How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Title.Paragraph)
Quote #4
The Happiness House girls clap and cheer and cackle like hens. The tiny pink-skinned TV man and woman are strange to me.
But these flesh-and-blood girls are, to me, stranger still.
How they can eat and laugh and carry on as normal when soon the men will come is so perplexing that, while they laugh, I fight back tears. (92.WhatIsNormal.14-16)
Lakshmi has just been released from her prison of a room, and she encounters the other women and the social structure of Happiness House for the first time. She doesn't yet realize how lying to oneself can be a way to survive the horrible conditions of sexual slavery—instead Lakshmi retains her straight-forward nature. But not for long…
Quote #5
While the other girls are downstairs watching the TV, I take his brightly colored storybook and make it mine.
I do not understand the words inside, and the pictures are queer and otherworldly. But at least for a few minutes, I pretend I am in school with Gita and my soft, moonfaced teacher, and I am the number one girl in class again. (102.StealingfromtheDavidBeckhamBoy.7-8)
Here Lakshmi is learning how to "pretend," as she calls it—though we might call it compartmentalizing what's happening in her life. Or even self-deception. Whatever we name it, this ability helps her both remember her past when life was good and forget about what her life has become.
Quote #6
He says the American lady is kind. He says Anita is wrong about the Americans, that they do not shame the children of the brothels. He says this is a story Mumtaz has told her to keep her from running away.
I do not know which of them to believe. (117.AStrangeVocabulary.2-3)
Lakshmi has lived with deception and betrayal for a long time at this point in the novel. This is a tactic of slavery on Mumtaz's part—to create a distrust of Americans so that the girls in the brothel won't try to escape if one comes come. Why might Lakshmi want to believe Harish, and why might she be afraid to?