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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Of White Hairs and Cricket, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Time, Decay, and Mortality
Assimilation vs. Tradition
Gender, Masculinity, and Pride
Colonialism, Exploitation, and Poverty
Summary
Analysis
The narrator sits at the table with his Daddy and plucks a white hair from his father’s head with tweezers. His father exclaims in pain and tells the narrator to only pluck one hair at a time. Annoyed, the narrator tries to tell his father that he did only pluck one hair, but his father doesn’t really look at him, instead staying focused on the classifieds section in the Times of India.
Daddy’s job search provides the first hint that the narrator’s family is struggling financially, and that the pressure falls on Daddy to provide for the household. By plucking the white hairs from Daddy’s head, the narrator reluctantly assists his father’s resistance to the natural aging process. However, at this early point in the story, the narrator does not seem to understand why the white hairs bother his father so much—he only plucks the hairs because Daddy wants him to. While the reader can likely intuit Daddy’s reasoning, the fact that the narrator is still in the dark about Daddy’s reasons highlights how innocent and naïve the narrator still is.
Themes
A light from the light bulb overhead glints off the tweezers in the narrator’s hand, drawing his eye around the room and over to the Murphy Radio calendar on the wall. The narrator takes note of the Murphy Baby on the calendar while his Daddy sighs and keeps reading the paper.
The Murphy Baby represents youth and innocence, and the fact that the narrator notices it in this moment suggests that it sharply contrasts with Daddy’s own advancing age.
Themes
Every Sunday, the narrator has to pluck white hairs from his father’s head. Every time he does, it takes him longer than the Sunday before, and Daddy jokes that it is the narrator’s laziness that makes it take longer. The narrator’s brother, Percy, never has to pluck hairs from his father’s head, and if the narrator asks his father why, he only tells him that Percy’s college schoolwork is more important.
When Daddy jokes about his son’s laziness, he further buries his real emotions about aging. Rather than face his fears about getting older head-on and admit that white hair is a natural part of the aging process, he instead shifts the blame for his aging onto the narrator. His nonchalance about something that really scares him demonstrates the kind of strong and silent masculinity that he models for his son. He refuses to admit his fears and laughs them off instead. Daddy’s investment in his elder son Percy’s education demonstrates how he strives for upward mobility (increased wealth and social status) for himself and his family. Daddy’s insistence that Percy shouldn’t be disturbed while he is studying shows that he really does care about his family and their future prospects—he just can’t seem to be honest with them about how he feels.
Themes
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The narrator’s Daddy relies on the narrator, who is 14 and has agile fingers, to “uproot the signposts of mortality” that show up on his head every week. And, since the narrator has to comb through his father’s hair while it is still greasy with pomade, he finds the task pretty disgusting. Each time, the narrator singles out the purely white hairs and the hairs that are just starting to turn white—the half-white hairs disgust him—and has to decide whether to pluck the half-white hairs or leave them for next week, by which time they will be fully white.
The narrator’s comment about the “signposts of mortality” seems to come from a retrospective look at the situation—in the present timeline of the story, the narrator still does not seem to understand why Daddy wants all the white hairs gone. However, he does seem to understand that in reality, he has very little control over the white hairs. His observation that the only thing he can control is whether to pluck the half-white hairs or wait until they are fully white shows that aging will continue regardless of Daddy’s and the narrator’s attempts to stop it. The only thing they can do is choose to accept it or refuse to face it.
Themes
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The Sunday edition of the Times of India has a comics section, which includes Mandrake the Magician, The Phantom, and Maggie and Jiggs in the comic “Bringing Up Father.” The colors in comics make the narrator’s family’s drab tablecloth look brighter and more cheerful, as if it’s dressed up for Sundays—although the tablecloth still smells like musty plastic. The narrator thinks that the cloth is impossible to clean because dirt accumulates in its grooved floral design.
The way dirt stubbornly accumulates in the old tablecloth is similar to how Daddy’s white hairs stubbornly grow back every week. Both of these phenomena reflect that idea that decay (of inanimate objects and of the human body) will set in regardless of people’s efforts to avoid it. On another note, the Times of India is an English-language newspaper, and the comics in it are American, which begins to hint that India has adopted certain elements of Western culture.
Themes
As the narrator’s Daddy reaches up to scratch his head, the narrator is surprised that his father yelped when he plucked the white hair, because his father has taught him “to be tough, always.”
Daddy’s yelp contrasts with his idea that it is always important to appear “tough.” In this moment, the narrator seems to notice that this standard is somewhat hypocritical, since not even Daddy is always tough. Still, though, the narrator doesn’t realize the full extent of his father’s refusal to face reality (and his own emotions) in an effort to appear invincible.
Themes
One day when the narrator and Daddy were coming home after a cricket game, Daddy told Mummy and Mamaiji that his son had done something “brave” like he himself would have done: a “powerful” cricket shot was heading toward the boundary, and the narrator blocked it “with his bare shin.” The narrator remembers his father’s exact words, and also how the red ball had collided with his shin so hard that it made a cracking sound that the narrator thought was audible. It hurt so much he nearly cried. But since his father clapped for him, the narrator waited to rub the sore spot until he wasn’t looking.
The fact that Daddy and the narrator played cricket, a British game, shows how colonial influence has worked its way into Indian culture. (India was under British colonial rule from 1858 to 1947). The pain the narrator experiences when he blocks the shot suggests both the pain that Indian people experienced under Britain’s exploitative rule and the pain (both physical and emotional) that the narrator will endure if he continues to act “brave” to impress his father and fulfill stereotypically masculine ideals.
Themes
After his cricket save, the narrator’s best friend, Viraf, was impressed. The narrator wishes that Percy had been there to see, but he had lost interest in cricket by then. Now, months have passed since that day, and Daddy doesn’t take him to cricket on Sunday mornings anymore.
The narrator’s nostalgia for cricket contributes to the story’s overall focus on the past as an idyllic time. The cricket games were the narrator’s opportunity to bond his father and impress the men in his life. The fact that Daddy no longer takes the narrator to play cricket suggests that his priorities have changed—he is now focused on staving off the future (by having the narrator pluck out his white hairs) rather than enjoying the present.
Themes
The narrator stops looking for white hair on his father’s head for a moment and instead uses the tweezers to direct the light from the light bulb onto the Murphy Radio calendar. Because Daddy is focused on something he sees in the classifieds, he doesn’t notice. The narrator notices how old and worn the calendar is—it has been on the wall for over a decade—but the Murphy Baby’s smile remains unchanged.
A calendar is, of course, typically used to keep track of the present and plan for the future. So, the fact that this calendar has been hanging on the wall for over a decade creates the sense that the narrator’s family is using it for a different purpose. Particularly since this calendar features a photo of a smiling baby, it seems like the family is trying to cling to the happiness and innocence they associate with the past rather than facing their troubles in the present or looking forward to the future.
Themes
The narrator’s Mummy and Daddy think that the Murphy Baby is “innocent” and “joyous,” even though the baby would now be about the same age as the narrator and the crumbling wall plaster is now visible around the edges of the calendar. Every day, the calendar does a worse job of covering the crumbling spot in the wall, as the plaster keeps falling away and the calendar curls with age.
While Mummy and Daddy think the Murphy Baby is “innocent,” the calendar itself is worn, and it’s covering up glaring problems in the building’s structure, which makes the smiling baby seem eerie and out of place. Again, the narrator’s family seems to be trying to ignore the decay surrounding them and fight the inevitable reality that everything and everyone will eventually grow old and break down.
Themes
Around the kitchen, many other old calendars from the Cement Corporation, Lifebuoy Soap, and an English and Parsi calendar cover crumbling wall plaster, the “broken promises” of the building management company. Mummy and Mamaiji consult the English-Parsi calendar when they pray. Presently, Daddy taps the newspaper and asks for the scissors.
Again, the calendars on the wall keep the family stuck in the past and cover up the crumbling plaster, a very literal sign of the narrator’s family’s poverty as well as the inevitability of aging and decay. Notably, it seems like most of the companies whose ads are on the calendars are British. The only Indian company is the Cement Corporation, which subtly represents stagnancy (being cemented in place) as opposed to happiness and innocence (like the Murphy Baby) or being saved and brought back to good health (like a lifebuoy). But much like the building management’s “broken promises,” these British companies haven’t brought the happiness and prosperity that they promise in their advertisements. Instead, Britain’s former colonial presence, as well as British companies’ continued competition with Indian companies, has left India’s economy crippled and Indian people poor and lacking in opportunities (hence why Daddy can’t find a job). In addition, the English-Parsi calendar on the wall is a symbol of the family’s religious devotion as well as the crossroads the family finds itself at regarding assimilation and tradition, as the English on the calendar is a reminder of Britain’s former colonial presence in Indian.
Themes
Mamaiji walks through the kitchen and sits in her chair on the porch. The narrator notices that when she is sitting, he can’t see the ailment that makes her walk bent over: according to her doctors, her large stomach and weak spine make it difficult for her to stand upright. However, the narrator knows from his Mummy’s old photographs that Mamaiji had been a large, attractive, even majestic woman when she was younger.
Mamaiji’s physical deterioration is yet another example of age and decay in the story. Her transformation from robust and beautiful to old and frail can be read as a sign of what’s to come for Daddy as he ages, in spite of his attempts to stave off this process.
Themes
On the porch, Mamaiji pulls out her spindle and wool, defying the doctor’s orders to rest her eyes after a recent cataract surgery, and notices the narrator with the tweezers. Under her breath, she mutters about Daddy making the narrator pluck white hair from his head, saying that it will bring “bad luck.” She compares Daddy to “a slaughtered chicken” and laments how he still makes his son pull out the hairs every Sunday despite her warnings. She says that the narrator ought to be playing or learning how to haggle with grocery shopkeepers, keeping her voice low enough that Daddy won’t confront her even if he hears her.
Mamaiji’s thread-spinning and superstitions about Daddy’s hair-plucking connects her to traditional Indian culture. Her desire for the narrator to have the time and space to still be a kid demonstrates how much she cares for him—but her love also comes with implicit expectations. She wants him to play or learn to haggle with shopkeepers (a traditional practice in India). The fact that Mamaiji doesn’t want Daddy to hear her talking about this suggests that Daddy disapproves of such things, and that perhaps he is more aligned with Western culture than with Indian traditions.
Themes
The narrator resents Mamaiji criticizing Daddy and resents being called a child. And as Mamaiji works her spindle and wool, the narrator wishes that the thread would break. Sometimes after he wishes so, the thread does break, and then his grandmother seems so surprised and upset that he guiltily runs over to pick it up for her. As Mamaiji spins her thread, the narrator compares the thread to “snow white,” tangled hair.
The narrator’s disdain for Mamaiji’s criticism reveals how he has picked up on some of his father’s misogyny, as he seems to respect his grandmother less than he respects his father. His wish that Mamaiji’s thread would break suggests the Fates from Greek myth, who spin the “thread” of human fate and eventually cut it to bring about death. Mamaiji’s outsize reaction to the break bears this out, as if the thread breaking signals Mamaiji’s impending death. Moreover, the narrator’s description of Mamaiji’s white hair further contrasts her with Daddy: she accepts her age and allows her white hair to grow freely, whereas Daddy stubbornly resists his white hair and the aging process it represents.
Themes
Mamaiji spins enough thread for everyone in the family to have a kusti. And, since Grandpa died, she’s spun so much that everyone has an extra kusti. The kustis themselves were woven by a professional weaver who praises the good-quality thread, and when the narrator’s family wears them to the fire-temple, other people look at them covetously.
Mamaiji’s thread-spinning for the family’s kustis binds everyone in the family together with shared religious traditions. Although they disagree about how to raise the narrator, they all come together in their faith.
Themes
The narrator admires Mamaiji’s spinning—everything that spins mesmerizes him, like the bucket descending into the Bhikha Behram Well for the people who go there to pray on holy days. He imagines himself holding onto the spindle and going into the well, certain that Mamaiji would pull him up before he drowned and praying that the thread will not break. He also likes watching records spin, particularly a record with a blue and gold label, so he plays it over and over just to watch it spinning. As he watches it, he leans his cheek on the gramophone to smell the wood and feel the comforting vibrations.
The narrator’s fixation on spinning, cyclical things suggests that he is comforted by the idea of things that remain the same and don’t deteriorate or die—like a strong thread that is continuously spun and never snaps, or a spinning record that always looks and sounds the same. In this way, he is like his parents, who prefer to cling to the past rather than accept change. On another note, the image of Mamaiji lowering the narrator into the Bhikha Behram Well (a Parsi holy site in India) is symbolic of her guiding him through Indian religious and cultural traditions. The narrator seems both comforted and afraid of this—confident that his grandmother will keep him safe but also terrified that he’ll drown in the well. In this way, the image represents the narrator’s conflicting feelings about immersing himself in Indian traditions (as opposed to assimilating to Western culture).
Themes
Daddy cuts out the classified advertisement he found and says that it seems promising, then says quietly to the narrator that if plucking the white hairs is bad luck like Mamaiji says, then he wouldn’t have found the advertisement. He sighs about old people and tells the narrator to make sure he gets every white hair out of his head. The narrator thinks that Daddy and Mamaiji really like each other, but that Daddy doesn’t like living with her because he and Mummy often disagree with Mamaiji about how to raise the narrator.
By teasing Mamaiji about her superstition (which is presumably rooted in Indian tradition), Daddy is subtly dismissing her cultural beliefs and instead pushing the narrator toward more assimilationist ideas. His comment about old people suggests that Mamaiji’s ideas are generational—the kind of traditional beliefs she represents are dying out with the people who hold them.
Themes
In particular, Mamaiji believes the narrator is underfed. Because Mamaiji is housebound, she can only eat food from vendors that go from door to door, or the food she cooks for herself. Mamaiji thinks that Mummy’s cooking is disgustingly bland, and because the narrator is Mamaiji’s favorite, sometimes he gets to eat her spicy food (which he likes but his parents don’t allow him to eat) while Daddy is at work and Mummy is “in the kitchen.”
Mamaiji, Mummy, and Daddy’s arguments over food are a key aspect of the debate between tradition and assimilation in the narrator’s life. Mummy rejects her mother’s traditional Indian foods, instead choosing blander Western foods. Moreover, the detail that Mummy spends most of her time in the kitchen and Mamaiji spends all her time in the house, while Daddy is able to work outside the home, highlights the different gender roles Indian men and women have at this time. It further thrusts all the responsibility for providing for the family financially onto Daddy, which perhaps contributes to his desire to feel young and capable.
Themes
When Percy was around, he also got to eat Mamaiji’s spicy food, and Percy’s stomach is more inclined toward spice. But when the narrator’s parents found out what their children were eating, Mamaiji would get in trouble for burning their stomachs or exposing them to diseases that the oils in the street foods might carry. But Mamaiji would argue back that the narrator’s parents were not feeding their children enough, so she had to feed them. When the narrator’s parents argue with Mamaiji, he pretends that it doesn’t bother him. Instead, he says the shouting is giving him a headache and walks away.
The narrator’s love of spicy food suggests that he appreciates traditional Indian culture more than his parents do. But because he is from a younger generation that is more Westernized than his grandmother’s generation, his body isn’t used to spicy food. This more broadly represents his inability to fully immerse himself in Indian culture, largely because his parents are pulling him in the opposite direction. Indeed, the narrator’s parents’ ideas that the food is unhealthy or dirty echoes common British colonial ideas about Indian food that are rooted in racism. By arguing against this point of view, Mamaiji defends her culture. Although these arguments bother the narrator, rather than directly communicate his discomfort to his parents, he denies the feelings and lies about the real problem, mimicking his father’s example of not facing problems head-on.
Themes
Watching the arguments makes the narrator feel guilty, especially since every time he and Mamaiji conspire against his parents and eat spicy food, he gives the secret away through diarrhea and vomiting. Mamaiji thinks his sickness proves that Mummy and Daddy have made his stomach weak, and the narrator always promises his parents he will never eat Mamaiji’s food again. When he makes his promises, he betrays Mamaiji, but he likes how she makes fun of him when he gets sick and admits his wrongdoing, saying that next time, she’ll cork him up before feeding him.
The way that the narrator’s body violently rejects spicy food suggests that no matter how he may feel toward Indian or British culture, his body has already partly assimilated into Western culture in a way he can’t reverse. In this sense, meeting his grandmother’s expectations of carrying on Indian traditions will cause him suffering, just like playing cricket (a symbol of British culture) to appease his father will make him suffer. This suggests that navigating a dual cultural identity will always be difficult, regardless of whether a person chooses to assimilate or hold onto their native culture.
Themes
Mummy comes into the room from the kitchen, moves the comics on the table, and sets down a plate of unevenly cooked toast that she made using the Criterion. Daddy reads the classified ad for a “Dynamic Young Account Executive” aloud and says that it is perfect for him and, if he gets the job, the family’s troubles will be over. Mummy listens to him say things like this every week and, despite her initial optimism, always ends up disappointed. But this time, she is silent, surprising the narrator.
As Daddy reads aloud the classified ad, it becomes obvious that the job is not right for him—his is not young, nor does he seem particularly “dynamic.” Instead, he is getting older and growing increasingly stubborn about his own abilities, refusing to accept that he isn’t the young man he used to be. In this way, Daddy denies reality for the sake of his own pride. Mummy probably stays silent on the matter because she recognizes how fragile Daddy’s confidence is regarding his age and abilities. He wants to provide for the family, but by chasing opportunities designed for much younger men, he repeatedly creates situations where he can’t fulfill his own expectations.
Themes
Daddy grabs a piece of toast and dips it in his tea, then says that the toast smells like kerosene from the Criterion, but when he gets a new job, he’ll get a toaster. Mummy tells him that she doesn’t smell the kerosene, and Daddy angrily shoves the toast in her face, telling her to smell it. He complains about how the Criterion has declined in quality and jokes that since the British left India 17 years ago, the British stove can go, too.
The aging Criterion stove is yet another example of decay in the story. Daddy reveals that it is a British-made product, which implicitly links British influence with a decline in quality. This suggests that the family’s poverty is at least in part due to the long history of colonial exploitation in India.
Themes
Turning toward the narrator, Daddy tells him that someday, he has to go to the U.S. because there is no future in India—he’ll get money for him to go somehow. Daddy’s face becomes affectionate, and the narrator wants to hug him, but he doesn’t because hugs are reserved for birthdays. To make this urge go away, the narrator pretends that his father is only being loving because he wants him to keep plucking his white hair.
Daddy’s wish for the narrator to go to the U.S. reveals the final frontier of his hope for the narrator’s assimilation: after denying Mamaiji’s beliefs and refusing to feed the narrator traditional spicy foods, Daddy ultimately wants his son to leave India behind entirely. Although he does so out of love for his son—love that the narrator can clearly see, a display of affection that’s uncharacteristic for Daddy—his desire to send young people out of the country contributes to the overall sense of decay and decline in India. The narrator’s desire to hug his father, and his reasoning for why he doesn’t, demonstrate the impact of Daddy’s model of masculinity: the narrator is unable to express his feelings for fear of not appearing “tough.”
Themes
Daddy says that they might be able to get a fridge when he gets this new job, which would make it so they didn’t have to ask favors of their upstairs neighbor and kill rats for her in exchange. The narrator can see that his Daddy wants him and Mummy to be excited, too, but Mummy tells her husband that planning too much will ruin his chances. Daddy gets angry and accuses her of thinking he will never get a better job and throws his toast onto the plate in front of him, then calms down and jokes that he’ll prove them wrong the day he throws out the kerosene stoves.
Here, Mummy reaches her limit when it comes to supporting Daddy. She seems to have a more realistic idea of what her husband is capable of, but Daddy interprets her hesitancy as an insult—certainly to his pride and his masculinity—rather than a reality check. Still, he does not linger on his feelings and turns his anger into another joke, much like the way he turned his anxiety about aging into a joke at the narrator’s expense earlier in the story.
Themes
Despite Daddy’s claims, the narrator likes the kerosene stoves. He likes looking into the Criterion to see the kerosene because it reminds him of looking at the stars, and he likes the way the flame reminds him of low fires in the fire-temple. He also likes the Primus stove, which is much hotter; Daddy is the only one who lights it, because many women die in explosions from Primus stoves. Daddy says that many of the deaths are not accidents, particularly “the dowry cases.”
Like cricket, the Criterion is an artifact of British colonialism that has become an important part of the narrator’s childhood. By comparing it to nature (the stars) and to the fire in the fire-temple (where Parsi people pray), the narrator creates an image of the Criterion that blends British colonial, traditional Indian, and natural imagery. This suggests that it may be natural for his generation to draw from the traditional beliefs of their grandparents’ generation as well as the assimilationist beliefs of their parents’. The distinction between Daddy and Mummy lighting the Criterion draws more gendered lines between who can perform what role in the family. In addition, the detail that some men may weaponize the Primus stoves against their prospective wives reveals that women in the society of the story are at risk of gendered violence.
Themes
Mummy goes back into the kitchen and the narrator eats his toast, not minding the kerosene smell. He tries to imagine the kitchen without its current stoves and although he doesn’t like the look of new stoves, he figures his family will get used to them. At night, he goes outside to look at the stars, but he prefers the look of them from the beach. On Saturday nights, he always fills the kerosene stoves, because Mummy used to make the narrator and Daddy early breakfast before cricket.
The narrator’s affinity for the past strengthens as he tries to imagine new stoves in the kitchen. He likes the existing stoves the way they are, and more importantly, they remind him of better times. In this way, the narrator is mimicking his parents’ tendency to cling onto the past rather than accepting the inevitable changes that will happen as time moves forward.
Themes
The narrator and Daddy always left for cricket before seven, while the rest of the building residents were just waking up and going about their morning routines—shaving, praying, and sweeping. If the sweeping woman happened to pass the praying woman, the praying woman would curse violently at her for “polluting” her prayers, which even made Daddy laugh.
The narrator’s nostalgic memory of he and Daddy’s old cricket routine again demonstrates his focus on the past. His description of the praying woman creates a meeting-point between traditional Indian and colonial practices, where both prayer and cricket seem to be familiar aspects of the narrator’s life.
Themes
As the narrator and his Daddy hurried along toward cricket, the homeless people would be waking up and looking for someplace to “relieve themselves” before they had to move their cardboard beds away from the traffic and street sweepers. Some made breakfast while others begged for food; some mornings, Mummy would give the narrator and Daddy food to give them. But it has been a long time since the narrator and his father last played cricket.
The homeless people in the narrator’s memories highlight how widespread poverty is in the society of the story. Historically, a great deal of this poverty resulted from British exploitation of Indian people’s labor and natural resources during colonialism. This context adds complexity to the narrator and his father’s pastime, as they enjoyed one aspect of British culture (cricket) but also saw firsthand the negative effects of Britain’s interference in India.
Themes
The narrator and Daddy don’t fly kites anymore either, and the narrator thinks everything he loves is leaving him. He misses Francis and wishes he still worked in the building, but Najamai and Tehmina, two old women who live in the building, accused Francis of stealing from them. The narrator thinks Najamai just forgot where she left her money.
The narrator is listing things from the past that he misses, which creates the sense that he is gradually realizing his childhood is ending, and that the happiness and innocence he associates with the past can’t be recreated.
Themes
The narrator puts down the tweezers and reaches for the comics, but Daddy tells him not to stop plucking because his hair has to be perfect for his interview “or something.” Without looking at him, the narrator declares that he will read the comics and walks away. As he goes, Daddy’s face reminds him of Mamaiji’s when her thread breaks, but he keeps walking out of “pride” and because he had to do what he said he would. But the comics don’t take long to read, and the narrator finds himself missing when he and Daddy used to race to read the comics and pretend to fight over who got to read them first.
Daddy’s vagueness about the reason he needs his hairs plucked suggests that he isn’t as invested in the job interview as he’d like his family to think—it’s more likely that he just wants to create the superficial appearance of youth and success. When the narrator refuses to pluck his hair anymore, he exhibits the toughness that his father wants him to. But once he sees how much it hurts Daddy, he regrets acting this way. By exhibiting the tough, masculine demeanor his father wants him to, the narrator only ends up hurting his father’s feelings and not being able to talk to him about the things he misses from the past.
Themes
As the narrator thinks about Daddy’s forehead wrinkles and thinning, white hair, he feels something between guilt and “pity,” but pushes the feeling away. None of his friends have to pluck their fathers’ greying hair, and none of them have anything that’s so “personal” they can’t talk about. His friend Pesi used to talk about his father passing gas, but his father is dead now, and Pesi is at boarding school.
As the narrator thinks about his father’s hair, he again forces down his stirring emotions. Comparing Daddy to Pesi’s dead father foreshadows the realizations that the narrator will come to about mortality.
Themes
Looking across the compound, the narrator sees Dr Sidhwa drive by and wave. He thinks Dr Sidhwa looks like Pesi’s father, Dr Mody; they have the same crow’s feet. But Dr Mody treated pets, whereas Dr Sidhwa treats people, and most everyone in the building had seen Dr Sidhwa at some point because his house is nearby. Dr Sidhwa is a pious Parsi and always drives to his house calls—everything anyone could want in a doctor, the narrator thinks. As Dr Sidhwa exits the car with his bag, the narrator figures it must be an emergency if someone called him on a Sunday.
Ruminating on Dr Mody, who has passed away, makes the narrator take note of all of the older or aging people around him, including Dr Sidhwa. This again suggests that deterioration is inevitable for everyone and everything, in spite of the narrator and his family’s impulse to resist time and hold onto the past. The fact that there seems to be a medical emergency in the complex contributes to the building tension around death in the story.
Themes
The narrator sees Viraf, his best friend, come out of the building Dr Sidhwa went into. Daddy used to take them to the beach to practice riding bikes early in the morning before it got crowded. He taught them to ride bikes and to play cricket, and when he had first bought the bat and ball, Mummy was angry with him for spending money. Daddy’s specialty on his school cricket team had been bowling, and he told them about how the best bowler had been born with a “defective” wrist perfectly made for spin bowling, which intimidated batsmen.
As the narrator reflects on the past once more, the reader gains insight about how Mummy felt about the narrator and Daddy’s cricket games. She felt that they were a waste of the family’s money and didn’t seem to understand that cricket was both a way for the narrator to fulfill his father’s expectations and a way for him to immerse himself in Western culture. The fact that the family could barely afford a cricket kit begs the question of whether cricket was yet another tactic that Daddy used to distract from deeper problems. Centering Mummy’s feelings highlights the gender disparity in the narrator’s parents’ relationship: Mummy must be pragmatic, while Daddy can dream and spend money without consequences.
Themes
On Sunday mornings, the boys in the building always played cricket, and they almost had a complete cricket kit. Daddy took anyone who wanted to play and was the captain of one of the teams he had arranged. But one day in the middle of a game, he had said he needed to rest. The narrator thought he seemed much older than he was while he sat on the grass looking far away, like he had “realized something and wished he hadn’t.” After that day, they didn’t play cricket anymore. The narrator and some other boys had tried to play in the compound, but it was poorly suited for the game.
When Daddy sits down in the middle of the game, the moment marks a key transition in his aging process, when he realized he could no longer keep up with the young boys. Reflecting on this moment makes the narrator realize that Daddy is afraid of something (that he “realized something and wished he hadn’t”), but he still seems uncertain of what that “something” is. The fact that Daddy stopped the cricket games after he had to sit down is yet another testament to his pride: he would rather end this pastime altogether than appear weak in front of the boys.
Themes
The narrator waves to Viraf again and calls their secret signal to him, and Viraf waves back before taking Dr Sidhwa’s bag. Smiling, the narrator thinks that Viraf knows just what to do to make grown-ups like him, and waits for Viraf. After half an hour, he heads upstairs to see what Viraf and the doctor are doing and meets Dr Sidhwa on his way down. He greets him respectfully and asks Viraf what the doctor is doing, but Viraf doesn’t answer and turns away, looking upset.
Like the narrator, Viraf attempts to hide his emotions, turning away to hide his tears rather than talk through his feelings with his best friend. This suggests that Viraf’s father, too, has passed down the expectations that men be “tough,” and that this attitude may be mainstream in Indian culture.
Themes
Not knowing how to express his worry, the narrator tries to act casual and ask Viraf what his plans are. When Viraf shrugs silently, the narrator makes fun of him for crying. Viraf tells him to “fish off,” and as his voice breaks, the narrator looks out onto his balcony. He looks into Viraf’s door and listens to people talking quietly around Viraf’s mother, then tries to convince Viraf to play a game. If he shrugged, the narrator would leave. Viraf agrees but says they have to be quiet or else his mother will send them outside.
Because the narrator has no idea how to talk about emotions, he can’t be there for his friend. Like Daddy does when something is bothering him, he tries to make a joke at Viraf’s expense. However, the joke doesn’t land, and the narrator must sit with the consequences of making his friend feel even worse.
Themes
As Viraf and the narrator walk through the flat, Viraf says that his father is very sick. The narrator peeks inside the sickroom and smells sickness and medicine. He sees Viraf’s father with a tube in his nose and a needle in his arm. Viraf’s mother talks quietly to her neighbors about how her husband’s chest gets worse when he climbs stairs now that he is older and has a big body. He has ignored her directions to take breaks between floors out of pride. She says that she doesn’t know what she’ll do now, and that Viraf has been brave.
The signs of age and illness on Viraf’s father’s body are the most jarring examples of decline and decay in the story, as it’s clear that he’s very close to death. Viraf’s mother’s story about her husband’s refusal to appear weak again suggests that Daddy’s attitudes about masculinity and toughness are widespread. But Viraf’s father’s illness demonstrates the consequences of this mindset: when men refuse to show weakness, they only become weaker and more vulnerable. And, in this case, it hurts both Viraf’s father and his family, who must now watch him deteriorate.
Themes
The narrator looks at Viraf’s father lying down and can’t tell he is fat from that angle. He regrets calling Viraf a crybaby and decides to apologize. Daddy is thin, but his stomach is starting to grow. He used to run during cricket, and the one time Viraf’s father took them to the field to play, he had just sat on the grass breathing heavily, unevenly, even painfully. He had lines on his forehead like Daddy, but Daddy’s weren’t as deep.
The narrator makes greater strides than his father in recognizing his own pride when he identifies his own wrongdoing and decides to apologize to Viraf. But the more he compares Daddy to Viraf’s father, the more upset he becomes, seemingly because he’s beginning to realize that his own father is growing old in spite of his efforts to cheat time. By thinking about how the lines on Daddy’s forehead aren’t as deep as Viraf’s father’s, he tries to reassure himself that Daddy isn’t as old and weak as Viraf’s father appears to be.
Themes
Viraf’s mother talks about how Viraf’s father refuses to exchange his third-floor flat for a ground-floor flat, because the third floor is “paradise.” But she questions what good “paradise” is if he isn’t alive and healthy in it. She says the doctor recommends intensive care, but the hospital has no beds. As the narrator listens, he looks at Viraf’s father and, rather than join Viraf for games, sneaks out of the flat and down the stairs.
Again, pride has gotten in the way of Viraf’s father’s health. Like Daddy, he wants to appear prosperous—he refuses to give up his third-floor apartment. But by prioritizing appearances over what is best for his health, he has put himself in a much worse state. Now, he can’t enjoy the “paradise” he so desperately wants, nor can he look prosperous or masculine as his condition declines and he becomes increasingly dependent on other people to care for him.
Themes
Back in his flat, the narrator hears Mummy in the kitchen over the Primus stove and sees Mamaiji sitting by the window wearing her cataract-surgery glasses. Daddy is still at the dining table reading the paper, and the narrator looks at the Murphy Baby and wonders how he looks now. When the narrator was two, his parents entered his photo into a Murphy Baby contest, and they think he should have won because his smile was so “innocent and joyous.”
The narrator’s smile was once “innocent and joyous,” just like the Murphy Baby’s, but this passage implies that he no longer has that sense of youthful happiness and innocence. In this way, the narrator himself is an example of how time inevitably moves forward, and how people will change both physically and mentally in spite of their efforts to resist these changes. The narrator realizes that even the Murphy Baby, whose unchanging presence on the calendar makes him seem like a symbol of perpetual youth, has grown older in the years since the calendar was printed.
Themes
The narrator picks the tweezers up from the table and sees them gleam like the needle in Viraf’s father, and he drops them loudly, making Daddy look up. The narrator hopes “desperately” that he will ask him to keep plucking white hair, but he doesn’t want to offer. The narrator peeks at the lines on Daddy’s forehead, which stand out, and his white stubble that he “should have” shaved by now, and decides never to tell his father he won’t pluck his white hairs again. Instead, he’ll do it whenever he’s asked—as if his family’s lives depend on it, no matter how long it takes.
Rather than talk to his father about his fears of mortality, the narrator follows in Daddy’s footsteps and decides to symbolically resist aging and death. Having seen Viraf’s father on his deathbed, the narrator is now hyper-focused on the features that mark Daddy’s age.
Themes
As Daddy rubs his eyes and walks to the bathroom, the narrator notices for the first time how tired and defeated he looks. He wishes Daddy would talk to him, but he doesn’t. The narrator’s throat closes up, and as he hears Daddy get ready to shave, he wants to go talk to him and watch him make funny faces while he shaves. But instead, he goes to his room and lies on the bed.
The narrator continues to push down his feelings as Daddy goes about his morning routine and, for the first time, sees his father as he is: old, tired, and defeated by repeated failed attempts to turn his family’s situation around. To appear “tough,” the narrator acts like he doesn’t care about his father, something that only hurts him as he remembers a happier past once more.
Themes
On the bed, the narrator wants to cry because he was mean to Viraf and because Viraf’s father is sick. He also wants to cry for Mamaiji’s “tired, darkened eyes,” and for Mummy, who has to be in the kitchen that smells like kerosene. He wants to cry because he can’t hug Daddy when he wants to, and because he never thanked him for cricket or anything else he did for him. And, finally, he wants to cry because he knows he can’t stop the white hairs from growing.
The narrator runs through all the signs of old age and decline in his loved ones. But even when no one is looking, he does not cry, as the idea that he must “be tough, always” makes it difficult for him to release his emotions. Finally, although he recognizes that he can’t stop his father from aging, he still wants to try. This suggests that although time inevitably moves forward, it is perhaps also natural and inevitable that people will try to resist mortality.
Themes
