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Rahamat / The “Kabuliwala”
Mini is the only child of the narrator and his wife. At the beginning of the story, she is a talkative, inquisitive, and energetic five-year-old. She is very close with her father, preferring him instead of her short-tempered mother who frequently scolds her for talking too much and asking too many questions. As a child, Mini spends a lot of time in her father’s study, hanging out with him while he works on his novel. One day, she sees Rahamat, a local fruit vendor, coming down the road and starts yelling “Kabuliwala” at him until she gets his attention and he comes over with his boxes of grapes and nuts. Mini is shy and afraid of him at first, but unbeknownst to the narrator, Rahamat and Mini gradually strike up a friendship. The narrator discovers this one day when he walks out of the house and sees Rahamat sitting with Mini and eagerly listening to her talk. Later, Mini tells the narrator about some of the inside jokes she has with Rahamat and that he comes over almost every day. The friendship between the two flourishes as long as Rahamat is in town, but soon he has to leave to return home to Afghanistan. However, before he leaves, he is arrested after an altercation with a customer. The last time Mini sees him that year is when he is being taken away in handcuffs. Mini forgets about Rahamat after he goes to jail, and she also starts spending less time with her father as the years go by, preferring the company of other children. Eight years later, Rahamat is released from jail on Mini’s wedding day. Rahamat pleads with the narrator to let him see Mini, but Mini is shy, uncomfortable, and doesn’t respond to him the way she did when she was five. This interaction leaves Mini’s father feeling sad that she is so different, and Rahamat anxious about what kind of changes might have happened in his own daughter, Parvati (who was about Mini’s age when Rahamat left, which explains why he was so drawn to Mini at first) since he last saw her.
Mini Quotes in Kabuliwala
The Kabuliwala quotes below are all either spoken by Mini or refer to Mini. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Kabuliwala Quotes
My five-year-old daughter Mini can’t stop talking for a minute. […] Her mother often scolds her and makes her shut up, but I can’t do that. When Mini is quiet, it is so unnatural that I cannot bear it. So she’s rather keen on chatting to me.
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[…] I saw my daughter sitting on a bench in front of the door, nattering unrestrainedly; and the Kabuliwala was sitting at her feet, listening—grinning broadly, and from time to time making comments in his hybrid sort of Bengali. In all her five years of life, Mini had never found so patient a listener, apart from her father.
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Rahamat would say to Mini, “Little one, don’t ever go off to your śvaśur-bāṛi.’ […] She […] couldn’t clearly understand what Rahamat meant; yet to remain silent and give no reply was wholly against her nature, so she would turn the idea round and say, ‘Are you going to your śvaśur-bāṛi?’ Shaking his huge fist at an imaginary father-in-law Rahamat said, “I’ll settle him!”
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Mini came straight out with her ‘Are you going to your śvaśur-bāṛi?”
‘Yes, I’m going there now,’ said Rahamat with a smile. But when he saw that his reply had failed to amuse Mini, he brandished his handcuffed fists and said, “I would have killed my śvaśur, but how can I with these on?’
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Living at home, carrying on day by day with our routine tasks, we gave no thought to how a free-spirited mountain-dweller was passing his years behind prison-walls. […] [Mini] even stopped coming to her father’s study. And I, in a sense, dropped her.
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Every year Rahamat carried this memento of his daughter in his breast-pocket when he came to sell raisins in Calcutta’s streets: as if the touch of that soft, small, childish hand brought solace to his huge, homesick breast. My eyes swam at the sight of it. I forgot then that he was an Afghan raisin-seller and I was a Bengali Babu. I understood then that he was as I am, that he was a father just as I am a father. The handprint of his little mountain-dwelling Parvati reminded me of my own Mini.
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Mini now knew the meaning of śvaśur-bāṛi; she couldn’t reply as before—she blushed at Rahamat’s question and looked away. I recalled the day when Mini and the Kabuliwala had first met. My heart ached.
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Mini left the room, and Rahamat, sighing deeply, sat down on the floor. He suddenly understood clearly that his own daughter would have grown up too since he last saw her, and with her too he would have to become re-acquainted: he would not find her exactly as she was before. Who knew what had happened to her these eight years?
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Mini Character Timeline in Kabuliwala
The timeline below shows where the character Mini appears in Kabuliwala. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Kabuliwala
The narrator’s precocious five-year-old daughter, Mini, started talking very young, and now she “can’t stop talking for a minute.” While her...
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One morning while the narrator is working on the 17th chapter of his book, Mini approaches him and tells him that the gatekeeper doesn’t know the proper word for a...
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...on his book—an adventure story in which the main characters are escaping from a prison—but Mini suddenly catches sight of a Kabuliwala outside. He is dressed in "dirty baggy clothes” and...
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Hearing Mini yelling about him, the Kabuliwala comes up to the house, but Mini suddenly becomes afraid...
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...days after the Kabuliwala’s first appearance, the narrator walks out of the house and sees Mini sitting and talking with the Kabuliwala, who is seemingly very happy to listen to her...
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Later, when the narrator gets back home, his wife is in the middle of scolding Mini for somehow getting her hands on a half rupee. Mini explains that the Kabuliwala gave...
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One of the jokes between Mini and the Kabuliwala—whose name is Rahamat—involves her eventually having to leave to go to her...
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...no problem in continuing to let the Kabuliwala come to the house to talk to Mini.
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...day during this time, but never fails to come to the narrator’s house to see Mini. Even though the sight of Rahamat in his baggy clothes in “a little frightening” to...
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...got in a fight, during which he stabbed the neighbor. As he tells this story, Mini appears outside and goes up to the Kabuliwala just as usual. Mini asks him if...
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The Kabuliwala is sentenced to prison for many years, and the narrator and Mini soon forget him. As she grows up, Mini’s behavior, according to the narrator, is “not...
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Years later, once again during autumn, the narrator and his wife arrange Mini’s marriage. They are terribly sad to think that their “pride and joy” will soon be...
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...Kabuliwala asks to see the narrator’s “little girl.” The narrator believes that the Kabuliwala thinks Mini “was still just as she was” years before, the Kabuliwala has even brought some grapes,...
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...mountain-dwelling Parvati,” reminds the narrator of his own daughter, and so he sends word for Mini to come down.
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Mini comes down wearing her wedding clothes, which startles the Kabuliwala. After a moment, he addresses...
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...tells him to go back to Afghanistan, and that by his “blessed reunion [with Parvati], Mini will be blessed.” The money he gives the Kabuliwala means that the wedding will no...
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