Certain elements in the novel A River Sutra by Gita Mehta constitute motifs or themes which run through the novel as threads holding together the different stories told and adding meaning to the whole. Two such themes would be the river and sorrow. The river as an object is ever-present, with the various characters and their stories occurring along the river, because of the river, or in proximity to the river, while a sense of underlying sorrow helps define the society and characterize the consequences of many of the tales told. The connection between sorrow and the river is seen as the narrator recalls one of the people he has met and experiences a sense of sorrow:
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 sorrow through the lives of the people of India.
A sutra is a precept or teaching, and thus the river is meant to be a teacher, offering lessons to those on its shore. The stories in this book are also clearly intended to be didactic in nature, to teach a lesson to the reader, as they teach lessons to the narrator who hears them or experiences them and then comments on their meaning as they change his view of himself and the world. Sorrow is also a teach...