Rachel - Roy, 4/4

So for my theme, I'm choosing how "adult" issues are explained to children within South Asian diaspora literature.  If there's one thing different cultures tend to view differently, it's how children should be raised.  Obviously, a significant aspect of raising children is discipline.  If a kid throws a tantrum in a grocery store, is it okay to smack them across the face?  In the small supermarkets of Korea, yes.  In liberal, yuppie Whole Foods of NYC, no.  Is it okay to talk to them about safe sex?  In Korea, DEFINITELY NO.  With a resounding "NO!"

In liberal, yuppie NYC, kids get "the sex talk" and an anatomy book before they're ten.

One particularly illuminating passage is on pages 112 and 113 of The God of Small Things - it's probably remembered as the exchange between Chacko and Rahel.  Here's the extract, in which they discuss the human condition:

"Chacko?" Rahel said, form her darkened bed.  "Can I ask you a question?"
"Ask me two," Chacko said.
"Chacko, do you love Sophie Mol Most in the World?"
"She's my daughter," Chacko said.
Rahel considered this.
"Chacko?  Is it Necessary that people HAVE to love their own children Most in the World?"
"There are no rules," Chacko said.  "But people usually do."
"Chacko, for example," Rahel said, "just for example, is it possible that Ammu can love Sophie Mol more than me and Estha?  Or for you to love me more than Sophie Mol for example?"
"Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice.  Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece.  "Love.  Madness.  Hope.  Infinite joy."
Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest.  Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it.
Infinnate Joy.  With a church sound to it.  Like a sad fish with fins all over.
A cold moth lifted a cold leg.
The cigarette smoke curled into the night.  And the fat man and the little girl lay awake in silence."

Again, this passage just shows the innovative diction that makes me love Roy so much...everything is always compared to a fish.  Why is that?  I don't know, but I like it.  Also, there's a fish stamped on the front cover of the God of Small Things edition I've got.  Just because I got it hardcover from Fogelman Library...weird.

Anyway.  Back to child rearing...Rahel manages to ask Chacko about the human condition - probably the world's most "adult" matter - without realizing it.  The even initiates the conversation.  So how does he, being an adult and a father, react?  Even if he isn't Rahel's father specifically, his reaction would certainly be influenced by cultural upbringing.

First, he speaks realistically - if not bluntly - in this passage.  Clearly, Rahel does not comprehend everything he says on a literal level.  It would be difficult for a child to truly grasp the concept of "Human Nature," or even the definition of "infinite."  But he goes on and says it anyway.

And somehow, at least on a phonetic level, Rahel understands.  The intonation of his voice, the sound of "Infinnate (capitalized, italicized, with three n's) Joy" explains the meaning to her.  Nothing is really left unexplained.  The child is left to decipher meaning on their own, but the adult is honest.  At the end of the passage, he smokes a cigarette while she contemplates, trying to process what has just been explained to her.

Things are handled differently in Midnight's Children.  Saleem is practically dumped at his aunt and uncle's house on page 275, and he "blames [himself] not a little for his banishment, attributing it to his "bandylegs cucumbernose horn-temples staincheeks."  The adults seem to be reluctant to discuss their reasoning at all.  It just kind of happens; but then, this is Rushdie, and the entire text of Midnight's Children just "seems to happen."  Nevertheless, adult matters are kept between adults - parents and aunts/uncles.

So, in conclusion, parenting methods seem just as varied in South Asian literature as they are in American literature.  You get parents who are either honest or secretive, strict or lax.  It all depends on which family you're born into, I guess.