As a newly-widowed immigrant, Shaila Bhave must negotiate many large and small cultural differences between her native and her adopted land. Most obviously, there are the cultural differences between herself and Judith Templeton, a brisk young Canadian government official. Templeton’s businesslike demeanor and overly pragmatic conception of “grief management” are deeply off-putting to Bhave, even while she takes some of Templeton’s advice: for example, moving out of her old family home and into her own apartment. At the same time, Bhave also feels assimilated enough to reject the path that her grieving friend Kusum has taken (moving back to India and joining an ashram). She often feels as estranged from Indian ways as she does from Canadian ways, and she must find some middle ground between the two.

Bhave’s status as an immigrant often causes her to view her own behavior from a distance, through the shocked eyes of a traditional Indian woman. Like the tragedy that she has been through, it splits her off from herself. Observing herself and Kusum losing their tempers at a customs officer in an Irish airport, she thinks: “Once upon a time we were well brought up women; we were dutiful wives who kept our heads veiled, our voices shy and sweet” (189).