Fasting, Feasting

“MAMANDPAPA. MamaPapa. PapaMama. It was hard to believe they had ever had separate existences, that they had been separate entities and MamaPapa in one breath.” 

This quote conflates Uma’s parents into one interchangeable and indistinguishable identity. While the two parents come from dramatically different backgrounds, their marriage and their authority over the household seamlessly ironed away any contrasts, replacing past distinction and identity with a monolithic and unified parental command structure.

“Uma tried not to look into the priest’s face, or listen to the words of the hymn either: there was an air of abandonment about them that made her feel uneasily as if MamaPapa, those enemies of abandon, were standing behind her and watching her and all of them, with scorn.” 

Even far removed from her household and ensconced within the Ashram’s evening prayers, Uma struggles to lose herself completely in the religious ceremony. MamaPapa, the singular, monolithic authority that her parents represent, are obsessed with maintaining a rigid outward appearance, a discipline that never allows them to lose self-control in momentary displays of emotion or piety. Though she desperately wants to lose herself completely in the prayers like the rest of the pilgrims, she suffers from a self-conscious anxiety and traumatic memory of her parents’ patterned judgment and contempt for anything outside their range of understanding and view of.

“Who cares what they say? Who cares what they think?” 

Aruna’s response to Mama is loaded with layered meaning. Anamika’s arranged marriage is a disaster, and a recent miscarriage after a vicious beating by her husband has aroused familial fears that Anamika will be sent home in shame. Although Uma secretly struggles to crystallize and focus her own response to Mama’s fear of public shaming, Aruna gives perfect