My commended emagazine (English & Media Centre) Close Reading Competition 2018 entry. The passage can be found here: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/competitions/emagazine-close-reading-competition-2018-the-results/
Kunzru introduces the reader to the characters Amrita and Forrester, establishing a connection between them and creating a sense of anticipation; the prolepsis in the passage of the two characters crossing paths later in the novel. The rich sensory language and metaphors explore the corresponding feelings of detachment felt by the two characters despite their cultural disparity.
Amrita’s detachment from her physical self becomes apparent in the simile of her hand as a ‘“snake sliding across a flagstone floor” as she anticipates not only her journey coming to an end but seemingly her life as she knows it. She detaches herself from her body as she will soon no longer possess it - as soon as she arrives at her destination and her uncle presents her to the man he has destined for her to marry. Kunzru emphasises that “this will be her last journey” and that when she is “delivered to her uncle…that will be an end”, because as soon she is married, Amrita’s independence as ‘mistress’ will be gone. However, even this supposed independence is limited: she is treated as some object “to be delivered” and so she accepts this role and is expectant of being told “what is happening” and for someone to “come for her” when she is left alone.
The elements and their signifying the passage of time is foregrounded: “As it does every year… these hanging gardens of cloud have ripened’ is not only a metaphor for the cyclical nature of the seasons, it also mirrors Amrita herself. She has matured and is “ripened” and ready to join the recurring pattern of the loss of possession over their own bodies that women in Amrita’s culture experience when they “can no longer maintain themselves”. As a result, Amrita wishes to focus on the immaterial rather than the tangible and therefore the vulnerability of her body. For example, she focusses on the taste of “the bitter resin on her tongue”, and the palanquin smelling of “food and stale sweat and rosewater”. This detachment from her body but focus on the senses makes for uncertainty; Amrita thinks the rain “sounds heavy” and that “outside it is dark” but “she is not sure”. Her memory and past is more clear to her than her present, the vivid account of her “father’s haveli in the summertime”, rich in onomatopoeic language, revealing that her memories are a form of escapism as her present and future appear to be so bleak.
There is a connection therefore between the characters of Amrita and Forrester. Forrester appears just as detached as Amrita from himself as he “hears himself tetchily agreeing” with Moti Lal.His detachment also stems from vulnerability as the cultural disparity between Forrester and his Indian counterparts is so marked; even when pitching their tents the two cultures are separated by “ a trickle of muddy water”. He is the coloniser among the colonised and this detaches him from his surroundings, just as Amrita is detached from herself.
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