A More Affectionate Ammu

It seems that as the novel moves, Ammu shows more and more signs of actually caring about her children. It is hard to tell if she is merely acting in the routine of her every day life that she loves them, but to me it seems genuine.

"It was as though Ammu believed that if she refused to acknowledge the passage of time, if she willed it to stand still in the lives of her twins, it would. As though sheer willpower was enough to suspend her children's childhoods until she could afford to have them living with her. Then they could take up from where they left off. Start again from seven. Ammu told Rahel that she had bought Estha a comic too, but that she'd kept it away for him until she got another job and could earn enough to rent a room for the three of them to stay together in" (152).

Previously it seemed as if the only thing Ammu cared about in life was herself, but this makes my opinion shift slightly. This also reminds me of my own life and how, although my mother may act like she doesn't care sometimes and hurts us (as Ammu did to Rahel's feelings), she occasionally surprises me like this. There was one point in our life where my mother was also striving to find a place and the money for the three of us (her, me, and my twin brother) to live and be happy in. I think this is why I likes this book so much out of all of the texts we read in this class; there are a lot of aspects that parallel my own life and I can really relate to some of the events.

Enough about me, though. Another indicator that Ammu does, in fact, harbor care and love for her children is the repetition of her assurance to the twins that "she was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double" (155). The children, at one point, repeat this statement in unison, telling me that this is something that their mother is very concerned that they know. That concern gains Ammu a little bit more respect in my book.