What Is The Theme Of Mr And Mrs Iyer Character Analysis

“Mr. and Mrs. Iyer” starts off slow, beginning with Meenakshi, her baby, and her parents getting her ready for her bus to the train station. Raja is introduced at the bus stop talking with a friend who recognizes Meenakshi and her family and offers Raja’s assistance in getting her to the train station safely. Along the trip, the bus comes across a village where the Hindu and Muslim locals are at odds leading to riots and murders on both sides, tick for tack. A curfew is issued in the area and the bus gets stuck until the curfew can be uplifted. That first night the bus is attacked by Hindus looking for Muslims to attack. Meenakshi, while having an adverse initial reaction to finding out Raja in a Muslim protects him by introducing him …show more content…
and Mrs. Iyer” is a great example of the post-colonial ethnic and religious divide. The diverse characters that shared the bus initially show just how culturally, religiously, and linguistically separated India is. The Sikh men speaking Punjabi amongst themselves, the isolated, elderly Muslim couple, the rowdy Hindu students, Tamil Meenakshi, who can’t speak Hindi and only communicates with the others in English, and Bengali Muslim, Raja. Even before the Hindu-Muslim conflict is introduced the ‘us vs. them’ attitude of most religious and ethnic groups in India was introduced in the set up of the bus. This subtle division was highlighted when the bus was attacked by the rioting Hindu …show more content…
The Aryan invasion theory also rankles many South Indians and their views on the use of Hindi as the official language. As an Indo-European language, Hindi is seen as proof that North Indians are descendants of an outside conqueror. Another faction of Indian social boundaries come up with Meenakshi’s caste based prejudices. Born a Brahmin and married to an Iyer Brahmin, Meenakshi has always been a part of a privileged caste and her view of others is very heavily influenced by their religion and caste. Her original reaction to finding out that Raja was a Muslim was to tell him not to touch her and woefully remark on the fact that they’d shared water. The caste system and her position in it affects her daily life just as it does many Indians. She goes as far as to say that she can’t eat the food at the bungalow because she doesn’t know the caste of the man preparing it and that she can’t eat food prepared by lower castes. This intolerance and treatment of people based on the caste they were born in is new and frustrating to Raja. They argue about it, even bringing up how it’s a surprise that she holds such antiquated and traditional views when she got so far in her