73 pages • 2 hours read
Indra SinhaAnimal's People
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Tapes 19-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Tape 19 Summary
Zafar, Farouq, and two women begin the hunger strike in a tent across from the courthouse. Elli begs them not to do it and explains what will happen to their bodies. She and others are horrified when Zafar announces that they will not drink water during their fast. Elli tells them they will die in only a few days. Animal criticizes her hypocrisy for pretending to care about them. Nisha is furious with Zafar.
The city is abuzz with talk of the four “new saints” (292), whose bodies begin to break down. People gather outside the tent to be in their presence. The two women end their strike. When Zafar is sleeping, Nisha sneaks him some water, infuriating him. Nisha tells him, “You can’t fight if you’re dead” (293). She says the Kampani is “laughing at” (293) him. Animal can see that Zafar agrees but that “he is tired of fighting and that this is the only way he can stop with honor” (294). Nisha tells him she refuses to watch him die, and he orders her to leave.
Zafar and Farouq grow weak in the blazing heat of Nautapa. Zafar confesses to Animal he “never walked in fire because [he] refuse[s] to bow to god” (297), adding that when you “[l]ook at the world’s misery […] you have to believe that something malevolent is at work here” (297). Animal is distraught watching Zafar suffer.
Elli announces that she’s had word that the deal has been delayed long enough to ensure it cannot occur before the hearing. The town celebrates, but Zafar and Farouq continue the hunger strike because, as Somraj notes, “there’s been no confirmation of her news” (299).
Zafar tells Animal he knows he loves Nisha and that if he dies, Animal should take care of her because, with his sense of humor and intelligence, he “can lift her spirits” (301). He says he wishes he himself had been more like Animal, who knows “in the end the only way to deal with tragedy is to laugh at it” (301). He also says Animal only pretends to be an animal.
Animal confesses to Zafar that he poisoned him and spied on him and Nisha from the tree. Rather than grow angry, Zafar laughs, telling him, “By god in whom I refuse to believe there are limits, but you exceed them all” (303). Animal then tells Zafar what he knows about Elli. Zafar thanks him and says Somraj already told him. He tells Animal to make sure Elli is also looked after, confusing Animal.
Tape 20 Summary
The day of the hearing, the people learn the judge has been transferred and the hearing has been postponed. The American lawyers arrive and feign ignorance.
Journalists ask if a deal has been reached. The head lawyer, or “the buffalo,” offers elusive responses. A woman asks if he cares that their chemicals have killed people; the buffalo gives her some money and says, “Buy yourself something nice” (307). Zafar asks, “[H]ow do you justify what you do?” (307). The buffalo says that when you are as accomplished as he is, “you don’t have to spend time justifying yourself” (307).
Zafar begins saying goodbye to his friends. Animal, in tears, tells him they are going to win. He thinks of Zafar’s belief that the power of nothing will triumph and begs for it to begin working.
Word arrives that there’s a protest at the factory. Animal leaves Zafar to find that people are overwhelming and attacking the guards. He sees that the power of nothing “is fueled not just by anger but despair” (310). The people tear down the barriers and storm the fields outside. Someone suggests burning the factory down, but Animal tells them “the chemicals will catch light, it’ll be that night all over again” (311).
Police reinforcements arrive and begin beating the protestors. When Inspector Fatlu, with whom Animal has had confrontations before, hits Nisha, Animal bites off his ear. Animal is beaten severely. Somraj, “who does not believe in direct or violent action” (313), slaps Fatlu and is beaten by officers. Suddenly, the officers are cleared from the field by thousands of angry protestors. Animal, Nisha, and Somraj are taken to Somraj’s house.
Outside, Animal sees Elli, who says there are rumors she works for the Kampani and that Huriya refuses to send Aliya to her again. Animal confronts her about seeing her at the hotel. Elli says the lawyer, her ex-husband, works for the Kampani; she hates the Kampani and divorced him because of it. She explains that she was surprised to find that the lawyers were in Khaufpur. When her ex-husband, Frank, called her, she refused to talk to him but took his hotel room number. She wanted to tell Somraj but was afraid. After watching from her rooftop the protest at the Chief Minister’s house, she disguised herself in a black burqa and went to the hotel to see him. He repeatedly expressed his affection for her. Elli told him about the Khaufpuris’ suffering and that she wanted the Kampani to clean up the factory. Frank told her he would delay the agreement if she agreed to come home after the hearing. Reluctantly, she agreed.
Tapes 19-20 Analysis
Animal wrestles with his conscience, not only in trying to decide whether to reveal what he knows about Elli but in reconciling his simultaneous resentment of and respect for Zafar. Though he’s always seen Zafar as his rival and has been irritated by Zafar’s seemingly infallible saintliness, when Zafar’s death seems imminent, he discovers he is “infected with this disease called conscience” (292): not only is he affected by “Nisha’s misery” (292), but there is, he admits, “part of me that admires the git” (292) who has “always been kind to me” (292). It “pains” Animal “to see my old rival in this state” (297), and he is brought to tears as Zafar says goodbye (308). Despite his continued insistence that he is “not a man” (303), his humanity is inescapable. Even on his deathbed, Zafar “affectionately” chides him, “Fucker, you pretend you’re an animal, and in this much you resemble one, you keep your nose to the ground and your tail up” (301).
Zafar, too, has proven to be more human than saint, and his deathbed confessions exhibit the very human struggles he has carefully concealed. He tells Animal he regrets not understanding earlier that “in the end the only way to deal with tragedy is to laugh at it” (301), calling his “[s]eriousness” a “curse” (301). Abandoning both his usual positivity and his conservative language, he complains his “head will bust with all the fucking thoughts bulging in it” (296). The hunger strike itself, while courageous, is an indication of his weariness: Animal suspects that Zafar is “tired of fighting and that this is the only way he can stop with honour” (294). Even the joking, honest conversations he holds with Animal suggest he is more than a saintly figurehead. Calling him “Animal bastard,” Zafar notes that datura is an aphrodisiac; when Animal expresses surprise that Zafar “felt the urge” (308), Zafar responds, “Am I not human?” (308).
Animal’s People centers around “that night” and the Kampani that has ruined countless lives, and Sinha has built suspense by keeping the face of the Kampani hidden until the final tapes. Though readers have spent the entire novel witnessing the devastation the Kampani caused, it isn’t until Tape 20 that representatives of the Kampani actually arrive. When we do meet them, they are every bit as heartless as we are asked to imagine. “The buffalo” makes generic, meaningless statements to the people, responding to their angry questions by telling them “[w]e’re confident that all outstanding issues will be resolved” (306). Laughing that he hopes the deal is closed soon because he misses his two Italian greyhounds, he hands a victim money and tells her to “[b]uy [her]self something nice” (307), completely oblivious to the fact that she has money for neither food nor medicine, let alone “something nice.” His smiling face is an insult to the people from whose lives his own life is so very far removed. The buffalo’s—and by extension, the Kampani’s—disregard of the people’s suffering is made tangible when the woman asks if it made “much difference” (306) to him that the chemicals designed to kill insects actually killed people. The buffalo’s response, “I don’t know how to translate it” (306), speaks not only to his literal inability to understand the language but also his inability to understand the harm his clients have done.
This insensitivity to the people’s suffering is represented by the clear skies above the factory riot. With Zafar dying and the hearing postponed, the people truly have nothing to lose, and they return to the place where their suffering began. Animal looks to the sky and sees “placid clouds drifting across the sky” (310) and concludes that “[o]utside of ourselves nothing cares” (310). The seeming indifference of the sky to the people’s anger illustrates the indifference of the Kampani to the people they have hurt. Ignored and invalidated yet again, the suffering people appear even more insignificant under the cheerful sky.
