Navigating Cultural Difference Theme Analysis

Dr. Sharma, the treasurer of the Indo-Canada society, pulls me into the hallway. He wants to know if I am worried about money. His wife, who has just come up from the basement with a tray of empty cups and glasses, scolds him. “Don’t bother Mrs. Bhave with mundane details.”

“Nothing I can do will make any difference,” I say. “We must all grieve in our own way.”

“It’s a parent’s duty to hope,” [Dr. Ranganathan] says. “It is foolish to rule out possibilities that have not been tested. I myself have not surrendered hope.”

[My mother] grew up a rationalist. My parents abhor mindless mortification.

The zamindar’s daughter [my grandmother] kept stubborn faith in Vedic rituals; my parents rebelled. I am trapped between two modes of knowledge… like my husband’s spirit, I flutter between worlds.

“In the textbooks on grief management,” [Judith] replies—I am her confidante, I realize, one of the few whose grief has not sprung bizarre obsessions—“there are stages to pass through: rejection, depression, acceptance, reconstruction.” She has compiled a chart and finds that six months after the tragedy, none of us still reject reality, but only a handful are reconstructing. “Depressed Acceptance” is the plateau we’ve reached.

“God provides and God takes away,” he says.

I want to say, But only men destroy and give back nothing. “My boys and my husband are not coming back,” I say. “We have to understand that.”

Now the old woman responds. “But who is to say? Man alone does not decide these things.” To this her husband adds his agreement.