The American and Indian flags blending represent the merging of American and Indian culture
The loss of her mother and the move to Seattle changed Ruma. A divide was created between the generation of her parent’s and her own generation. Ruma’s parents attempted to immerse themselves in American life and culture, learning a new language and making new friends, while also maintaining their Indian roots. In contrast Ruma, due to her move away from her parents and the loss of her mother, has stopped staying true to her Indian ways and instead has allowed herself to be fully immersed in the great American melting pot, not maintaining a hold on its rim, and not balancing her Indian customs with new American ways like her parents had. This shift is seen not only in Ruma’s own forgetting of Bengali, but also in her son, Akash, and his total ignorance in Bengali. A major cultural catharsis that has occurred to Ruma is her loss of fluency in Bengali, despite that fact that “it was the language she had spoken exclusively in the first years of her life” (Lahiri 12). Ruma had continued to maintain her knowledge of Bengali, as it was the main language that she conversed with to her mother. However, after the death of her mother, Ruma’s fluency began to decline as she did not feel obligated to speak to Bengali to her father, as he did not require it. Ruma’s loss of her mother mirrors her loss of the Bengali language as both are connections to her cultural past that have been lost due to the passage of time. Another consequence of Ruma forgetting the Bengali language is that she could not teach it to Akash. Although Ruma initially made a conscious effort to teach Akash basic Bengali in order to keep him connected to her parents and to his ancestors, the passage of time as well as the death of Ruma’s mother have resulted in Ruma no longer teaching him. Thus, the death of Ruma’s mother is significant to Ruma’s transformation as the desire to remain in a relationship with her mother forced her to hold onto her past. However, now that she is dead, Ruma is slowly losing her Indian identity and Akash is growing up without the influence of his family heritage.
