“Through the windows of the connecting bus to the temple, the sight of more bilingual signs on shop fronts gave Nikki a slight headache and the sensation of being split in two parts. British. Indian.”

This bus ride from her white British neighborhood into the heart of the immigrant Sikh community of Southall in London is disorienting to Nikki. The theme of The Challenges of a Hybrid Identity is evident as the two parts of her own identity are on full display through the bus window with the bilingual signs in Punjabi and English. At this point in the story, the signs represent how she feels split into two separate identities; her character arc will involve uniting those halves into a cohesive whole.

“Twenty years ago, in her first and last attempt to be British, Kulwinder Kaur bought a bar of Yardley English Lavender Soap.”

Yardley, although available in India, was thought of as a quintessentially British product that exuded hygiene and aromas connected to British colonial identity. In her desire to fit in, Kulwinder bathed in this lavender soap; her effort is undermined, however, by a gassy belch caused by her consumption of a quintessentially Indian food before going to the school, the mango pickle. Kulwinder’s memory of this scene and its requisite aromas mark her much deeper and well-founded sense of British stereotypes and prejudices against people who look like her.