Thirst

The ways Minni’s life changes after her brother and mother are forced to leave home illustrate the Compounding Effects of Resource Deprivation. Both Sanjay’s and Rohini’s absences are the result of problems with their neighborhood’s drinking water: Sanjay has to flee after interfering with the local water mafia, and Rohini has become ill as a result of water sanitation issues. Losing her brother and mother deprives Minni of different resources with different results. While losing her brother is primarily an emotional loss, losing her mother has systemic ramifications that threaten Minni’s security and future.

Sanjay is the first to leave, rendering Minni companionless in the family home. He is also one of her role models, and when he leaves, Minni no longer has a family member in her age range to learn from. She notices his absence most vividly in the loft they share for sleeping: “I spread my bedroll horizontally instead of vertically. I’m alone up here. I don’t have to share space” (37-38). Ironically, although the family could certainly use more living space, it has been achieved at the expense of Sanjay’s safety and presence in Mumbai. Minni’s only saving grace in this regard is that she still has Faiza to spend time with: “Sanjay is my brother, Faiza is my sister […] It doesn’t matter that we have different mothers or believe in different gods” (40). In this regard, the loss of Sanjay is softened by the support system Minni has outside of her family. In Minni’s neighborhood, challenges within family units are mitigated by having a Supportive Community in Times of Crisis. In her darkest hours, Faiza is always around to lend a loving ear.

The loss of Rohini, however, is a far more seismic shift in Minni’s life. The existential crisis is so overwhelming that she has a physical response to it: “The room suddenly feels more airless than ever. And I feel like I’m suffocating” (54). This somatic experience of almost death mirrors the metaphorical death of childhood that Minni experiences after her mother leaves. Rohini’s final words to Minni before leaving signal the end of her youth and the beginning of adulthood: “You need to grow up, Minni […] I’m sorry” (56). The fact that Minni is only 12 years old—still very much a child—highlights one of the key ways that the compounding effects of resource deprivation impact children like Minni: They are deprived of their childhoods by being forced to take on adult responsibilities at a young age.

For Minni, this means not only taking on her mother’s job to maintain her family’s income but also taking on the traditional roles expected of mothers in Indian households. Making roti is a key example of this kind of traditional female labor. Minni realizes the level of labor her mother did to support the family almost immediately as she tries her hardest to step into Rohini’s role: “How did Ma do so much each day? Did she have more than two hands? And how did she usually do it with a smile?” (74). Minni’s shock at the amount of labor she now must manage functions as an implicit critique of the sexist expectations of women in Indian families, which demand that even young girls like Minni sacrifice their time and energy to maintain the household with little support from male family members. Minni is expected to become a perfect stand-in for Rohini simply due to her gender even though she is still a child. Though the task is insurmountable, almost all of the characters behave as though it should be natural for Minni to fulfill all of Rohini’s duties. Between taking over her mother’s job and her household duties, Minni does not have time to devote to the things a 12-year-old child should be focusing on, such as her education. The specific gendered demands of domestic labor highlight the ways the compounding effects of resource deprivation fall unequally onto women versus men.

Nevertheless, Minni still benefits from having a supportive community in times of crisis. Faced with the pressure to keep the family financially stable, Minni steels herself: “I always dream of making Ma proud, and knowing she already is makes me hold my head a little higher” (67). Such thoughts reveal that Rohini’s support for Minni continues to generate positivity in the protagonist’s life even when it can only be experienced from afar. She knows that her mother loves and believes in her, and that emotional support helps her persevere. In her mother’s absence, other women in her neighborhood step up to help her navigate the burdens she has taken on as well. Shanti, for instance, provides Minni with advice and sympathy about how to manage the challenges she faces.