T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

is broken.It is the same air this side as that.He'll never see Lahore again and I never have".!Jasmine, 43)jasmine's passage to America was not easy: She encounteredthreats and violence all the way. After murdering Half-Facewho assaulted her she sets the suitcase (containing her husbandprakash's suit) on Eire. Yama and the pitcher are recalledagaln- "I thought. The pitcher 1s broken. Lord Yama, who hadwanted me, who had courted me, and whom I'd flirted with on thelong trip over, had now deserted me". (Jasmine, 120)Considering the numerous appointments Jasmine had withdeath she may be compared to the sun-goddess Savitri in Indianmythology. The mythical Savitri, daughter of King Ashvapatifell in love with a simple man called Satyavan, married himmuch against the warning of the sages who warned her that hewould die in a year. (Knappert 1992,218) Although Savitriloses her husband she follows hlm behind Yama, the God ofDeath. Similarly Jasmine follows the dead Prakash's (herhusband's) wlsh and lands up In America. The villageastrologer had warned her in Hasnapur that she would become awldow early in life. Reconciling to her fate Jasmine bravesdeath to follow her dead husband's wishes.Hasnapur, the village from which Jyoti/Jasmine comesechoes the mythlcal Hastinapura, the capital city of centralIndia in the days of the great war of the Mahabharata.