Summary
Meena is still outside her front door when Anita Rutter approaches, mischievously swatting Meena with a stick and snatching Meena’s bag of candy. Anita walks away, eating the sweets, and beckons Meena to follow. Meena is happy to join Anita, because Anita is rebellious and older: Meena “never expected” Anita to “even notice” her.
Anita and Meena wander through the back alleys of their neighborhood village. They pass by the house of Mrs. Christmas, an older woman who is dying of cancer. Meena remembers the last time she saw Mrs. Christmas: it was during a donation drive hosted by the local Methodist church and organized by Uncle Alan, a youth leader at the church. Meena had no success collecting donations from her neighbors until Mrs. Christmas gave Meena a full wagon load of clothes (along with a sloppy kiss on the cheek).
Meena wonders whether Anita has seen Mrs. Christmas recently, but before Meena can ask, Anita throws the candy to the ground and runs through the alley, hollering. Anita’s voice echoes crazily. Anita tells Meena to do the same and Meena does, running and shouting to meet Anita at the other end of the alley. Immediately after, Mr. Christmas steps out of his house to angrily chastise Meena and Anita for disturbing the neighborhood’s peace. Mr. Christmas promises to tell on them to their mothers. Meena pleads with Mr. Christmas, until Anita brashly says, “Tell me mom. I don’t care.” Meena is shocked—and impressed—by Anita’s boldness, and Mr. Christmas retreats indoors.
Anita and Meena head to Anita’s house, where they meet Tracey Rutter, Anita’s timid younger sister. Tracey is worried because her mother hasn’t yet come home, so a next-door neighbor, Hairy Neddy, tries to comfort Tracey. Meena describes Hairy Neddy, Tollington’s “only bachelor.” Neddy used to have a remarkably hairy face, but shaved it off to look more like one of the Beatles; the nickname “Hairy” remained, all the same. Neddy is a musician, and Meena fondly remembers dancing with the local kids as Neddy struggled to carry one of his electric keyboards, accidentally turning on the instrument’s pre-programmed music as he stumbled. Meena suspects Sally, a local “divorcee,” has the hots for Hairy Neddy.
Deirdre Rutter, Anita and Tracey’s mother, returns home and invites Meena inside for tea with the Rutter daughters. But, after taking a good look at Meena, Deirdre seems to withdraw her invitation, wordlessly signaling to Anita that Anita should say goodbye to Meena. So, Meena walks back to her own house. On the way, she passes the house of Sam Lowbridge, “the Yard’s Bad Boy,” and his single mother, Glenys Lowbridge. Sam, “for some reason,” has always been respectful to Meena, despite being a 16-year-old delinquent.
Back at her own house, Meena finds her mother rummaging through an outdoor shed, looking for a vase. Mrs. Kumar gives the vase as a gift to the Kumars’ next-door neighbor, Mrs. Worrall, who has just broken her own. Mrs. Worrall is a grandmother, whose children never visit. At Mrs. Worrall’s request, Meena goes to the Worralls’ house, to help Mrs. Worrall bake pastries. Mrs. Worrall shows Meena how to properly make dough for a tart, and the experience is a refreshing change of pace for Meena, who is accustomed to Indian cuisine.
As the tarts bake, Mrs. Worrall introduces Meena to Mr. Worrall, who was left severely disabled after serving in World War II; Mr. Worrall is now unable to form words. Meena is overwhelmed as she realizes Mrs. Worrall has spent over twenty years, “stoic[ally]”, taking care of her husband. Meena puts a hand on Mr. Worrall’s lap before excusing herself, shouting one final goodbye as she leaves the house, tarts in hand.
Analysis
In Chapter 3, the reader learns more about Meena’s neighbors in Tollington, as well as Meena’s personal conflict with her community, namely her search for belonging. Many of Meena’s neighbors live in dysfunctional households: take for instance Sam Lowbridge, who lives without a father, or Mrs. Worrall, whose children and grandchildren never take the time to visit; later, Anita will have an absent mother. This stands in contrast to Meena’s home life, in which Meena lives with two supporting and stable parents, and even has an entourage of Aunties and Uncles to play the role of extended family members. And yet, Meena struggles to feel accepted outside of her immediate household: this can be seen when Meena is disinvited from having tea with Anita, after Anita’s mother actually sees Meena, and presumably notices Meena’s race (p. 55). Characters like Sam Lowbridge and Anita Rutter can be understood as foils to Meena: Sam and Anita lack familial support, but find communal support in public, through their gangs of friends; conversely, Meena struggles to feel accepted with the other school kids, but has a strong familial support system. Throughout Anita and Me, Meena will struggle to create her own understanding of community in the face of internalized (and externalized) racism, at times rebelling against her family and Indian heritage in an attempt to feel more accepted by her British community.
And this, in part, explains Meena’s excitement at befriending Anita: Meena feels she has found a sense of belonging outside of her family. Moreover, Anita directly challenges the values held by Meena’s parents: Anita is the “cock” of the yard, with a “foul mouth” and “cack-handed flirting and unsettling mood swings” (p. 39). For Meena, a friendship with Anita is a symbolic revolt against her family. Consider Meena’s admiration when Anita rudely talks back to the older Mr. Christmas: Meena says, “I gasped. This was treason. Why hadn’t I said that?” (p. 45). Meena’s exaggerated diction, her use of “treason” to describe Anita’s flippancy towards the older generation, reveals the elevated stakes of Meena’s personal conflict against her familial values: it is brought to the same level as a battle against nations.
But Meena does not always side against her parents in Chapter 3, just as she does not always side with Anita. Meena is tugged back and forth, trying to reconcile her competing values. Although Meena claims to have the “best day of my life being Anita Rutter’s new friend” (p. 60), she also isn’t allowed into the Rutters’ home, likely because of her race. And when Mrs. Kumar scolds Meena for lying, Meena still sees love in her mother’s eyes: “Those eyes, those endless mud brown pools of sticky, bottomless love” (p. 60). Meena’s metaphorical language in this quote offers the reader insight into the relationship Meena shares with her mother: their love is messy (“mud[dy]”) but it is also unwavering (“bottomless”). One of the central conflicts of Anita and Me is Meena’s attempt to make sense of her muddy relationships, to feel self-assured amongst others.
Food is a motif throughout Chapter 3, used to symbolize community. According to Meena, being invited to tea and sharing a meal means “knowing you weren’t just playing together, you were now officially socialising” (p. 55). To share food with someone is to share community: for example, after Mrs. Worrall teaches Meena how to bake tarts, Meena is allowed access into Mrs. Worrall’s private life, with Mrs. Worrall introducing Meena to her recluse husband. Conversely, to refuse food is to ostracize: for example, when Deirdre Rutter disinvites Meena from having tea with Anita. Food can also become a symbol of already existing communities: for instance, Meena describes the significance of Indian cuisine for her mother and Aunties, saying, “This food was not just something to fill a hole, it was soul food, it was the food their far-away mothers made and came seasoned with memory and longing, this was the nearest they would get for many years to home” (p. 61). So, when Meena asks for chicken fingers instead of “rice and daal” (p. 60), the act becomes symbolic: Meena has (temporarily) rejected her Indian heritage, prioritizing instead her British heritage.
In Chapter 2, we analyzed Meena’s desire for drama, foreshadowed by her question to the reader: “When would anything dangerous and cruel ever happen to me?” (p. 37). In Chapter 3, one can already see a change in Meena’s perspective: when Meena meets a severely disabled war veteran, Mr. Worrall, she meets someone who has truly experienced danger and cruelty; rather than feeling excitement, as she expected, Meena feels extreme discomfort: “I felt queasy, my hunger had become nausea” (p. 66), she says. Discoveries like these—with Meena confronting realities different than her expectations—are crucial to Meena’s maturation, and the narrative’s coming-of-age plot.
