The Colonel’s wife is one of the few white women (“mem-sahibs”) in Bulashah. She is frustrated with Colonel Hutchinson for his willingness to spend so much time with the outcastes, and she resents her husband for his drooping mustache and sagging body. When she spies the Colonel with Bakha, she erupts, frightening Bakha; as he leaves the Colonel’s home, dejected, Bakha wonders if “the anger of a white person mattered more.”