Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

he returns to India, he has begun to wash himself repeatedly and powder his face in an effort to be more like
the British – becoming only a shell of the man he was before.
However, as only an omniscient narrator can, the perspective jumps to his wife, and readers are
then able to learn about her intense loneliness and despair through her thoughts and reactions. Through the
omniscience of the narrator, readers are fortunate to be able to know Nimi more intimately than her
husband ever would. It is only as Desai is telling the individual story of these characters that it is understood
who they are and their importance to the story. In the end, there is not one character that is left only to
interpretation through objective comments by the narrator; each has been laid bare before and judged by
the reader.
Post-Colonial Literature exposes the iniquities of the colonial powers and tells the story of the
natives of lands destroyed by the practice of colonialism. Desai uses this narrative to depict the effects of
colonialism on her native India. A predominant effect of the colonial experience explored throughout the
book is the resulting Diaspora of countries that have been colonized. Diaspora, the displacement of people
from countries colonized by the British and the other Imperial powers, was experienced on a large scale by
Indians. According to Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Post-Colonial scholars, “Indian populations formed
(and form) substantial minorities or majorities in colonies as diverse as the West Indies, Malaya, Fiji,
Mauritius and the colonies of Eastern and Southern Africa” (69). The people of once-colonized countries
were left in extreme poverty with hardly anything left for them to do but leave their homeland and try to
find education and/or work somewhere else.
Nearly all characters in this book have been affected by this Diaspora; and as she narrates her story,
Desai makes obvious this fact through the travels of her main characters. As a part of an older generation,
the judge was the first to study in England and was able to return to an English-ruled India and find a good
job. Sai’s parents, offspring of the older generation, meet in India while going to the university, but leave
for Russia for better opportunities. Sai’s first tutor, Lola, has a daughter in England who is working for the
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