Summary
Mrs. Kumar gives birth to Sunil, Meena’s baby brother, “the tallest baby ever born” in Wolverhampton. While Mrs. Kumar is occupied with Sunil, Mr. Kumar leaves Meena free to hang out with Anita on a regular basis. With Anita and Meena wanting to be a part of a gang, but not old enough to join Sam Lowbridge’s motorbike gang, the “Tollington Rebels,” and still too young for Tollington’s mid-tier gang, “The Footies,” Anita and Meena form their own odd gang: “The Wenches Brigade.”
The Wenches Brigade led by Anita, with Meena as second-in-command, consists of Anita’s younger sister, Tracey, and a handful of younger kids, some only five years old. One day, in a neighborhood park, the group hosts a “peeing competition.” After one of the boys in the group tries to pee in nearby nettles, Anita encourages the group to compete and see who can best aim his or her pee at a target of clover. After a couple of kids go—Anita with surprisingly adept aim—Tracey is pressured by her sister into competing. Tracey pulls down her pants, and the group makes fun of Tracey for having a skid mark on her underwear. Meena is troubled by the group’s readiness to tease one of their own friends, but even more troubled by a hidden mark on Tracey’s legs: bruises in the shape of a handprint, on Tracey’s thighs.
Spending more time with Anita, Meena grows increasingly insecure about her appearance. Anita introduces Meena to erotic topics, and the two regularly read Jackie, a teenage glamour magazine. Meena begins to worry if she will ever get a boyfriend, and so writes an anonymous note to an advice column in Jackie magazine: “Dear Cathy and Claire, I am brown, although I do not wear thick glasses. Will this stop me from getting a guy?” Their published response: “You would be amazed at what a little lightly-applied foundation can do!” Meena feels uncomfortable in her own body.
Mr. Kumar takes Meena on a walk, and expresses his concern about Meena’s changing personality—Meena no longer talks to him, and no longer spends time with Pinky and Baby, he says. Mr. Kumar encourages Meena to be more patient with Mrs. Kumar, who is busy with Sunil, and to remember the importance of family. Meena does not sympathize with her father’s concern, expressing distaste towards the quiet, overly polite behavior she sees in girls like Pinky and Baby.
Soon after is Meena’s tenth birthday party. Auntie Shaila arrives with her daughters, Pinky and Baby, and Auntie Shaila encourages Meena to take Pinky and Baby outside to play. Meena agrees, but, once outside, invites Anita to tag along, as well. The four girls go to Mr. Ormerod’s shop. To the horror of Pinky and Baby, Meena and Anita shoplift candy. Moreover, Meena steals the money from Mr. Ormerod’s donation tin. Anita is impressed by Meena’s boldness, and Meena is thrilled to have distinguished herself from Pinky and Baby, who have fled in tears. Back at her house, Meena hides the stolen tin and rejoins her party. But, before the end of the night, Mr. Ormerod knocks on the Kumars’ front door. Mr. Ormerod talks to Mr. Kumar, explaining that the donation tin went missing while the girls were in his store. When confronted by Mr. Kumar, Meena falsely accuses Pinky and Baby of stealing the tin.
Meena’s lie seems to work, and she is spared punishment. Mr. Kumar repays Mr. Ormerod the lost money. Meena watches her cousins, Pinky and Baby, leave the party with Auntie Shaila. Auntie Shaila slaps her two daughters as they get into the car. But, the next morning, Mr. Kumar avoids making eye-contact with Meena, and he leaves the kitchen with a slam of the door when Anita comes calling for Meena.
Analysis
In Chapter 6, Meena explores her self-identity, attempting to find personal agency while her mother is occupied with newborn Sunil. In Meena’s words: “It was a mutual decision we made, mama and I, to forget each other temporarily and move onto other loves” (p. 135). Seeking independence, Meena falls under the influence of Anita Rutter, who Meena admires for her self-confidence and free spirit. But, Meena, rather than finding her own confidence, begins to frame her identity around her friendship with Anita, mirroring Anita’s beliefs and behaviors. For example, when Meena describes talking with Anita, Meena admits, “When I said that we talked, what I mean is that Anita talked and I listened with the appropriate appreciative noises” (p. 138). Although in this chapter we see Meena and Anita at their closest, their friendship remains unequal: “Anita leading, me at her side” (p. 138).
Anita’s eyes appear as a symbol multiple times in Chapter 6, used to illustrate Anita’s point-of-view, to which Meena conforms. Spending time with Anita, Meena describes how she begins to see “the familiar and the mundane through new cynical eyes, Anita’s eyes” (p. 139). Meena has strayed from her own identity–– the “familiar”–– and now finds her identity through Anita–– “Anita’s eyes.” Later, Meena describes looking into Anita’s eyes, and divulges, “In fact, sometimes when I looked into her [Anita’s] eyes, all I could see and cling to was my own questioning reflection” (p. 150). The gaze is symbolic of a person’s identity; it is through eye contact that we can begin to know someone. So, when Meena looks into Anita’s eyes and Meena only sees her “own questioning reflection,” it represents Meena’s confusion whilst forming her own sense of self: Meena has temporarily based her identity on Anita’s identity.
A broader theme explored in Chapter 6 is the relationship between conformity and finding a sense of belonging. By conforming to Anita’s demands, Meena temporarily finds a sense of belonging: for the first time Meena is part of a gang of friends, the “Wenches Brigade.” But, when the gang holds a “piss-contest,” and Tracey is teased to the point of tears for peeing herself, Meena recognizes the instability of conformity: Meena says, “I had seen how in an instant, those you called friends could suddenly become tormentors […] turning their own fear of ostracism into a weapon with which they could beat the victim away, afraid that being an outsider, an individual even, was somehow infectious” (p. 142). This quote reveals how the pressure to conform restricts individuality: in a group, being “an individual” can be seen as a threat to the larger group. Meena’s discomfort with their teasing of Tracey indicates Meena might ultimately resist conformity, after all.
Further evidence of Meena’s struggle with her identity is found in Meena’s preoccupation with the glamour magazine, Jackie. Seeing the girls featured in the magazine, all of whom are skinny and white, Meena grows increasingly insecure about her Indian identity. Meena even writes to the magazine editors, asking whether being “brown” will “stop me [her] getting a guy?” (p. 145). The magazine editors respond, “You would be amazed at what a little lightly-applied foundation can do!” (p. 146)—a suggestion that Meena lighten her brown skin, a literal white-washing. After reading this, Meena wishes she could “shed my [her] body like a snake slithering out of its skin and emerge reborn, pink and unrecognisable” (p. 146). This simile quite explicitly communicates Meena’s discomfort with her race and body: she wants to be “pink,” she wants to be something other than herself—“unrecognisable.” Meena’s discomfort with her Indian identity, spurred by an internalized racism, reaches a climax at the end of Chapter 6, when Meena and Anita steal from Mr. Ormerod’s shop, and blame Meena’s cousins, Pinky and Baby. Seeing Pinky and Baby’s shock, Meena “giggled and quipped and chattered excitedly about nothing. I basked in their [Pinky and Baby’s] fear and bewilderment, it fed me and I welcomed it for it reaffirmed I was nothing like them, would never be them” (p. 158). The false accusation Meena makes against Pinky and Baby is a symbolic refusal to conform to her family—to “never be them.”
Another important narrative development to note in Chapter 6 is Meena’s elusive, and worrying, view into Anita and Tracey Rutter’s home life. First, Anita reveals her mother, Deirdre, has been hospitalized, explaining, “She [Deirdre] said my dad beat her up. He didn’t. She pricked her arm with a dart to make it look like that. Dad told me. He’s not picking her up. She can come home on the bloody bus, he says” (p. 133). Although Meena and Anita both seemingly accept Roberto Rutter’s side of the story, letting the matter drop, many readers will be left unconvinced, questioning Roberto’s reliability and concerned at the possible abuse–– an unsettling form of dramatic irony. Second, while forced into a “pee-contest” with the Wenches Brigade, Meena glimpses troubling bruises on Tracey’s thighs: “I wished I had not seen what I was sure I had seen, the row of bruises around Tracey’s thighs, as purple as the clover heads, two bizarre bracelets mimicking the imprint of ten cruel, angry fingers” (p. 142). In this passage, Meena uses a figure of speech to insinuate, yet not fully assert, an uncomfortable truth: someone has left bruises on Tracey’s thighs. Perhaps out of fear of the truth, Meena does not say the bruises are a hand-print, but rather that they “mimic” one. Meena personifies the fingers, calling them “cruel, angry,” but cannot say who the fingers belong to. The reader is left troubled, yet uncertain—just as Meena is.
