In The Passions of Lalla, Lalla possess an everlasting sense of youth or at least a youthful approach to living her life. After marrying and having children at an early age, its as if she seems to feel that she’s done with “adultly” concerns and focus primarily on what she wants for herself. In this sense, it’s interesting that she is particularly generous to children. Maybe it’s because she thinks she owes them something, for not being as adult as maybe she feels she should, or because she sees herself as having something, maybe a world view, in common with them. Though her concerns seem to be frivolous, she seems to be aware of being able to enjoy things fully for “that one moment” where pleasure is most complete and presumably most satisfying.
Either way, these characteristics seem similar to a few features of Roy’s God of Small Things. The focus on a perspective that is so child-centric and a figure who provides generously for those in need (a Jesus-like figure), are all pieces held in common with Roy’s work and this one (maybe even with Rushdie’s).
Lalla seems to not want to be attached to anything physically, not even her own grandchildren when they want to hold her hand. Maybe this is a representation of a child-like naiveness in that she regards herself as being a whole being separate from all others, one who’s capable of making decisions for themselves according to their desires. Her love for drinking may be what perpetuates this belief but ultimately she’s dragged away by a flood, containing all types of things and objects, to her death. She’s basically mixed back into “everything else.”
This last bit seems to be particularly relevant to South Asian lit. In this story, “Westernness” and “Easternness” seem to be somewhat blurred. But in the end it seems that the Eastern side, the one that sees the world as being infinitely connected with all other things, claims all others and subsumes them not matter the circumstances or opposing beliefs held by those who are subsumed.
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