"All the leftovers of the city living washed up like driftwood" (Simile, page 36)
In Mister Salgado's house, the servants live in a cluttered section, which Triton compares to marine debris, like driftwood. Throughout the text, nautical imagery is used to illustrate the nature of Sri Lankan society. By comparing the servants' living quarters to a garbage-filled beach, the text argues that the social injustices against the working class in post-colonial Sri Lanka accumulate until they cannot be ignored, just like garbage on a beach.
"Robert looked me straight in the eye, his own irises packed with splintered bluish ice..." (Metaphor, page 102)
Mister Salgado and Nili invite Robert, a white American, to their Christmas dinner. Though Triton usually avoids eye contact with Mister Salgado, Nili, and their friends, he notices the striking blue color of Robert's eyes, an unusual feature in Sri Lanka. Triton compares Robert's eye color to shards of ice, calling to mind Robert's cold and dangerous personality. This metaphor reveals Triton's negative initial impression of Robert, which eventually proves justified, as the American's inappropriate behavior destroys Mister Salgado's relationship with Nili.
"Mister Salgado glowed as if a magic lantern were shining beneath his skin." (Simile, page 118)
Triton uses the image of a lantern to contrast Mister Salgado's mopey bachelor days with his delirious happiness during his relationship with Nili. Before Nili, Mister Salgado is quiet, reflective, and insubstantial, "as if all he wanted was to grow old." He lives in "a dark house" where "the lights never quite reached everywhere." By contrast, when Nili moves in, Triton notices his employer "glowed." Since Triton cannot fully understand Mister Salgado and Nili's relationship, he compares the source of Mister Salgado's happiness to "magic" in this simile.
"The whole place had the ambience of madness: like some hot-water shrine of a demonic sect." (Simile, page 152)
After Mister Salgado and Nili fight, Nili asks Triton to help her create a "sauna" using boiling water and a towel. Triton compares Nili's private space to a demonic shrine, a comparison that recalls his donation to a temple earlier in the text. Just like Triton donated to the temple despite not believing in the supernatural, here he indulges Nili's unnerving ritual. This simile also foreshadows Nili's eventual confinement in a mental health facility.
"...thickening into a great beast reaching landward, snuffling and gurgling." (page 182)
Triton and Mister Salgado move to England, where Triton is surprised to find the cold, powerful Atlantic Ocean is nothing like the clear, warm Indian Ocean of his home. Though, according to Mister Salgado, both oceans have a "hunger for land," Triton describes "Mister Salgado's famous ocean" in lyrical, nostalgic terms. In this simile, Triton expresses his feelings of displacement and fear by comparing the ocean of his new home to a "beast."
