Summary
It is autumn by the time Meena and Anita Rutter cross paths again. Mrs. Kumar is hesitant to let Meena spend time with Anita because the Rutters have gotten a new dog, a black poodle, and named it the N-word. Regardless, Meena plans to join Anita at a fairgrounds, to watch as rides and booths are set up for a fair later that evening.
At the same time, the Kumar household sets up their own celebration: it is Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, and the Kumars are hosting a mehfil. Meena is disappointed that none of her neighbors seem to care, or even know about, Diwali. So, she’s glad her parents let her celebrate Christmas, too: it’s the one celebration she can share with her neighbors. Meena thinks about her family’s acceptance of multiple religions. Her father is irreligious because of her grandfather’s politics. Meena’s first exposure to religion came from her Auntie Shaila, who taught Meena Hindu prayers in her kitchen shrine and explained to Meena the concepts of karma and reincarnation. The idea of reincarnation brought Meena to tears—she was upset that her parents were not preparing her for a good next life—so Mrs. Kumar decided to bring Meena to a gurudwara, a Sikh temple.
On the drive to the gurudwara, Mrs. Kumar (an inexperienced driver) lost control of the car while stopped at a stoplight on a steeped road. The car began to creep backwards, down the hill. Meena had to run out of the car and ask a line of drivers behind them to back up, one by one. The final driver yelled at Meena, calling her a racial slur. This was one of Meena’s earliest experiences of aggressive racism, and she explains how the encounter changed her understanding of her parents: she realized racism was something they must deal with regularly.
The narrative returns to the present. Mrs. Kumar gives Meena permission to visit the fair with Anita, so long as Meena returns for their Diwali celebration that evening. As Meena and Anita walk to the fairgrounds, they pass the Big House, the mysterious mansion, and Anita claims a witch lives inside, and that the witch eats children. At the fair, Meena and Anita meet up with Sherrie and Fat Sally, two of Anita’s sidekick friends. Meena, the youngest of the group, feels jealous and embarrassed when Anita, Sherrie, and Fat Sally begin to flirt with three older boys. One of the boys (nicknamed “the Poet”) tells Anita that he wants to “shag the arse off” Anita. Meena doesn’t know what this means, and Anita jokingly says it means “that he really really loves me.”
Feeling left out, Meena runs back home. As guests filter into the Kumar house for their Diwali celebration, Meena sneaks into her mother’s room and puts on a heavy layer of make-up and her mother’s necklace. Auntie Shaila makes fun of the make-up, and Meena’s parents make Meena wipe her face (though she keeps the necklace on). Later in the night, Meena is pressured by the party guests into singing a song for them. Meena struggles singing in Punjabi, before switching to a British pop song. When asked about the pop song by her Auntie Shaila, Meena parrots Anita’s earlier words, saying, “It’s so brilliant I could shag the arse off it.” Meena’s parents are horrified, and Meena is sent upstairs. Later, Meena overhears a conversation between her mother and the Aunties; Mrs. Kumar is sharing examples of Meena’s recent misbehavior. Meena embarasses her mother by walking in on the private conversation, before leaving the house to return to the fair.
Meena wanders the fair alone in the rain, until Sam Lowbridge (a teenage delinquent) invites Meena to try her hand at a shooting range. Holding Meena’s hand, Sam helps Meena to aim the rifle, and Meena hits the target square: the target is a racist caricature of a black man with a bone piercing. Soon after, Meena finds Anita sitting touchy-feely with the Poet (the older boy from earlier). Anita’s mother, Deirdre Rutter, gives Anita money to buy dinner. While Anita is away, Meena watches Anita’s mother and the older boy slip away to a private caravan, unbuttoning each other’s clothes as they enter. Anita returns with food for herself and Meena, and Meena keeps secret Deirdre and the Poet’s affair.
Worried that she’ll be in trouble with her parents, Meena starts to say her goodbyes, but Anita says she wants to show Meena a secret. Anita takes Meena through the dark Tollington streets, guiding them to a hole in the fence of the Big House. They sneak through the estate, ultimately reaching a marble gazebo, overgrown with ivy. Meena pulls at the ivy, until a sculpture of Ganesha (the Hindu elephant god), emerges. Suddenly, Meena and Anita hear the barking of approaching dogs, and the two girls flee the property. Meena trips, tears her clothes, and loses the necklace she took from her mother.
Meena makes her way home, expecting to be greatly punished by her parents. Instead, Meena’s return is hardly noticed: Mrs. Kumar’s water has broken, and everyone at the Diwali party is focused on getting Mrs. Kumar to the hospital for the birth of Meena’s brother.
Analysis
In Chapter 5, Meena confronts various societal pressures, namely racial and gender prejudice. The chapter includes several incidents of everyday racism. For example, the Rutter family gets a new dog, a black poodle, and names it the N-word. The racial slur is reduced to a pet name, treated merely as cutesy fun. Later at the fairgrounds, Sam Lowbridge invites Meena to play a shooting game. Sam helps Meena aim the rifle, holding her hands as he does—an act of physical intimacy and a common romance trope. However, the target at which they aim is a racist caricature of a black man. In both of these examples we see racism trivialized, even placed within otherwise loving contexts: owning a family pet, or flirtatious physical intimacy. They illustrate how racism permeates the community of Tollington.
Though these examples of racism are mundane—normalized—the chapter demonstrates the profound effects such casual racism can have on an individual. Take, for instance, Meena and Mrs. Kumar’s drive to the gurudwara. When their car gets caught on a hill, Meena must ask the drivers behind them to pull into reverse. Each driver respectfully helps Meena, except for the final driver, who shouts a xenophobic slur at her. Even if the majority of drivers were friendly, this lone act of racism causes deep hurt for Meena and her mother: for the remainder of the trip, they “did not speak” (p. 97). Later, Meena looks closely at her father’s face, and sees “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” (p. 98). The chapter shows how seemingly small or short-lived acts of racial violence can accumulate like the wrinkles on a face, leaving lasting impacts on Meena, her family, and those like them.
Chapter 5 also explores questions of sexuality and femininity; Meena begins to focus attention on her own physical appearance, after seeing Anita and her friends dress up to attract boys at the fair. Meena observes Sherrie “shivering in a short denim skirt” and Fat Sally “squeezed into a psychedelic mini-dress” (p. 103). Indicative of the pressure these girls endure to meet beauty standards, Sherrie and Fat Sally prioritize physical attractiveness over their own physical comfort: Sherrie is “shivering” and Fat Sally is “squeezed.” In Fat Sally’s name we see the perverse significance given to physical appearance: her weight becomes a signifier of her identity, part of her name. As the girls apply make-up, Meena pulls her “anorak hood down and wiped my [her] nose” (p. 103). In this moment, Meena sees herself as an outsider: her clothes are functional, a rain jacket for keeping dry, as opposed to the fashionable, but impractical, clothing of her friends. Soon after, Meena is made an actual outsider: as Anita, Sherrie, and Fat Sally flirt with three boys, Meena is left with no one but herself.
Faced with peer pressure and feeling like an outsider, in the second half of Chapter 5 Meena attempts to conform to her new conception of femininity. However, she largely fails in her first attempts to refashion herself. For example, back at home, Meena applies her mother’s make-up and ends up looking like the “Cheshire Cat” (p. 107). Her Auntie Shaila responds to Meena’s made-up face, saying, “What is this? Looking like a rumpty tumpty dancing girl already […] You see what happens to our girls here?'” (p. 108). Later, Meena attempts to emulate Anita, and borrows one of Anita’s phrases, despite not knowing its meaning: Meena tells her family that a song is “so brilliant I could shag the arse off it” (p. 115). Meena’s parents are horrified. In these examples, we see how Meena faces competing pressures: from her peers Meena feels pressure to display her sexuality, and from her elders Meena feels pressure to conceal her sexuality. Competing pressures are central to a coming-of-age plot: Meena will have to form her own opinions on which path to take.
As shown, Chapter 5 introduces several points of conflict for Meena, as she grapples with social pressures of racism and gender norms. The chapter also introduces several narrative threads—secrets that Meena uncovers—that foreshadow the plot to come. For example, Meena witnesses Deirdre Rutter, Anita’s mother, sneak away to have sex with a teenage boy—the boy with whom Anita had, just moments prior, been flirting. Deirdre’s affair hints at a larger conflict between Anita and her mother. How will Anita’s relationship with her mother progress? At the end of Chapter 5, Meena and Anita sneak onto the Big House estate and discover a sculpture of Ganesha, the elephant god. Being a prominent symbol of Hindu heritage, the sculpture leaves the reader wondering: who lives at the Big House, and why was this sculpture placed here? We can expect these questions to be answered in subsequent chapters.
