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Identity Politics of South Asian Enclaves
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such as phoning or visiting the Boy’s Side and buying and picking
up champagne cases (2006a: 88). Whenever Arun argues with her,
she replies: “But beita, it’s the way things are done, it’s the way
things are done. All da time, all da time, It’s the ways things are
done” (2006a: 88). It is the traditional cultural practices of a
Hindu wedding that she insists upon, and expects other desis to
follow. And yet, traditional as Amit’s mother is in terms of cultural
and religious devotions, Jas also notices that she is a materialist,
and shares materialism with her desi friends. As Jas speculates,
“[s]he could go to bed that nite feelin in her heart an in her soul
that both God an her high-society satsang guests had been
impressed by how she displayed her devotion to the finest furniture
an forks an stuff that her husband’s money could buy” (2006a: 79).
Here, by juxtaposing the devotion of Amit’s mother to the finest
furniture with that to God, and comparing her high society guests
to satsang, namely “spiritual gathering for communal worship”
(2006a: 340), Jas, as the narrator of the novel, leads the reader to
see that, for first-generation Indian immigrants like Amit’s mother,
a sense of belonging to the community comes not only from
cultural and religious practices but also from materialist worship.
Likewise, and to an even greater degree, for the British-born
second- and third-generations of immigrants like Hardjit, Amit,
and Ravi, their shared values and distinctive ways of life in the
enclave are not entirely based on ethnicity or religion. With respect
to cultural traditions, they even come into conflict with the first
generation. Arun, for example, most unfortunately dies of an
aspirin overdose at the end of the novel because he has a mental
breakdown trying to deal with his “complicated family-related
shit,” which in part results from his mother’s insistence on
traditional Hindu wedding customs, and his more “Westernized”
idea of wedding (Malkani, 2006a: 273, 258). In terms of religion,
the fact that Hardjit is a Sikh, and his bosom friends Ravi and Amit
Hindus, does not inhibit them from forming a group, nor does
ethnicity when they take in the white boy Jas as a member of their