited by Patrick McGilligan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. The author comments on her personal history as well as on her film adaptations.

Nelson, Eric. “Retrofitting the Raj: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and the Uses and Abuses of the Past.” In British Women Writing Fiction, edited by Abby H. P. Werlock. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000. Argues that Jhabvala’s awareness of the losses her father’s family suffered during the Holocaust is reflected in her sensitivity toward the plight of Indians under British colonial rule.

Krishnaswamy, Shantha. The Woman in Indian Fiction in English, 1950-1980. New Delhi: Ashish, 1984. This study of the representation of women in English-language Indian fiction includes a chapter that is critical of Jhabvala’s writings.

Rushdie, Salman. “Introduction.” In Mirrorwork: Fifty Years of Indian Writing, 1947-1997, edited by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. Offers an insightful overview of the importance of regional background and language to Indian writers, which Rushdie sees as the reason Jhabvala’s work is unique. Essential reading.

Sinha, Sunand Kumar. The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: A Feminist Perspective. New Delhi: Radha, 2004. This scholarly work examines the complexities of Jhabvala’s work from the standpoint of feminist criticism.

Tank, Nayan D. “Thematic Concerns in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust.” In Indian Women Novelists in English, edited by P. D. Bheda. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2005. Shows how the novel is dominated by four major themes: love and sex, complexity, orthodoxy, and an autobiographical revelation by the narrator.