A River Sutra by Gita Mehta

For some time the memory of the monk disturbs me. When I sit on the terrace before sunrise with my face turned toward the source of the river, I find I cannot concentrate, seeing the monk's intense eyes above the white mask covering his mouth as clearly as if a photographic image is being projected onto the darkness (Mehta 42).

Note the reference to the river as "the source," for the river means life. The image of a river as a representation of life is common in fiction, with the passage of time represented by the movement of the water, with the idea of a journey down the river as the journey of life, and with the ebb and flow of the river as bringing life and death to those along its shore. Sorrow is a part of the human condition, though here it becomes a repeated motif that itself runs like a river of s

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d brother music, and he adopts the boy in spite of the opposition of his wife and family. He learns the meaning of sorrow first when he finds out about the nature of his family as they treat the blind boy badly, tormenting him, speaking ill of him to his face, and making his life and the teacher's life miserable. The boy sings beautifully, with a voice like that of an angel. He sings so well that he is offered a recording contract, and when his recording comes out and is played everywhere, the wife feels pain every time she hears it, as if it were a personal affront to her that the boy sings so well and is accepted in a way she can never be: Now his wife's rage was inflamed by jealousy. She could hear Imrat's record being played everywhere in the bazaars (Mehta 53). She is especially enraged when she learns that her husband has refused to let the boy sing for a great sahib who has offered an enormous sum for the privilege, and she forces her husband to take the fee and let the boy sing. The sahib wants to buy the boy, and when he cannot get Mohan to agree, he slits the boy's throat so he can sing for no one else. The river is the frame for every story in the book, for the stories are told by pilgrims who have been drawn to
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Gita Mehta, Master Mohan, Narmada Mehta, Courtesan's Story, Narmada River, Chapter Seven, River Narmada, Professor Shamkar, Tariq Mia, civil servant, sorrow river, narmada river, river river, tells story, human sorrow, York Doubleday, boy sing sahib, river cleansed, journey river, reenter world, story river, comes tea plantation, story chapter story,
Approximate Word count = 2173
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)