Wedding Photo
Mama is in the foreground, her delicate neck seemingly bent under the weight of a heavily encrusted dupatta. She looks up into the camera lens with the expected posture of all new brides, a victim’s pose showing passivity and bewilderment, stressing the girl would much rather stay with her family than drive off to a bed with her new husband. But mama is not crying, although her head is bowed, her gaze is direct and calm, and there is a light in her pupils which papa said was the camera flash, but which I recognise as joy. (p. 32-33)
Mrs. Kumar’s complex character—both her personal anxieties, and her outward resilience—is captured in a single photograph, her wedding photo. Throughout Anita and Me, Mrs. Kumar struggles with homesickness, longing for her family back home. In many ways, Mrs. Kumar has remained that girl who “would much rather stay with her family”–– evident in Mrs. Kumar’s increased vitality when Nanima comes to visit. And yet, Mrs. Kumar, both in the photo and in her day-to-day life, remains “direct and calm,” persevering through her personal pains so she can provide unwavering support to her children and husband. In this passage’s final line, the reader encounters a difference in point-of-view, with Mr. Kumar seeing a camera flash in Mrs. Kumar’s eyes, and Meena seeing a flash of joy. These contrasting perspectives illustrate the multi-dimensionality of Mrs. Kumar, a character who sometimes hides her true feelings to protect her family.
Wrinkles
I wanted to tell him about the old lady, but then I looked at his face and saw something I had never seen before, a million of these encounters written in the lines around his warm, hopeful eyes, lurking in the furrows of his brow, shadowing the soft curves of his mouth. I suddenly realised that what had happened to me must have happened to papa countless times (p. 98).
In this quote, Meena sees in her father’s face a long history of endured racism, his wrinkles becoming a physical marker of repeated suffering. And yet, Mr. Kumar’s eyes remain “hopeful,” and his mouth still shows “soft curves,” as though held in a delicate smile. The resulting image, with pain placed next to joy, demonstrates Mr. Kumar’s perseverance and reveals the complexity of victimhood: being happy does not mean that someone has not also suffered, and being a victim does not mean one cannot be happy, too.
Spring Cleaning
Spring was always my favourite season in the village, and as the first cuckoo sounded, almost every cottage door would swing open revealing taut-jawed women in pinnies and headscarfs brandishing an armoury of cleaning materials. You could not walk down the street without falling over some possessed female hunched over a front step with a wire scrubbing brush, choking over the clouds of dust rising from the scores of rugs being beaten to a pulp by strong sleeveless arms, picking your way through clusters of china dogs and horse brasses laid out on sheets in the watery sun, drying to a gleam whilst indoors, cupboards, shelves and cabinets were being emptied and washed down (p. 162).
In this brimming scene of domestic chores, Meena repeatedly uses language suggestive of warfare and battle. The women are soldier-like: they have strong physiques (“taut-jawed” and “strong sleeveless arms”), are dressed in uniform (“pinnies and headscarfs”), and are fully armed (“brandishing an armoury of cleaning materials”). The verbs Meena uses evoke combat: “falling over,” “hunched over,” “choking over,” “beaten to a pulp,” and “picking your way through.” Using such diction, Meena subverts gender norms—likening domestic activity to military activity, likening homemakers to soldiers—and in so doing, Meena asserts the strength and fortitude of the women in her community.
Night Sky
Even the stars had changed; I used to be able to look out of my window and trace the studded curve of the Milky Way […] I learned that darkness is not one colour, that there are shades upon shades within black—midnight-blue black on the horizon, pearly opaque black encircling the moon, the heavy wet green-black of a stormy night sky. But against the yellow lights of the motorway which stitched up the horizon like a cheap seaside necklace, the subtle washes of the sky and the diamond clarity of the stars simply faded away. Only the most gaudy constellation survived the neon fallout, and against it, black was no longer a colour in its own right, but simply an absence of light (p. 298).
One of the central elements of Meena’s character arc is her growing awareness that life is not black-and-white, cut-and-dry, but rather full of ambiguities: she learns that bullies can be victims, that love can survive conflict, that she doesn’t have to reject parts of her identity to find a sense of belonging. In this passage, Meena’s changing perspectives are pitted against the changing landscape of Tollington, which, unlike Meena, has grown increasingly homogenized through industrialization. Just as light pollution muddies the complexities of the night sky, this quote critically examines society’s stifling effect on individuality, fuelled by the pressures to conform to social norms.
