Rachel - Ondaatje, 4/11

Lalla is antithetical to "Eastern values."  By seeing how she does not conform to Indian ideas of what a person should be, we gain insight into what qualities the local cultures deems important.

In most Eastern countries - from India, to Japan, to Cambodia - the dead are venerated.  Sure, here in the West we have grave stones too.  America is full of ghost stories that involved Indian cemeteries being dug up, or a grave being defaced, and poltergeist activity occurring as a consequence.   But in the East it goes a step further.  There, there is a strong tradition of ancestor worship, the importance of one's family being "of good repute," and the idea that one's actions in previous lives affects one's caste.  From what I can gather, these beliefs probably came out of some hybrid "Buddhism/patriarchy/Confuscian" ideals.  Potestant Europe and America often do not assign the same weight to respect for the dead.

This makes it particularly offensive when Lalla steals flowers from graves.  On page 164, Ondaatje has her saying to her husband:

"Darling, I've just been to church and I've stolen some flowers for you.  These are from Mrs. Abeysekare's [grave], the lilies are from Mrs. Ratnayake's [grave], the agapanthus is from Violet Meedeniya and the rest are from your garden."

He goes on to describe her:

"She stole flowers compulsively, even in the owner's presence.  As she spoke with someone her straying left hand would pull up a prize rose along with the roots, all so that she could appreciate it for that one moment, gaze into it with complete pleasure, swallow its qualities whole and then hand the flower, discarding it, to the owner."

This shows that the main character 1.) has no sense of veneration or respect, 2.) cannot be trusted around delicate things, and 3.) will recklessly destroy beauty.

So Lalla is a particularly low-down character to a South Asian audience.  Between her constant lunches and bridge games, she's lazy, which solidifies her image as a "bad character."  (And most of us know, laziness = death in Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korea, etc., culture.  Statistically, students whose ancestors hail from the East are overrepresented in major colleges/universities and score highest on IQ tests and the SATs.  Do I think this is attributed to innate ability?  No.  But to the Confuscian ideal that you MUST work hard to achieve, as Kam Louie once wrote, "cultural attainment?"  (Better known as the ancient Chinese philosophy of "wen?")  Absolutely.

Lalla doesn't push herself at all.  Rather, she simply floats through life, trying to maintain her contentedness through Ajoutha card games.  (According to Ondaatje, these games take at least eight hours to complete.)  That character trait seems to be the reason why he picked her name.  "Lalla?"  Seems like a revealing choice to me.