How we cite our quotes: (Abbreviated Title.Paragraph)
Quote #4
It was this voice that she enumerated, twice a day as she swept the stairwell, the details of her plight and losses suffered since her deportation to Calcutta after Partition. At that time, she maintained, the turmoil had separated her from a husband, four daughters, a two-story brick house, a rosewood almari, and a number of coffer boxes whose skeleton keys she still wore, along with her life savings, tied to the free end of her sari. (ARD 2)
We're wondering if Boori Ma makes herself seem even more foreign and exotic to the residents in the building by telling these tales about her time before Calcutta.
Quote #5
For months afterward, [Miranda] had been too frightened even to walk on the same side of the streets as the Dixits' house…for a while, she even held her breath until she reached the next lawn, just as she did when the school bus passed a cemetery. (S 59)
As a child, Miranda was so frightened by the "other-ness" of the foods, aromas, and decorations in the Dixit family's house that she avoided it altogether. We can probably assume that her own family didn't do much to explain the Dixits' culture or reach out to the family.
Quote #6
It shamed her now. Now, when she and Dev made love, Miranda closed her eyes and saw deserts and elephants, and marble pavilions floating on lakes beneath a full moon. One Saturday, having nothing else to do, she walked all the way to Central Square, to an Indian restaurant, and ordered a plate of tandoori chicken. As she ate she tried to memorize phrases printed at the bottom of the menu, for things like "delicious" and "water" and "check, please." The phrases didn't stick in her mind, and so she began to stop from time to time in the foreign-language section of a bookstore in Kenmore Square, where she studied the Bengali alphabet in the Teach Yourself series. Once she went so far as to try to transcribe the Indian part of her name, "Mira," into her Filofax, her hand moving in unfamiliar directions, stopping and turning and picking up her pen when she least expected to. (S 60)
It may be easy to criticize Miranda for succumbing to the whole exotic-Indian thing. Dev's other-ness is very attractive and exciting to her. But here's another way to look at it: isn't it good that Miranda tries to learn about what she thinks is "Indian" culture? True, she's totally stumbling around, but she's trying to be open to learning about it.
People evolve. As an adult, Miranda's ashamed of how she felt about her neighbors, the Dixits. Could the affair with Dev also be a way to work out some old guilt?