Malliga Homes

The retirement community, Malliga Homes, symbolizes loneliness. While the narrator describes Malliga Homes as a perfectly pleasant place with many high-quality amenities, she cannot help feeling uncertain about her fate living there. "No amount of expensive stone," the speaker says, "or carefully worded praise from my daughter can change what Malliga Homes is: a place for those who have nowhere else to go" (2). The narrator acknowledges that, because they were only part of the upper-middle class, her daughter had to go to America to seek a better life while the wealthy families are able to keep their children close to them. For the narrator, Malliga Homes comes to represent a sad and bleak last chapter of her life, wherein she must live without her husband while feeling abandoned by her daughter.

The Sweater

The sweater that the narrator knits for Renuka symbolizes shared experience. The...