Pashmina

After the plane lands, Priyanka and Meena Mausi take a taxi to the sari fabric shop, Sualkuchi Silks. At first, none of the women working there recognize the pashmina or the handiwork on it. Finally, one woman recognizes the embroidery and says that it resembles the work of a woman named Rohini, who didn’t work at their shop but at a different factory nearby. Priyanka and Mausi take a train to the city where the other factory, Warangal Silks, is supposedly located. The place feels familiar to Priyanka, and she feels a faint, cold breeze. When Priyanka and Mausi ask a taxi driver to take them to the factory, they learn that it has been closed. They go to the location anyway and find the former factory destroyed altogether. Priyanka sees the shadow woman roaming about the wreckage. Mausi cannot see the shadow woman, but Priyanka follows the mysterious figure to a hut that she recognizes. It is the same hut that she saw at the beach with Kanta and Mayur, where the shadow woman was also lurking. The breeze becomes stronger and very cold. Priyanka takes the pashmina and goes into the hut while Mausi waits outside.

Priyanka puts on the pashmina and meets Kanta and Mayur again. The shadow woman is also there, but she is no longer a shadow; she looks like a regular human. This time, Mayur and Kanta don’t try to shoo the woman away or urge Priyanka to ignore her; they are no longer worried about her presence. The narrative does not explain why they tried to keep Priyanka away from the shadow woman on previous visits or why they are more comfortable with her now. The woman introduces herself as Rohini Mitra, the same woman who made the magic pashmina. In a flashback, she explains her story.

In 1944, Rohini worked at a clothing factory, which was the only place nearby where women were allowed to work. The factory was going to move to a new location, and the boss invited Rohini to come along because she was a fast and skilled worker and was his “favorite.” Rohini didn’t like working at the factory or being the boss’s favorite, but she didn’t have much of a choice because she needed a job and the factory was the only place within miles that would hire women.

The other workers were upset that the factory was moving, so they raided the building, which caught fire. Most people fled. Once Rohini was alone, the goddess Shakti appeared to her in the form of a giant flame. Shakti asked Rohini for a favor to help end injustice and urged her to make one last pashmina that would “allow women to see their choices” (142). In exchange for doing this, Rohini would no longer be held back by fear. Rohini felt that Shakti would protect her, so she went back inside the burning building to get the materials to make the pashmina. Then she went to the hut and spent several days finishing it with embroidery. When she was done, she put the pashmina on, and it transported her to Kolkata, a city she’d never seen. She saw a vision of a potential future in which she helped to take care of another woman’s children and didn’t have to work in a factory anymore. She felt joyful and was grateful to regain control of her life. The flashback ends.

Rohini, Mayur, and Kanta fuse together and transform into Shakti. Priyanka asks for forgiveness for her prayers against baby Shilpa. Shakti says that Shilpa will recover. However, Shakti needs Priyanka’s help to reach more women because the magic pashmina is not enough on its own. Priyanka is surprised that Shakti would ask her for help, but she doesn’t protest. However, Shakti does not explain what Priyanka can do to help her reach additional women. Shakti disappears, and Priyanka is transported back to reality. Priyanka exits the hut, finds Meena Mausi, and explains what she saw. On the train back to her aunt’s house, Priyanka tells Mausi to keep the pashmina and give it to her daughter one day.

Meena Mausi and her husband drop Priyanka off at the airport. Priyanka flies back to the US, where her mom greets her at the Los Angeles airport. On the drive home, Priyanka says that she enjoyed spending time with Mausi, who reminds her of her mother, but that she thought Mausi’s husband (whom Priyanka’s mother has never met) was “weird.” Priyanka says that everything in the US seems different now, including her mother. Her mom asks if she brought back the pashmina. This surprises Priyanka because she didn’t realize that her mom knew she had it in the first place. Priyanka says that she gave it to her aunt, and this does not bother her mom.

Priyanka’s mom explains that she got the pashmina from her own mother, who got it from Rohini, her nanny. When Priyanka’s father called off the engagement, Priyanka’s mom put the pashmina on, and it transported her to an idealized version of the US that didn’t exactly reflect reality. Still, the pashmina-induced vision made her decide to move to the US to raise her child, and she is glad she did because here, she can raise Priyanka independently, whereas in India, being a single, unmarried mother would have been more difficult. Priyanka apologizes for pestering her mom about her dad and for “everything” else. Priyanka gives her mom some sweets that she brought back from India; they used to be her mom’s favorite when she was a child. Priyanka’s mom jokes that she’ll send Priyanka back to India one day to get more sweets, but she also says that now, she wants to return to India herself one day to meet Meena Mausi’s baby.

Uncle Jatin, Auntie Deepa, and baby Shilpa come over. Priyanka is thrilled to see Shilpa, and she joyfully holds her and plays with her. Before bed, Priyanka adds a photograph of her and Meena Mausi to the collection of family photographs on her nightstand. At school, Priyanka greets her friend Eddie and gifts him a stack of comic books from India. Eddie thanks her, using her previous nickname, “Pri,” but she says that he can call her “Priyanka” from now on, which he does. Eddie asks how her trip was, and she says that it was “better than any fantasy” (160. In English class, Priyanka shares that over break, she wrote a comic book titled Pashmina.

Meanwhile, in India, Meena Mausi gives birth to her baby girl at the hospital, with the pashmina and a statue of Shakti on her bedside table. Her husband smiles at the baby. Later, he leaves, and Mausi sleeps. A woman comes into Mausi’s room to clean and moves the pashmina so that she can wipe down the bedside table. She makes a shocked expression as the pashmina evidently transports her somewhere, but the location is not shown.