Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

the practice of colonization but the ethics and responses of the characters. The intricate narrative also
allows readers to respond mimetically. This response involves a very personal reaction to the characters as
people and involve our “evolving judgments and emotions, our desires, hopes, expectations, satisfactions,
and disappointments” (5). In allowing for an uncensored look into the hearts and minds of many of the
characters, Desai permits readers to experience her characters with a greater degree of intensity that makes
this story, at times, more felt than read. This narrative technique emphasizes that no one person is more
important than any other. No single character is central to the meaning of this story, and the narrator
illustrates this by spending time exploring other characters and narrating their personal stories separate
from the accounts of the rest.
There are five main individuals explored in depth throughout this story. Jemubhai Popatlal Patel, a
lonely and retired Indian judge trained in England, lives in a crumbling estate with his orphaned
granddaughter Sai, his cook, and his dog Mutt. His granddaughter, Sai, is a teenager who is dissatisfied with
the life that she is living with her grandfather and longs for more. Gyan, Sai’s second tutor and her first
love, is a young man facing the hard reality of being unable to find a job despite his education. The judge’s
cook, Panna Lal, is not named until the end of the book and is a man preoccupied with the lowly perception
of his station in life. The cook’s son, Biju, is a young man who is trying to make his way in the United
States but finding it more difficult than he had anticipated.
Desai moves easily between the United States and India as she tells the story of Biju and his father.
The narrator spends ample time looking at life through Biju’s perspective exploring his ideas and his
problems and then brings readers back to India showing them the differing ideas and problems of his father,
the cook. When Biju is in America, readers see the complex view that he has of himself and of what he is
doing in his new country. He at first believes that he will be able to go to the United States and become
someone, but he quickly learns that things are not the way he expects and hopes. He spends time working
in mostly seedy restaurants that care nothing for him or any of their other workers. Eventually, Biju finds
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