Summary
Meena comes to her senses, bedridden in the hospital. She has just been put under anesthesia for an operation on her leg, which was shattered in the horseback accident. A nurse tells Meena that she will likely be hospitalized until Christmastime. Meena is heartbroken: she’ll miss spending time with Nanima, she’ll miss Sunil’s birthday, and, most importantly, she’ll miss her family’s trip to India. Laying in her bed, Meena remembers how Anita showed no emotion when Meena hurt herself, and Meena hopes she can forget Anita entirely. Moreover, Meena hopes this accident will mark a turning point in her life. She vows to be an ideal child, polite and studious.
Meena shares her hospital room with two other kids: to her left is a girl named Angela, and to her right, behind a “glass walled isolation room” is a boy named Robert. Angela quickly annoys Meena with talk of astrology. Meanwhile, Robert charms Meena with hand-written notes held up to the glass wall between them.
After requesting writing materials from her parents, Meena begins to have regular conversations with Robert via pen and paper. They develop a secret code, adding extra letters to each word. For example, “How are you” becomes “Haobw Acrde Yeofu?” The two gossip and share their life stories.
Meena loses track of time in the hospital; six weeks pass. Her entire family visits with a birthday cake, to celebrate baby Sunil’s birthday. Meena notices that her Nanima seems unusually quiet, and Mr. Kumar reveals that Nanima has decided to return to India, and will leave the following day. Meena is devastated and upset, but suppresses these feelings—just like her parents would have done, Meena observes.
The narrative jumps forward in time, and it is almost Christmas. Meena notices that Robert isn’t in his room, and a nurse tells Meena that Robert is away taking painful medical tests. The nurse says Robert is “not a well little boy at the moment, sort of two steps forward and one back.” More time passes, and the day arrives of Meena’s discharge from the hospital. The head nurse gives Meena special permission to visit Robert in his room, before Meena leaves. Meena asks Robert when he’ll recover; he doesn’t give a definite answer, but hopes he’ll be free by the following summer for his O level exams. Then, Meena asks if Robert has a girlfriend; Robert says, “Yeah, I have” and takes Meena’s hand in his own, implying that the two are now a couple. Meena is filled with joy.
Driving home, Meena sees Tollington for the first time in several months: the town looks increasingly drab. The field beside Meena’s house has been marked for construction; an old office building has been torn down. “The whole village had aged behind my back,” says Meena. That night, Meena sees Anita riding on the back of Sam Lowbridge’s new motorcycle. Meena watches the young couple kiss.
In the following week, Meena tries to visit Robert in the hospital, but, unfortunately, Robert has gone to another hospital to take more medical tests. Meena leaves a letter and a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird on Robert’s pillow. A few days later, Meena receives a reply in the mail. The letter is from Robert’s parents, sharing the tragic news of Robert’s death.
Analysis
Chapter 12, primarily set in Meena’s hospital room, is both a literal and symbolic moment of healing for Meena: as she recovers from her leg injury, Meena reflects on her past actions—her friendship with Anita, the lies she has told her family—and vows to improve herself. She says, “I decided there and then to heal myself, both in body and mind. It was time. I asked mama to bring in all my school books to prepare for the eleven-plus, I would grow my hair long and vaguely feminine, I would be nice to Pinky and Baby and seek out their company willingly, I would write letters to India and introduce myself properly to that anonymous army of blood relatives, I would learn to knit, probably, and I would always always tell the truth” (p. 284). And yet, because the novel is narrated by an older Meena, it is made clear that the goals Meena sets, at least in part, are not met: Meena says she “would learn to knit, probably,” but in an earlier exchange between Meena and her mother, Meena confesses that she does not learn to knit: “Now’s the time to learn [to knit]!” mama said. I never did” (p. 283). It is important character growth for Meena to wish to be more studious, honest, and filial—regardless of whether or not she learns to knit—but the fact that Meena does not fully actualize her goals is also significant, because it introduces a second theme explored in Chapter 12: that hopes and dreams do not necessarily reflect reality.
Later, Meena learns that her Nanima is returning to India, and that Meena will have to say her final goodbyes. In Meena’s words, this is one of Meena’s first encounters with significant loss, and the reality is unlike anything she had expected. Responding to her grief, Meena says, “After so long of living in that dusk where my fantasies almost met reality, […] I was having to learn the difference between acting and being—and it hurt. I had enacted loss and departure so many times and thrilled to the tears I could make myself shed, but now, I could not cry at all” (p. 289). Not only does this quote speak to the unpredictability of reality, it also speaks to the difficulty of predicting and communicating emotions: in a moment of deep sadness, Meena cannot cry. Meena is learning that sadness exists in many forms, and that one of them does not involve tears. Common to the bildungsroman genre, Meena must reconcile herself to an unexpected and painful reality. Using metaphor to liken her former point of view to a “dusk,” Meena suggests her childhood perspective is nearing its end—the metaphorical end of the days of her youth.
Another way in which Meena’s expectations differ from reality is in her relationship with Robert. Meena describes her childhood fantasies of love, saying: “we [Meena and her dream boyfriend] kissed a lot and never spoke except in greeting card cliches […] In these scenarios, words were secondary, unnecessary; physical contact and smouldering looks were all” (p. 286). It is with irony that Meena acknowledges, “So it was very strange that my first and most intense relationship with a boy was conducted via scribbled messages on scrap paper through a pane of glass blend where you could look but not touch, understand but not hear” (p. 286). Whereas Meena had expected love to be built on physical intimacy, she first experiences it through language alone. As the chapter progresses, Meena and Robert continually push the limits of their communication: “I would begin a phrase and before I had reached the full stop, Robert was holding the same question, or in a few spooky cases, the answer to something I had been about to ask him. Now to get his attention, I simply had to look up” (p. 286-287). The young couple can answer questions, without a question being asked; they can call for the other without speaking any words, using instead the slight gesture of a head raise. These actions suggest that communication is not limited to words alone, especially in the communication of love. Somehow, paradoxically, Meena has managed to enact her fantasy—a love where “words were secondary”—in a relationship seemingly confined to words.
After Meena says goodbye to Nanima, Meena describes the comfort she finds in Robert’s silent presence: “Robert and I sent no messages that evening. We did not make eye contact although I knew he was watching me, even in the darkness. And I woke up comforted, my fist warm and curled where he had been holding my hand” (p. 289). In this quote, the limits of Meena and Robert’s communication are pushed further, with traditional modes of communication being fully evaded: Meena knows Robert is watching her, even without making eye contact—sight without sight; Meena awakes, still feeling warm from holding Robert’s hand the day prior––holding hands without touching. These details create a conception of love that transcends the concrete: in other words, they suggest that love is intangible, and cannot necessarily be defined through simple language or communication.
At the end of the chapter, Meena is confronted with her second true experience of loss: Robert’s death. Throughout the early chapters of Anita and Me, Meena has expressed a desire for drama, for tragedy: “I was going to die in the back of the car and somewhere inside me, I felt thrilled. It was so dramatic” (p. 27) or “When would anything dangerous and cruel ever happen to me?” (p. 37). Now, Meena has the tragic answer to her question, and she is permanently changed because of her dual losses: “Nanima and Robert, who had thrown all previous self-pity into stark relief” (p. 324). Meena’s transformation is paralleled by the transformed scenery and personalities of Tollington. New construction sites are scattered through Tollington, to which Meena responds, “What’s been happenin!’ […] furious that neither of my parents had mentioned that Tollington was being carved up in my absence” (p. 293). The characters, too, have changed: Hairy Neddy and Sandy are now married (p. 294); Meena’s neighbor Cara Mitchell has been placed in a psychiatric hospital (p. 295); Sam Lowbridge has a new motorbike, “a proper motorbike not a moped” (p. 295); and so on. Meena says, “I never remember it all looking so shabby, so forgotten” (p. 294). But the reader might wonder: has Tollington changed, or has Meena? Maybe Meena is simply seeing Tollington with new eyes.
