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Shoba is Mahesh’s wife. As a couple, they are some of Salim’s first friends in the town. Shoba comes from a wealthy Indian family who she scandalized by marrying Mahesh. When she left, her brothers threatened that if she ever returned they would throw acid on her face, thus ruining her. The couple have lived in relative exile in the town at the bend in the river since. Shoba retains her regal bearing despite her estrangement from her family, keeping a house servant and demanding near reverence from Mahesh, who does most things for her sake. She is obsessed with physical beauty and dictates how Mahesh dresses. She is phobic and fearful and worries that they have wasted their lives sticking to Mahesh’s mantra of “carrying on.” Shoba hears of her father’s death and plans to return home for some months but returns after a few weeks. The two become reclusive even from Salim, until it is revealed that her brothers carried out their plan and her face has been scarred by peroxide. Shoba dreams of travelling to Switzerland to receive expensive skin treatment, but it is understood that this will never happen—the two are stuck “carrying on.”
Shoba Quotes in A Bend in the River
The A Bend in the River quotes below are all either spoken by Shoba or refer to Shoba . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 14
Quotes
Their obsession was with more than a skin blemish. They had cut themselves off. Once they were supported by their idea of their high traditions […] now they were empty in Africa, and unprotected, with nothing to fall back on. They had begun to rot. I was like them. Unless I acted now, my fate would be like theirs. That constant questioning of mirrors and eyes; compelling others to look for the blemish that kept you in hiding; lunacy in a small room. I decided to rejoin the world […] I wrote to Nazruddin that I was coming to London […] When no other choice was left to me, when family and community hardly existed, when duty hardly had a meaning, and there were no safe houses.
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Shoba Quotes in A Bend in the River
The A Bend in the River quotes below are all either spoken by Shoba or refer to Shoba . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 14
Quotes
Their obsession was with more than a skin blemish. They had cut themselves off. Once they were supported by their idea of their high traditions […] now they were empty in Africa, and unprotected, with nothing to fall back on. They had begun to rot. I was like them. Unless I acted now, my fate would be like theirs. That constant questioning of mirrors and eyes; compelling others to look for the blemish that kept you in hiding; lunacy in a small room. I decided to rejoin the world […] I wrote to Nazruddin that I was coming to London […] When no other choice was left to me, when family and community hardly existed, when duty hardly had a meaning, and there were no safe houses.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
