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Part 2, Chapter 18
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fire on the Mountain, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Nature of Freedom
Honesty and Self-Reflection
Trauma and Suffering
Class and Privilege
Female Oppression
Summary
Analysis
One afternoon at tea, Nanda Kaul resumes telling Raka stories about her childhood in lush Kashmir. She describes rowing in its lakes and streams with her siblings and their houseboat vacations. Raka bluntly asks why Nanda Kaul came to arid Kasauli rather than going back to Kashmir, and Nanda Kaul cryptically remarks that that would be like trying to be young again, and that isn’t something she wants.
At least part of the reason Nanda Kaul couldn’t go back to Kashmir is because it no longer exists, at least as it did during her childhood under the British Raj. Kashmir was one of the areas claimed by both India and Pakistan during the Partition of 1947, leading to violence. India’s colonial past continues to color its present.
Themes
Lost in her memories, Nanda Kaul tells Raka about her parents’ estate, with its groves of almond trees and orchards. She describes the exotic fruits her father cultivated. Desperate to keep Raka’s attention, Nanda Kaul drones on, describing the animals her father kept: a Himalayan bear that grew too big for its cage but too tame to be released back into the wild, and hissing, feral leopards that lived in a cage on the landing outside her father’s room. Raka doesn’t like the image of the caged animals, so Nanda Kaul switches to telling her about the half-tamed peacocks and the wild lemurs that were allowed to roam the estate’s garden. Raka listens with growing consternation. Her great-grandmother used to leave her alone. She doesn’t understand or like this newfound talkativeness.
On a superficial level, Nanda Kaul’s story about her father’s zoo illustrates her family’s privilege and wealth. But it also speaks to unsettling power dynamics. The father cages wild animals for his own pleasure. Later, Nanda Kaul will feel trapped in the gilded cage of her superficially successful but emotionally empty marriage to the Vice-Chancellor. She resents this control and flees her cage as soon as she can. Yet, she’s desperate enough for companionship in this moment that she’s willing to use the lure of her story to trap Raka, too. The book courts readers’ sympathy for the animals in this moment, making a powerful statement about how all creatures need—and deserve—to be free.
Themes
