"In India, you can always recognize a ghost by his feet, which are attached to his ankles the wrong way around, with the heels in front and the toes pointing backward. The rest of his appearance may be entirely normal, and, of course, since a ghost doesn't wish to be recognized, he usually takes the trouble to hide his feet." (676)
Gift of Passage by Santha Rama Rua
From The Norton's Book of Woman's Lives by Phyllis Ross
At the beginning of this expert. Santha and her sister had gone to a new school that seemed to be very opinionated when it came to race. They were not allowed to correspond with an Anglo-Indian or an English and had the belief that Indians cheat, which had affected them so much that they no longer attended that school. They also had to change their names in school to Americanize them and make them easier to say. But they just ended up mentally straining the children as they developed some split personality issues as they were growing up, which seems very harmful in the long run.
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| Santha Rama Rau |
In the second half, The Ghost In The Garden, she describes a haunting in her Indian garden of a woman who died in a well after cheating on her man. She is very apprehensive about the ghost and about nighttime, so much so that they stay up late enough some nights to make sure a ghost isn't wandering around them and also have a plan if they ever come in contact with it. She discussed show the feet of ghosts as the establishing fact that you are a ghost, which makes me wonder why. If they are supposed loved ones, then why do they not want to be recognized?
I loved this blog post! I think you did a very good job at breaking down the chapter contents and you analyzed them very well. It is always super upsetting to read about oppression in the olden days, and I feel strongly that this was very traumatizing for them. I also really enjoyed reading about the ghosts in the garden and how they were a little superstitious about it. Its always interesting for me when I get to read about these times and see what everyone went through.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you broke down the events in the passage and applied them to how they were important to the story as a whole. This passage shows a lot of important things in regards to the colonization of different countries and the aftermath of it, and it is important to fully understand it.The fact that their names/culture are taken away from them but given to the colonizers is absolute terrible, but it goes to show what happens when you give the wrong people power; they strip people of their culture, home, humanity, etc. and claim it as their own.
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