The story is told from the perspective of a community of Indian immigrants in Edison, New Jersey. It centers on an act of incest and its aftermath, to which the first-person plural “we” bears imperfect and scathing witness. Not everyone in the community views or responds to the events in the same ways, but the tide set in motion by Madhu’s pregnancy casts her and the crime’s other victims out to sea, adrift from the community and with no hope for peaceful harbor.

The reader learns about Madhu’s pregnancy from Nehali, who, like Madhu, is fourteen at the time. She shares the news with her mother, Dr. Shukla, with “excitement” and “enthusiasm,” “giddy” to be discussing something so “interesting.” She isn’t “happy,” in the same way she wasn’t happy that Mr. Narayan didn’t allow Madhu to sit on the front porch or wear shorts in gym class. She’s simply interested, caught up in the very human, endless, in this case morbid fascination with others’ lives that everyone living in community has experienced. While that interest is universal, it isn’t always innocent; Nehali’s question—“Why shouldn’t I talk about it?”—is answered by the story, because in another version of these events no one (starting with the nurse or the principal, if Nehali’s account can be believed) spreads the news of Madhu’s pregnancy. This eventuality does nothing to negate the abuse Madhu suffers but does keep it hidden from the community, whose knowledge, in Sharma’s story, adds horror to an already horrific situation.

As the subjects of the community’s scrutiny, the story’s narrative perspective at once acknowledges and rejects the Narayans’ inclusion in its “we.” In being discussed, the Narayans are distanced from the collective voice that tells the story. (Dr. Shukla is “distanced” in another way, as the member of the community most empathetic toward Madhu and her mother.) The community justifies its position as follows: “There were so few Indians in Edison, New Jersey, in those days; we felt that each of us reflected well or badly on the others. The Narayans had stolen some piece of our self-respect.” Those who prostrated themselves in the temple on account of sick loved ones “frightened” the other members of the community by reminding them “what life finally came to.” Mrs. Narayan’s prostration, on the other hand, triggered a “sense of indignation,” because of how, as the community saw it, the Narayans’ situation reflected on them. In both instances, the community’s response centers not on others’ suffering, but on their own self-interest and -respect.

Several passages speak to the warped morality of the “we.” When Madhu’s brother, Vikas, is beaten up by a group of white girls in school, they say, “This, we all felt, was not wrong. He was male, and he belonged to his family.” Their only worry is whether their own children will be beaten up, too, for being Indian. No one will hire Mrs. Narayan as a cook anymore—“When we tried to swallow her food now, the masticated globs seemed to dangle down our throats from a long hair”—so she gets a job at Kmart, until Mrs. Bilwakesh speaks to the manager and gets her fired. They say, “This, we felt, was too much. To take away someone’s ability to earn a living seemed evil,” despite having just done the same by not letting her cook for them. Later, with the opening of Hilltop Estates in Edison, “there were so many Indians that there wasn’t the same feeling that one family reflected on the rest.” Had Madhu gotten pregnant after Hilltop opened, “Mrs. Narayan might . . . have felt less isolated. She could have befriended the families that came to Hilltop, many of whom had chaotic stories of their own.” Other, similarly unfortunate families could befriend her, whereas such friendship, for the families included in the “we,” was unthinkable. On hearing of Mr. Narayan’s death, the community’s “first thought was: Thank God we didn’t live in India, where such things occurred.” However evil and undeserving of sympathy Mr. Narayan may be, their thoughts, again, bend not toward Mr. Narayan’s (possibly violent) death, nor toward Madhu, Vikas, or Mrs. Narayan, but toward themselves.

Mr. Narayan is monstrous. The story’s second paragraph, a vivid litany of community complaints, ends brilliantly with him shower-capped and smoking in his car. He’s villainous and roundly despised even before Madhu’s pregnancy. The community never learns for certain whether Mr. Narayan or Vikas impregnated her, though they take Madhu’s being sent to India as “proof that Mr. Narayan was the one.” Had it been Vikas, “his parents could have just kept him locked in his room at night.” (There’s an interesting parallel between this line and one delivered later by Madhu, who reveals that her husband’s parents used to keep her locked in a room when they were gone. The former instance evokes, at best, a helplessly twisted “solution”; the latter a crushing sense of powerlessness against evil.) Sharma gives a significant amount of space to Mr. Narayan’s downfall and eventual death in India. There’s a temptation to conclude that justice was served, but there’s no justice for the rest of the Narayans: Mr. Narayan’s death doesn’t improve their situations. It doesn’t undo his actions or reverse their effects. Ultimately, it does nothing to change where Madhu stands in the community.

The narrative comes to a head at Dr. Shukla’s dining table. Madhu is living in Edison again, and Mrs. Narayan asks the other families to “invite Madhu to lunch or dinner and give her gifts.” Dr. Shukla and Nehali do so, and when Nehali offers to take Madhu to visit New York, Madhu dumps a bowl of yogurt on Mrs. Narayan’s head. In the story’s opening paragraph, we’re told that Mrs. Narayan “cooked for many of us and regularly tried to refuse payment. ‘This is from my side,’ she’d say. ‘A horse can’t be friends with grass,’ we might answer.” The grass feeds the horse for free. Dr. Shukla and Nehali, at Mrs. Narayan’s request, feed and offer gifts to Madhu, who can’t pay them in return. It’s possible that Madhu partially blames her mother for events surrounding Mr. Narayan’s abuse, and that some of her anger stems from that blame. But, in this moment at the table, Madhu resents her mother for not understanding her situation more clearly. She sees the free gifts as charity, not friendship, in a way that Mrs. Narayan—“Just eat. Just eat,” she says—never has. Sharma places everyone at the table in an impossible position for which none of them are ultimately responsible. Mrs. Narayan only wants the very best for her daughter, but she’s clueless in some ways (“She is a wonderful girl,” she says of Madhu, at the table), and powerless in many others. (When Madhu talks about being locked in a room, we’re told that “Mrs. Narayan had been smiling and nodding. She kept doing so.”) Dr. Shukla and Nehali want Madhu to feel welcome, but they don’t know how to accomplish it. (As Madhu cries, Dr. Shukla joins Mrs. Narayan in speaking about Madhu as if she isn’t there.) And Madhu’s made to sit there and take it—until she doesn’t.

At the end of the story, Madhu starts mowing the other families’ lawns. There’s peacefulness nearby, in the community, but in her isolation there is only “immense noise.” But there’s also a quiet strength: she isn’t mowing the lawns for free. She’s not a horse eating grass; she’s cutting the grass to make a living. Her aloneness is devastating, but her strength in the face of it all is a triumph. Despite everything, she’s still fighting.

Read “The Narayans,” by Akhil Sharma, in The New Yorker.