excerpt from "By Any Other Name"

Question

by Santha Rama Rau

This excerpt from Santha Rama Rau's memoir Gifts of Passage takes place in the late 1920s. India was a colony of the British Empire from the 1700s to 1947, when it attained independence. During the period of colonial rule, the British set up schools in India based on the British curriculum with lessons taught in English. Many Indians objected to the total replacement of their traditional curricula.

1
At the Anglo-Indian day school in Zorinabad to which my sister and I were sent when she was eight and I was five and a half, they changed our names. On the first day of school, a hot, windless morning of a north Indian September, we stood in the headmistress's study and she said, "Now you're the new girls. What are your names?"

2
My sister answered for us. "I am Premila, and she"—nodding in my direction—"is Santha."

3
The headmistress had been in India, I suppose, fifteen years or so, but she still smiled her helpless inability to cope with Indian names . . . . "Oh, my dears, those are much too hard for me. Suppose we give you pretty English names. Wouldn't that be more jolly? Let's see, now—Pamela for you, I think." She shrugged in a baffled way at my sister. "That's as close as I can get. And for you," she said to me, "how about Cynthia? Isn't that nice? . . . . "

4
I can't remember too much about the proceedings in class that day, except for the beginning. The teacher pointed to me and asked me to stand up. "Now, dear, tell the class your name."

5
I said nothing.

6
"Come along," she said frowning slightly. "What's your name, dear?"

7
"I don't know," I said, finally.

8
The English children in the front of the class—there were about eight or ten of them—giggled and twisted around in their chairs to look at me. I sat down quickly and opened my eyes very wide, hoping in that way to dry them off. The little girl with the braids put out her hand and very tightly touched my arm.

Copyright © 2015 by Santha Rama Rau. Reproduced with permission of Restless Books Inc. All rights reserved.

2
What does paragraph 8 reveal about Santha's perspective?
A.
She realizes the English children do not want to know her name.
B.
She thinks the teacher does not want her in class.
C.
She feels like no one can help her learn.
D.
She knows she is not alone in her experience.

Answer 1

Paragraph 8 suggests that Santha feels a sense of alienation and distress in her new environment. The fact that the English children giggle at her and twist around in their chairs indicates that she feels like an outsider. Her action of sitting down quickly and trying to dry her eyes suggests she is overwhelmed and perhaps embarrassed.

Thus, the most accurate answer regarding Santha's perspective in that paragraph is:

C. She feels like no one can help her learn.

This choice reflects her struggle to communicate her identity and the sense of isolation she experiences in a classroom where she feels disconnected from her peers and the teacher.