His mother, a domineering, half-senile octogenarian, sits like a tyrant at the top of his house hold, frightening off his sister’s suitors, chastising him for not having become a doctor and brandishing her hypochondria and paranoia with sinister a Bandon. It was Sripathi’s children, however, who pose the biggest problems. Arun, his son, was becoming dangerously involved in political activism, and Maya, her daughter, broke off her arranged engagement to a local man in order to wed a white Canadian. Sripathi’s troubles come to a head when Maya and her husband are killed in an automobile accident, leaving their 7 year-old daughter Nandana without Canadian kin. Sripathi travels to Canada and brings his granddaughter home. While his family was shaken by a series of calamities that may, eventually, bring peace to their lives. Guilt-ridden for having refused to communicate with Maya because she humiliated him by marrying out of her caste and race, Sripathi brings his seven-year-old orphaned granddaughter, Nandana, back to India. Badami’s portrait of a bereft and bewildered child was both rest rained and heart rending, Nandana has remained mute since her parents died, believing that they will someday return. In his own way, Sripathi was also mute unable to express his grief and longing for his dead daughter. This poignant motif was perfectly balanced by Badami’s eye for the Ridiculous and her witty, pointed depiction of the contradictions of Indian society she also writes candidly about the woes of underdevelopment. In the course of the narrative, everyone in Sripathi’s family undergoes a life change and in the moving denouement reconciliation grows out of tragedy and Sripathi understands “the chanciness
His mother, a domineering, half-senile octogenarian, sits like a tyrant at the top of his house hold, frightening off his sister’s suitors, chastising him for not having become a doctor and brandishing her hypochondria and paranoia with sinister a Bandon. It was Sripathi’s children, however, who pose the biggest problems. Arun, his son, was becoming dangerously involved in political activism, and Maya, her daughter, broke off her arranged engagement to a local man in order to wed a white Canadian. Sripathi’s troubles come to a head when Maya and her husband are killed in an automobile accident, leaving their 7 year-old daughter Nandana without Canadian kin. Sripathi travels to Canada and brings his granddaughter home. While his family was shaken by a series of calamities that may, eventually, bring peace to their lives. Guilt-ridden for having refused to communicate with Maya because she humiliated him by marrying out of her caste and race, Sripathi brings his seven-year-old orphaned granddaughter, Nandana, back to India. Badami’s portrait of a bereft and bewildered child was both rest rained and heart rending, Nandana has remained mute since her parents died, believing that they will someday return. In his own way, Sripathi was also mute unable to express his grief and longing for his dead daughter. This poignant motif was perfectly balanced by Badami’s eye for the Ridiculous and her witty, pointed depiction of the contradictions of Indian society she also writes candidly about the woes of underdevelopment. In the course of the narrative, everyone in Sripathi’s family undergoes a life change and in the moving denouement reconciliation grows out of tragedy and Sripathi understands “the chanciness