One of the main themes I would like to highlight in the novel is family priority. Family is where we all belong to and from where our identity comes from. A person is valued …show more content…
In Indian society, marriages are inextricably linked to a caste system, with its roots in religion. To marry out of your caste is considered unacceptable, often even resulting in honour killings. Even though laws in India allows inter-caste marriage, it does little to protect those who do marry outside their caste. In this novel, inter-caste marriage can be seen in the marriage of Anand and Neelima. Anand is a Telugu Brahmin while Neelima is a Maharashtrian Brahmin. Even though we can see that both are Brahmins but they are from different caste. Neelima is a Maharashtrian which is a lower caste from Telugu. This can be seen in the novel when Anand says ‘Ever since Neelima and I got married, you all have been treating her really badly’.(page 131) Caste system in Priya’s family can also be seen where the family servant from another caste, Rajni was not allowed inside the kitchen.(page 26) Importance of caste in marriages can also be seen when Ammamma sounds sarcastic when talking about the family tradition that ‘ In our family we don’t let our daughters chase and marry men from other castes’. (page 52) The way of treating people from lower castes in a bad way do still exist in our society. In today’s society people from lower caste are given less respect and they were look cheap by the higher caste. The tone used by the author is sarcasm. Ammamma tries to be sarcastic with Neelima just because she got married with Anand secretly and …show more content…
In the context of Priya we can clearly see lots of changes in her in terms of lifestyle and how she perceives things in her everyday life when she is back in India after 7 years living in The United States. Priya found it difficult and hot even to wear the traditional salwar kameez which she used to wear in India before she goes to San Francisco.(page 16) At the same time, we can see that she has a different mindset now as she is much liberalized and modernized. She thinks going through Pelli- chupulu is just a waste of time.(page 147) This is very common in most of the people. Change is permanent, and you cannot say no to change. When we are in the land of the westerners, sooner or later we will surely get adapt to the lifestyle there. For example, living together before marriage is totally prohibited in India but not in the western culture. Here, we can see that Priya's lifestyle had changed when she went to The States. She lived together with Nick in the same roof even though they are not married yet and on top of that she had also made love with Nick.(page 17) Besides that, the westerners call people by their names even though the person is much older than them. In this novel we can see that Priya calls Nick's mum by her name, “Hello Frances,” even though she is much older than Priya.(page 196) So, based all this facts from the story I can deduce that we will get adapted to the culture where we