{"id":1074,"date":"2016-04-08T07:58:04","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T11:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2016-04-08T07:58:04","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T11:58:04","slug":"we-are-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2016\/04\/08\/we-are-one\/","title":{"rendered":"We are one."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bird-escape-97373083-resized\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMala will take care of you, Pohpoh. No one will ever touch you again like that. I will never let anyone put their terrible hands on you again. I, Mala Ramchandin, will set you, Pohpoh Ramchandin, free, free, free, like a bird!\u201d (Pg. 173)<\/p>\n

Under the Mudra tree, camouflaged under the untamed brush, sat Mala in a chair with her eyes closed with her mental state churning. Otoh is with his father, and both are trying to enter Mala\u2019s yard, however Mala has yet to be seen by anyone. It is in this passage that Mala coincides her past with the present. Pohpoh, her younger self, exists by her (Mala\u2019s) side. This scene is the unveiling of what Mala has felt about her younger self. Mala was not \u201cfond\u201d of Pohpoh when she and her were one, however as the years went on Mala became more accepting of Pohpoh. It is as though the guilt for not always being able to protect her sister [Asha], the shame of the sexual abuse from her father, and the pain from her mother and Lavina leaving, all exist within Pohpoh. This childhood trauma has seeped out of Pohpoh\u2019s brain into Mala\u2019s, and the chaos in the yard represents the acknowledgment of her past; Mala is brought back into reality and has to confront her torment. I want to make the claim that this acknowledgment of Pohpoh being present with Mala is the eruption of loneliness, anxiety, and misery of her childhood that could never be acknowledged because of the constant physical and mental degradation inflicted by her father. \u201cMala will take care of you, Pohpoh\u201d is the replacement and loss of their mother and the affirmation that Pohpoh was the mother figure and has grown into being that battered mother figure. It is phrases such as, \u201cno one will ever touch you again like that\u201d that a mother would say to a child. Mala is wishing to travel through time to save the innocence of her younger self, and render her perplexing future so the deterioration of her home, the leaving of her sister, and the incestuous relationship with her father could be abolished. It is to stop the future of Pohpoh\u2019s life as a disoriented being, and to stop her mental deterioration as Mala. \u201cFree, like a bird!\u201d is the final release, the final realization that to move forward, Mala\u2019s needs to reconcile with her past. Thus far in this novel we see that Mala\u2019s home has become devoured and encapsulated with plants, trees and brush, and this build up of nature around is the representation of her past and the \u201cbird\u201d is Mala, waiting to be set free through her own self.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMala will take care of you, Pohpoh. No one will ever touch you again like that. I will never let anyone put their terrible hands on you again. I, Mala Ramchandin, will set you, Pohpoh Ramchandin, free, free, free, like a bird!\u201d (Pg. 173) Under the Mudra tree, camouflaged under the untamed brush, sat Mala … Continue reading We are one.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3014,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3014"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}