 Diasporic writing – a sense of strong political ties with the homeland.

The characters will have

thoughts of return, nostalgia and a sense of longing. The lack and the impossibility of full
integration into the host countries is a looming pervasive theme in such narratives. The
ancestral homeland stands as a symbol of their true Home. They relate personally or vicariously
to the homeland to a point where it shapes their identities.
 The diasporic community will usually have relationships with other communities forged
on/formed through common heritage or a shared experience.
 Salman Rushdie – “myth or a collective memory of their homeland” is central to diasporic
communities.

 Page 9 – “I just learned very early on that those of us deprived of history sometimes need to
turn to mythology to feel complete, to belong.”

 Page 27 – Meena's connection to her culture and traditions via photographs, and symbols and
idols of deities, etc. – her displacement as a second generation immigrant. An attempt on the
part of her parents for her acculturation towards her ethno-national identity.

 “You’re so lovely. You know, I never think of you as, you know, foreign. You’re just like one of
us.”

 Page 31 – “I rarely rebelled openly against this communal policing, firstly because it somehow
made me feel safe and wanted, and secondly, because I knew how intensely my parents valued
these people they so readily named as family, faced with the loss of their own blood relations.”
–

 Page 90 – “Black, brown, what does it matter? Just because we are not black, it is still an
insult!...You ask any man on the street to tell the difference between us and a Jamaican fellow,
he will still see us as the same colour”

 Page 96 – “all wore the same weary amused expression, as if my mother's driving had only
confirmed some secret, long-held opinion of how people like us were coping with the
complexities of the modern world.” – the long held opinion of racial inequality and white
supremacy, which firmly believed in the intellectual inferiority of the coloured. There is also the
intersection of misogyny and sexist behaviour, of a commonly held notion of how women are
not good drivers. Here it is intertwined with xenophobic and racist attitudes as well.

 Page 98 – “a million encounters written in the liens around his warm, hopeful eyes….I suddenly
realised that what had happened to me must have happened to papa countless times” – the
diasporic sense of the othering, here on racial and ethnic lines. This entrenched discriminatory
behavior is woven into the social fabric of Tollington. Provides a microscopic post-colonial study
of the larger racist and supremacist attitudes of the West towards the East. It is Meena's first
realization of her social, cultural and political position as a racial and ethnic minority in 60s
Britain. “I learned that mama is a really good driver” is a way for her to discard prejudiced
notions and claim the validity of her identity.
 Page 94 – “Of course now we have different snobberies, who has the biggest Mercedes and the
fattest gold necklace, as if the biggest show-off is the most holy” – the entry of capitalist market
forces in the space of religion where the performativity of religious ceremonies and rituals
becomes a way for upper caste and upper class people to display their status symbol;
materialistic aspect in the pursuit of religion.

 Page 112 – “The songs made me realise that there was a corner of me that would be forever not
England.” “sounded like the only home I had ever known.”

 Page 102 – “I was fascinated by these travelling people, envied them their ability to contain their
whole home in a moving vehicle, and imagined how romantic it must be to just climb in and
move off once boredom or routine set in.” – unlike the first generation immigrants who would
wish for a fixed physical space that they may occupy in a foreign land – a perpetual source of
anxiety on the part of diasporas to own something of their own in an alien environment.

 Page 136 – local groups of teen and young local rebels in Tollington – Sam Lowbridges'
Tollington Rebels, the Footies and Meena's group of friends, the Wenches Brigade – a
microcosmic representation of the emerging counterculture in Britain during the 60s, which
were severely dissatisfied with the post-war crumble of their society and economy, and the
influx of immigrants.

 Jackie magazine – an entry point for Meena to explore the contemporary conventional forms of
beauty – Meena remarking how anorexic and limpid the women represented in the magazine
seem.

 Page 143 – reference to the contemporary feminist movement as well as the hippie
counterculture.

 Page 145 – Meena acutely aware of her racial and ethnic difference – “I had never wanted to be
anyone else except myself only older and famous. But now, for some reason, I wanted to shed
my body like a snake slithering out of its skin and emerge reborn, pink and unrecognisable.”

 Page 148 – “My life was outside the home, with Anita, my passport to acceptance.”

 “Because they are polite and sweet and enjoying spending time with their family?”, “That
description fitted all the Indian girls I knew”, “the girls were always the same – pleasant, helpful,
delicate, groomed, terrifying.” – interstitial spaces that Meena occupies between her society in
Tollington and the Indian community she feels compelled to communicate with.

 Page 150 – “In fact, sometimes when I looked into her eyes, all I could see and cling to was my
own questioning reflection.”
 Page 164 – the failure and irrelevance of sexual revolution and counterculture of the 60s, as
seen in the local context of Tollington through the lens of Meena – unlike the widespread usage
of LSD and popularity of psychedelic rock music, for Tollington, the drugs were Mr. Ormerod's
buttercup syrup and sexual revolution consisted of Sam Lowbridge's heavy-petting sessions. “if
Tollington was a footnote in the book of the Sixties, then my family and friends were the
squashed flies in the spine.”

 Page 165 – popular representation of Indians which were far and few, and also “far too
exaggerated and exotic” that catered to Western cliches and stereotypical notions of the East.
For Meena, her world feels like another planet altogether, where her “revolutions were quieter
and often unwitnessed….after years of earwigging on the elders' evening chats.”

 “Hai, the letters I wrote home, so many lies about the jobs we had, the money we were making.
My mamaji still thinks I am a college lecturer”

 Page 166 – “None of these stories appeared in any book or newspaper or programme, and yet
all were true. But then I was beginning to realise that truth counted for very little, in the end.”

 Reference to Reita Faria

 Page 172 – “it’s not just about giving them stuff, is it? It’s about giving them culture as well,
civilisation. A good, true way of living, like what we have….I mean, we ain’t a charity, are we?” –
undercutting the connotations of the colonial enterprise and white man’s burden.

 “God Shyam, is that how they see us? Is it really?”

 “And they leave us alone because they don’t think we are really Indian. “Oh, you’re so English,
Mrs. K!” Like it is a buggering compliment! If I hear that one more time….” – the larger post-
colonial question of what Englishness represents and signifies in an era of post-colonialism.

 Page 193 – “And give everything away to some darkies we’ve never met. We don’t give a toss
for anybody else. This is our patch. Not some wogs' handout.” – the younger English
generation's reaction towards the colonial enterprise, with a strong linkage to racist and
supremacist attitudes. Anger towards the use of money by elders for charity, which he feels is
only to benefit the Other – a rhetoric of reverse racism and reverse victimization where Sam
articulates that how the whites are in danger.

 Page 204 – “I noted disapprovingly, they were as noisy and hysterical as everyone else. I had
never seen the Elders so expansive and unconcerned, and knew that this somehow had
something to do with Nanima.” –

 The Punjabis demarcate their private sphere – Meena has internalized this divide and hence her
behaviour differs according to the temporal space she occupies.
 Page 210 – “But gradually I got used to Nanima's world, a world made up of old and bitter family
feuds in which the Land was revered and jealously guarded like a god, in which supernatural and
epic events, murder, betrayals, disappearances and premonitions seemed commonplace”

 Page 211 – “….a country that seemed full to bursting with excitement, drama and passion,
history in the making, and for the first time I desperately wanted to visit India and claim some of
this magic as mine.” – the chasm between what previous generations had experienced v/s what
Meena experiences in daily life in Tollington. “It was all falling into place now, why I felt this
continual compulsion to fabricate, this ever-present desire to be someone else in some other
place far from Tollington.”

 Meena indulging in imperial barbaric representations of Indians as “unruly mobs”, “howling like
animals for the blood of the brave besieged British”, and dancing “an evil jig of victory outside”

 Page 212 – “why, after do many years of hating the 'goras', had they packed up their cases and
followed them back here.”

 Page 244/245 – “As I entered my house, the sound of deep-frying greeted me.” – away from the
external world of pain and conflict, Meena seeking refuge in the space of the home. “Can I have
something...vegetarian for lunch?” – food being an essential cultural marker of one’s identity.
Also a turning point for Meena’s growth/bildung in the narrative.

 Page 254 – “It had never occurred to me that this would be a moment of controversy, it had
never occurred to me because I had never eaten Indian food in the presence of a white person
before. In fact, I only then realised that Anita Rutter was the first non-relative to sit and break
bread with us, and the same thought had just hit my parents, who had gradually slowed down
their eating and were eyeing a nearby box of paper hankies with longing.”

 “I would not have Anita play the same games with my parents that made me dizzy and
confused.”

 Page 257 –

 Page 263 – “I felt strange that he used that word 'home' so naturally, did that mean that
everything surrounding us was merely our temporary lodgings? But this note of disquiet melted
into the symphony of anticipatory joy we all felt now” – the diasporic condition where the
homeland still constitutes the notion of the 'home'.

 Page 267 – “I had always assumed this was some kind of ancient Punjabi custom, this need to
display several dusty, bulging cases overflowing with old Indian suits, photographs and yellowing
official papers” – the suitcases being “the nearest thing in our house that we had to a shrine”,
“allotted their own place and prominence” – however their place was one distinctly “apart from
 the rest of the household jumble” – the diasporic imaginary closeted to a remote corner in their
fragmented subjectivities.

 Page 275 – reference to a Mr. Rajesh Bhatra who was attacked in Tollington – a possible victim
of racial and xenophobic violence – attacked by Sam Lowbridge and his gang, who assume
themselves to be the true voices of Tollington's resistance – however in reality it provides them
with an excuse to exercise their bigoted racist attitudes towards the “other”.

 Page 284 – “I decided there and then to heal myself, both in body and mind. It was time.”

 Page 293 – critique of modernity and the programme of modern nation-building.

 Page 295 – “It’s home, it really is, but we can’t stay here forever, Meena…”

 Themes:
1. Concept of home for the diasporic individual
2. Personal sense of exile
3. Metaphor or the motif of journey
4. Relationship of memory and history
5. The identity of the child narrator

 History as a valid identity marker – an idea that reverberates in the narrative. This history is not
restricted to the realm of personal experiences only, but is related to a larger shared cultural
memory of a community, which consists of experiences that have been narrativised and passed
down from generation to generation.
 Cultural markers of identity involves food, and the manner in which it is consumed – how
Meena’s family eats v/s how the others around them have notions of eating. Also it involves
literary and cultural productions that a community partakes in – the politics of language and also
intonation is involved here.
 Dress codes also dictate markers of identity – identification through a person wearing similar
clothing that is crucial in the diasporic imaginary.
 The aspect of race in identity – for all her post-colonial subjective location, and her acculturation
into the life of Tollington, Meena’s race is also a source of value judgement in the public gaze.
 Gender in conjunction with culture – Meena reading Jackie Magazine with Anita that enforce
the European idea of female conventions of beauty.
 The tension of mis-attribution of identity – identity being in a state of becoming, in a state of
flux – Meena’s tussle between the British social nexus she lives in and her cultural history and
heritage. The ambiguities and complexities of hyphenated identities is what she begins to learn
through the course of the narrative. There can be no neat dichotomy between these two
identities, and a full rejection of one over the other wouldn’t be possible.
 Identity and the nation – the former in a state of flux while the latter is a constructed myth of an
imaginary community – never attaining completion.