Family

Throughout the novel, Lakshmi learns the importance of family and finds her own among her sister and friends.

First, it is important to understand that Lakshmi does desire a family at the beginning of her story. In the early chapters, she talks about how much she wants her parents to join her in Jaipur. She even says, “I’d been turned out from my village to marry when my parents could no longer afford to feed me. Now I could afford to feed them, take care of them… my parents would finally see that everything had turned out all right” (29). Making them proud of her is one of her biggest goals in life, and learning that she will never get that opportunity is devastating to her character. She tells the reader, “All this time I’d been dreaming of a reunion with my parents, never once...