Loneliness and Belonging

Desai shows loneliness as an imposed condition created when people misread one another’s worlds and then treat the misreading as a solution. When Sonia’s family hears she is unhappy in America, Dadaji responds with baffled cheer, asking, “Why lonely?” because he can only imagine the United States through the friendliness he once encountered as a visitor (20). That gap between tourist certainty and lived isolation returns whenever elders offer fixes that ignore what she actually needs, turning care into another form of distance. Loneliness becomes less a private emotion than the space between what others assume and what Sonia can safely say.

The novel also treats loneliness as a temptation, because characters learn to aestheticize it in order to avoid admitting vulnerability. When Sunny says it is “embarrassing” that a letter describes him as lonely, Sonia flatters both of them by insisting, “All...