The Marriage Plot

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness.

In Calcutta, Mitchell volunteers at the Home for Dying Destitutes, operated by the Salvation Army. Volunteers from all over the world flock there, and Mitchell learns that the best way to catch a glimpse of Mother Theresa—who travels throughout India and often visits other parts of the world, raising funds—is to attend the weekly Mass. Mitchell does and is amazed by how small the woman is.

For the first time, he feels that he is doing meaningful work now that the main phase of his trip has begun. However, he is reluctant to perform the more difficult tasks involved with caring for the dying, such as bathing them or helping them to the bathroom. He interacts with other pilgrims regularly, including an American named Mike, who has come to India after being fired from a sales job and brags of his sexual escapades in Thailand, and a German named Rüdiger, who claims to have visited every country in the world except two. Rüdiger philosophizes about various religious beliefs often.

In his third week, Mitchell retrieves the medicine cart from the nearby supply facility as usual. Most of the medications—donated by various foreign pharmaceutical companies—are useless for the conditions that the Indians in the hospital suffer from. Upon returning with the medication, Mitchell carefully doles out pills, moving from bed to bed. He passes by a man whose face is bandaged, his skin having been eaten by a staph infection. Another man complains to Mitchell that the pills do him no good and that, having kidney failure, what he needs is dialysis, which he never receives.

That weekend, Mitchell roams the city, thinking about whether he is truly altruistic (as he aims to be) if he cannot bring himself to perform the most discomforting tasks at the hospital. When work resumes, he resolves to assist with bathing and helps another American carry a wide-eyed man who does not speak. The man is wrapped like a mummy and appears frail, but he is surprisingly heavy. When the bandages are removed, Mitchell discovers that the man suffers from a grapefruit-sized tumor on his scrotum. He helps bathe the man but does not feel as though the bath makes any difference to the patient when they are through.

Next, Mitchell walks from bed to bed, searching for someone who needs help. The man with kidney failure tells Mitchell that he needs to defecate, but as Mitchell searches for a bedpan, the man does so in his bed. Rather than clean the man, Mitchell walks out the door and heads immediately to the train station. He decides to buy a ticket to Benares, which departs that night. In the interim, he buys food to take on the trip and then goes to the Salvation Army housing to retrieve his belongings.

There, he bumps into Mike, whom he asks to take him to the bhang lassi stand that Mike has been lauding. There, Mitchell asks Mike to once again see the photo of the Thai teen that Mike carries with him. Mitchell rips the photo in half and berates Mike for bragging about having sex with a teenager, accusing him of preying on her.

Mitchell, filled with courage, immediately writes a letter to Madeleine. In it, he orders her not to marry Leonard.