Fire on the Mountain: Character Quotations

Key word or phrase to memorise: “Discharge me”

What the quotation means: Nanda feels she has finished her duties of caring for others.

Theme: Patriarchy/Trauma

• With Raka close to arriving, Nanda is suddenly reminded of how unhappy she was as a mother:

  • Nanda felt overwhelmed by the crowded, noisy household and lack of privacy, and disliked how little time she got to herself

• Nanda wants to be released from her duty, as she feels this is taking her freedom away from her once more

• By saying she has “discharged” all her duties, she is saying that she has done all this before:

  • She feels she has done her time, having been a mother and wife even when unhappy

• Nanda sees no prospect of joy in looking after Raka, just a burden

Key word or phrase to memorise: “It had been a religious calling”

What the quotation means: Nanda used to care for people, but soon lost her love for it.

Theme: Trauma

• Once upon a time, Nanda had thought that caring for others was the most important thing, something she enjoyed and was passionate about, almost as if it were her calling

• Nowadays, Nanda is no longer someone who wants to care for others:

  • This may reflect disillusionment and long-term emotional exhaustion from her past life

  • She felt locked into her marriage and motherhood, with no escape

  • This has removed any joy or interest she had in the care of others

• This is a great indication of how her trauma has changed her:

  • Something so strong in her it felt a religious experience has been taken by trauma

Key word or phrase to memorise: “A great-grandchild of mine”

What the quotation means: Nanda thinks she sees similarities between herself and Raka.

Theme: Solitude and loneliness

• Raka does not want to go to the club and socialise, and stands up for herself by saying that Nanda does not either:

  • Nanda briefly reads Raka’s refusal as a sign of similarity, projecting her own self-image onto her

  • This is something Nanda thinks of herself, but it is wishful thinking

• Nanda tries to show little interest in Raka, but is consistently drawn in:

  • While Raka does not care, Nanda does and is not so naturally able to ignore people

• This is projection from Nanda, wishing she was like Raka

Key word or phrase to memorise: “It was all a lie”

What the quotation means: Nanda, in sudden grief, admits to herself that she has been lying about multiple aspects of her life and past.

Theme: Trauma

• Nanda has lied to Raka in many conversations, trying to engage her:

  • Nanda is pretending to live a certain way but it is a front she puts up to shield herself from pain

• With Ila’s death confronting her, she breaks:

  • This is more than just admitting that she lied to Raka

  • Here she is admitting that she has lied to herself for a long time

  • Nanda has changed her personality and retreated into her shell so that she can block out her pain

• In the final moments of the book, she admits it to herself and to the reader, finally dispelling her fabrications: 

  • Desai has been hinting at this throughout the narrative, and here it becomes clear

Key word or phrase to memorise: “The infant looked strangely aged”

What the quotation means: Raka and Nanda are watching a mother langur and its baby.

Theme: Trauma

• Raka sees an infant langur with her mother, and the pair somewhat mirror Raka and Nanda watching them

• In this reading, the infant langur is symbolic of Raka:

  • Raka is a child who has been aged by the circumstances of her young life so far

  • The illnesses she has faced have left her looking thin and sickly 

  • The abuse of her mother also has left her with mental scars of anxiety and trauma

• Both Raka and the langur are small figures tinged with sadness:

  • The tear-drop is literal for the langur

  • Raka is worn by sadness in her frailty and desire to be alone

Key word or phrase to memorise: “Behind it all, was her father”

What the quotation means: This is a traumatic memory Raka has of her abusive father.

Theme: Patriarchy

• As Raka sees the drunken revellers at the club, she is reminded of her drunk father:

  • When he would stumble home drunk was when he was going to beat Raka’s mother

• “Behind it all” is an interesting phrase here, as if her father’s abuse of her mother is behind all her anxiety:

  • It has made her mother a shell of herself, and has left Raka fearful of drunken adults

  • Raka is clearly scared of adults out of control, knowing what they can do

• Raka might be free of this trauma in a different society, but the patriarchal systems of 20th-century India mean she has been trapped in a cycle of abuse:

  • Her grandmother pushes her mother back to her father over and over

  • As a professional man who is well respected in the community, his faults are looked past

  • There is a suggestion that Raka’s mother needs to do better as a wife to be happy

  • Women and girls are valued less, so this trauma is seen as not important

Key word or phrase to memorise: “Preferred to stand apart and go off”

What the quotation means: Nanda has not known a child as independent as Raka.

Theme: Solitude and loneliness

• Nanda’s confusion here is part of her seeing someone like Raka, who is comfortable alone, and noticing the difference in how she feels when by herself:

  • Nanda has been lying to herself about her own happiness

  • Raka exposes this, because Nanda sees how comfortable she is and realises she is not as content

• It can also be questioned whether this is true:

  • Nanda found her own children too much to bear, and she may have felt that they were all attention-seeking

  • Equally, Nanda barely remembers the difference between her children and grandchildren, and cannot be trusted to recall correctly

Key word or phrase to memorise: “Confined to the old lady’s fantasy world”

What the quotation means: Raka is not interested in Nanda and wants to be left to explore.

Theme: Solitude and loneliness

• It is possible that Raka is seeing through Nanda’s lies:

  • She may believe it a “fantasy world” because she believes Nanda’s self-confidence and happiness being alone to be false

• Another possibility is that she does not care about Nanda’s memories:

  • To her, they are a tale of the past, and an example of Nanda living in her fantasy of those days, rather than the present day

• Raka is interested in the world around her, and wants to go off alone:

  • Raka has rarely been interested in Nanda as a person

  • She does not want to be here with her in Kasauli

  • She also does not want to be stuck in conversation

• This shows the difference between the pair:

  • Nanda cares about what Raka thinks and what she does

  • Raka has little interest in Nanda because she appears far more comfortable alone outdoors than in social settings

Key word or phrase to memorise: “Dear Carignano”

What the quotation means: Ila has great respect for a beautiful house that once housed British dignitaries.

Theme: Class system

• To Ila Das, who grew up with wealth and status, a big and important house would be a sign of achievement

• Ila would also recognise the significance of Carignano:

  • Having been a home for British people of a certain status, it holds some prestige

  • The class system has arguably been left behind by the British, a system she existed in comfortably for much of her life

  • She was raised to respect status and wealth

• This may also reflect Ila’s shame about her current situation:

  • With wealth and status important in her upbringing, living in poverty is likely something she is ashamed of

  • She mockingly mentions her “castle” to deflect from her shame

Key word or phrase to memorise: “How sympathetically she listened”

What the quotation means: Ila sees the best in Nanda, even when Nanda’s emotional distance seems to be clear.

Theme: Trauma

• For Ila, thinking the best of others and assuming kindness helps to protect her from her pain:

  • She thinks the best of Nanda because that is best for her

  • If she sees Nanda is being kind, then someone is showing her care and respect, which she rarely gets

  • Ila has been regularly mocked all her life, but needs to deflect it

• This is also a sign of her naivety:

  • Her comfortable upbringing has left her without a sense of the real world

  • Nanda offers her no support and was reluctant to hear a word she said, but Ila would never consider this to be true

Key word or phrase to memorise: “Sahibs and Memsahibs”

What the quotation means: Ram Lal is reminiscing about dances put on by the upper-classes — the men (sahibs) and women (memsahibs).

Theme: Class systems

• Ram Lal is still a servant, even after the British have left, and is still using the language of their rule:

  • By using these terms, he is showing himself as being beneath the status of these people

• This is a reminder that the British Raj being over does not mean its impact is gone:

  • Many of its power structures remain, and people raised in these times are going to continue on similarly

  • This is especially true of those who benefit from it, and the upper-class are likely to let these structures remain in place as it benefits them

  • The novel suggests colonial language and hierarchy persist; their decline seems to be very gradual