Motif: Play
Children’s play, whether through games, role-playing, or practicing traditional adult rituals in a world of imagination, is where Arjie is able to express his full identity. As a child, he comes most alive when his female cousins adorn him as the bride in the game Bride-Bride. He enjoys acting in "The King and I" (similarly, Radha Aunty is able to love freely with Anil during rehearsals for the play). Arjie also has his sexual awakening with Shehan while playing Hide and Go Seek with his younger sister and her friends.
Symbol: House
After his last time making love with Shehan, Arjie drives back to his house to says goodbye. He is finally able to mourn his house and his innocence at this point. Through his relationship with Shehan, he has begun to explore his sexuality and venture out from his family’s expectations of him. The house, burned and looted, was the victim of the Tamil-Sinhalese civil war. Its sad, bleak, empty ruin is symbolic of Arjie's loss of innocence—some good, as with his sexual awakening, and some bad, as with his realization of the extent to which ethnic strife could affect him and his family.
Symbol: Animals in Cages
Arjie and Radha Aunty spend time with Anil at the zoo, a place filled with animals in cages. These caged creatures are symbols of Radha Aunty and Anil, who are also essentially "caged" by their different ethnic identities, which preclude them from marrying and living the life they want. The animals in cages also can pertain to Arjie, who, by virtue of being "funny," is not allowed to freely be himself.
Symbol: Closing the Window
Though Radha and Anil are in love, their relationship is doomed to fail because Radha is Tamil and Anil is Sinhalese. When Radha tells Doris she is out of the play, she shuts the window emphatically; this is a powerful symbol of the end of her relationship. This window is "closed," never to be opened; instead, another window opens and Radha marries Rajan.
Symbol: The Sky
Appa offers Jegan another position in the business due to the tensions over his being Tamil, but this is essentially a firing. Jegan is going to be out of Arjie's life, and he doesn't even give Arjie a proper goodbye. Arjie is watching the sky and notices how "the sun was declining and a dark blot seeped across the sky, obliterating shades of red and yellow" (202-203), which is a symbol for both the darkness that is the family's relationship with Jegan as well as the darkness that is the accelerating Tamil-Sinhalese conflict.
