One of the questions for discussion at the end of the story asks about how close attention the author pays to the significance of particular words. The way that the meaning was emphasized was either straight out saying the meaning or by putting in anther language and then having a sub-script on the bottom.
The way that Mukherjee talked about how she never had to tell her husband that she loved him, that he just knew how she felt, showed the difference between the way the she was brought up verses the way that her daughters are going to go about their lives. Another major difference between her and her daughters, is the fact that she never felt comfortable calling her husband by his first name. Now, there is no way that a woman would marry a man that she couldn’t call by his first name.
The words that were written in Punjabi were ones that would have a particular significance. Words like landowner, hymns, and a Hindu Holy man, have importance to someone who has moved from their native culture into that of Canada and needed to hang onto something that was more familiar to them.
The way that the whole story was put together really emphasized the meaning of those particular phrases.
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Charlotte,
You make an interesting point in bringing up how the Punjabi words are those of significance. Should you choose to revise this, you might consider each word individually in detail...for example, now that the narrator is widowed, what might "landowner" mean to her? Or, how does her moving into an apartment affect the significance of "landowner?"
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