Jhabvala’s “Picnic with Moonlight and Mangos” from How I Became a Holy Mother (1976) is about the picnic in the garden of Moti Bagh, a 17th-century palace in a suburb of New Delhi. This annual event is often an excuse for drunken behavior and sexual liaisons.
The pattern is always the same: friends and families visit Moti Bagh with baskets of mangoes and crates of local whisky. They lick the mango juice from their fingers and get rowdy drunk. But they sing, recite poetry, and play musical instruments. And when the moon comes out, empowered by the whisky, the moonlight, and the ghostly shadows of the ruins, there is ample opportunity for betrayal, lust, and infidelity.
At this picnic, Sri Prakash drinks with his erstwhile friend Goel, who accused Sri Prakash of molesting his daughter Miss Nimmi. Now drunk, Sri Prakash thinks of his wife but desires Miss Nimmi, who patiently endures his caress. The resulting shame cost Sri Prakash his job but not his lust for Miss Nimmi.
See Ruth Prawer Jhabvala ‘s “Picnic with Moonlight and Mangos,” How I Became a Holy Mother. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.