The “Double Entendre”
Anita and Me begins with an epigraph, a brief introduction to the novel’s central themes, narrated by the novel’s protagonist, Meena Kumar. The epigraph is, essentially, the novel’s thesis statement: “But I’ve always been a sucker for a good double entendre; the gap between what is said and what is thought, what is stated and what is implied, is a place in which I have always found myself. I’m really not a liar, I just learned very early on that those of us deprived of history sometimes need to turn to mythology to feel complete, to belong” (p. 10). As the quote promises, Anita and Me is a novel of reconciliation, of building bridges over gaps. Over the course of thirteen chapters, Meena learns to negotiate and embrace the many competing pressures on her: her British heritage and her Indian heritage; her dreams of friendship and her obligations at home. Often, Meena finds that these competing forces can, in fact, coexist—that life allows for ambiguity and contradiction.
The rest of the novel's main themes can be seen as a subset of this single, overarching theme of the double entendre.
Lying / Myth-Making
At the beginning of Anita and Me, Meena is caught lying to her parents, stealing candy from Mr. Ormerod’s shop—the first of many in a long list of Meena’s lies and fabrications. Gradually, Meena learns the dangers, and sometimes the merits, of deception. For example, Meena learns the real-world consequences of deception when her father shares a story from his experiences during the partition of India, and how Mr. Kumar was deceived into planting a bomb, after being told the bomb was a package. But, so too, does Meena encounter beneficial uses for deception, or, at least, for bending the truth. For example, Meena describes how her parents hide the truth to protect her and her brother: “I had seen my parents swallow down anger and grief a million times, for our sakes” (p. 288). Moreover, Meena learns that “truth” itself is not always truthful, realizing that Western biases are written into her school’s history textbooks: “This urge to reinvent myself, I could now see, was driven purely by shame, the shame I felt when we ‘did’ India at school, and would leaf through tatty textbooks where the map of the world was an expanse of pink” (p. 211). Meena even uses deception to create a mythic persona surrounding her Nanima—claiming Nanima is a gold-seeking polyglot—and in so doing, challenge the racial stereotypes held by the Ballbearings committee. At the end of the novel, Meena is given a choice between telling a lie or the truth—to falsely accuse Sam and Anita, or to save the two—and in a completion of her narrative arc, Meena chooses the truth. She has learned that lying can harm, but also protect; that lying is sometimes closer to myth-making, and a way to shape the future.
Comedy / Tragedy
Another thematic dichotomy found in Anita and Me—present in both form and content—is the pairing of comedy and tragedy. Primarily written in a comedic tone, the novel brims with playful characterizations, exaggerated language, and ironic narration. And yet, the novel deals with heavy subject matter, including racism, child abuse, political violence, and poverty. Often, the comedic and tragic are placed side-by-side: for example, Anita brags that her father bombed “Jerries” (i.e. a slang term for Germans) in World War II, causing Meena to mistakenly wonder “why he had taken a particular dislike for men with this name” (p. 17). The novel shows the hazards of comedy, how comedy can trivialize and/or normalize tragedy: for example, the Rutters’ choice to name their black poodle after the N-word, or the inclusion of a racist caricature as a target at the fairground’s shooting range. But the novel also shows that comedy can assuage tragedy, becoming a means of coping and healing: for example, when Mr. Kumar uses comedy to lighten the mood at a family gathering, after a heavy conversation about partition, saying, “I celebrated my seventeenth birthday in a refugee camp with only what I stood up in. But I thank God, because if I had not gone to Delhi, I would never have met Daljit …” (p. 75). In this thematic exploration of comedy and tragedy, Meera Syal shows how humor can help us cope—or, when misused, cause further harm.
Expectations / Reality
Central to Anita and Me’s coming-of-age plot is the fact that, as the novel progresses, Meena must confront difficult realities that often differ from her expectations. A broad example is Meena’s growing awareness of Tollington’s racial dynamics, and the everyday xenophobia faced by her family, and others like her. More personal examples can be seen in Meena’s deepened understanding of her parents’ sacrifices: learning that her parents left everything behind to emigrate to Britain in search of an easier life for Meena and Sunil, recognizing that Mr. Kumar gave up on his dream to be a performer to remain financially secure, and realizing that Mrs. Kumar suppresses her longing for home to keep their family happy. At the start of the novel, Meena dreams of drama—finding thrill in the idea of tragedy—but by the novel’s end, when she finally faces her own adversity and the loss of those she loves, Meena recognizes the permanence of loss that accompanies real tragedy.
Bullies / Victims
When Meena watches Anita wrestle Fat Sally, Meena says: “What really troubled me was her quiet acceptance, her satisfaction at being pummelled. She seemed to be saying, I made you do this, I knew you would do it, and I have been proved right. I could not work out if this made her a bully or victim” (p. 24). In this quote, Meena introduces another major dichotomy in Anita and Me—that between bully and victim. Many characters in the novel blur the boundaries between bully and victim, hurting others, after having been hurt themselves. For example, Roberto Rutter, Anita’s father, is left with trauma after fighting in World War II; but, so too, is there indication that Roberto abuses his children. Anita, in turn, adopts an aggressive persona to mask the pain of her broken home life—for example, pushing Meena away after Meena tries to hug her. The same might be said of Sam Lowbridge, who lives in poverty with his single mother. Meena, even, becomes a bully, falsely accusing her cousins Pinky and Baby of theft. By depicting bullies as themselves victims, Meera Syal does not seek to excuse the behavior of bullies, but rather to better understand them and what causes the bully-victim dynamic.
Public / Private
Another thematic conflict in Anita and Me is the tension between public and private, influencing the way Meena relates to her community. Meena observes the ways in which her own family members change their behavior in public; for example, Mrs. Kumar never shows her anger in public. Meena tends to associate her Indian culture with her private life, and her British culture with her public life; she considers Punjabi an “indoors” language, and English an “outdoors” language, and typically celebrates with her family’s South Asian community inside her house. Anita, too, demonstrates the gap between public and private lives; although Anita presents as tough and self-assured, Meena catches Anita breaking into tears when her mother whispers into her ear. Over the course of the novel, the barriers between Meena’s public and private life are gradually weakened. For example, at Nanima’s welcoming party, the Kumars celebrate outdoors; and when Anita visits the Kumars for dinner, the differences between Anita and Meena’s private, cultural customs are made visible.
Spoken / Unspoken
The way people talk plays an important role in Anita and Me, becoming a means to shape the perceptions of others, with or without intention. What is spoken can sometimes reveal what is unspoken—for example, social class. The wealthy Mrs. Pembridge surprises the Tollington townsfolk when she speaks in a working-class accent: “It was a miner’s daughter’s voice […] Blue blood, my arse. It’s gin!” (p. 174). Similarly, we see Fat Sally deliberately modify her language, to speak less formally and so hide her upper-class upbringing: “And we aren’t…I mean ain’t rich” (p. 239). At other times, we encounter language barriers—in these instances, the unspoken leads to gaps in knowledge, and so language becomes a form of power. For example, consider Meena’s inability to speak Punjabi; Meena’s parents speak Punjabi when they want to keep something secret from Meena. Consider also, how Anita claims to have greater maturity than Meena because Anita knows more adult language: “What’s a lezzie,” Meena asks and Anita responds “Yow don’t know nothing, do ya? […] Bet yow don’t know what a virgin is neither” (p. 248). This even gets Meena in trouble with her parents, when she misuses Anita’s vulgar slang: “Do you know what you are saying? I hope not!” (p. 249) says Mr. Kumar, in one such instance.
There are many more ways in which the use of language is thematized in Anita and Me. Sunil’s first words are a blend of Punjabi and English—language, once again, becoming a symbol of identity. Meena and Robert challenge traditional modes of communication, falling in love using handwritten notes, and learning to communicate with mere gestures of their heads. To an even greater extreme, the rules of language are fully defied when Nanima has a lively conversation with Mr. Worral, even though Nanima can only speak Punjabi and Mr. Worral is nonverbal. All of these examples point toward Meera Syal’s thematic interest in the power of communication, and the balance between spoken and unspoken communication.
