ANITA DESAI: Fasting, Feasting Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing. Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: At thirteen, Aruna still had thin brown legs and wore her hair plaited and tied in loops over her ears with large ribbons. Even though she had to dress in the faded blue cotton slip ordained by the convent, and white not coloured ribbons, there was already something about the way she tossed her head when she saw a man looking at her, with a sidelong look of both scorn and laughter, and the way her foot tapped and her legs changed position, that might have alerted the family to what it could expect. Even if Mama was indignant in refusing, she was impressed too, and – Uma saw - respectful of this display of her younger daughter’s power of attraction. By the time Aruna was fourteen she was rebelling against the blue cotton tunic and the white hair ribbons. At every opportunity she would shed them and change into flowered silk salwars. ‘Silk!’ Uma would exclaim, and Papa would sit up and take notice, frowning, but Mama was inclined to indulge Aruna and perhaps realised, instinctively, that if she did, there would be rewards to reap. So Aruna fluttered about in flowered silk, and the hair ribbons were replaced with little shiny plastic clips and clasps, and flowers that she picked from the dusty shrubs and hedges. When Uma was still watching to see that Arun did not crawl off the veranda and break his neck or put knitting needles or naphthalene balls in his mouth, Aruna was already climbing into bicycle rickshaws and going off to the cinema with girl friends from school, she said. That was quite true, but she did not mention the young men who took the seats behind them, or even beside them, tempestuously throwing out a knee, an elbow, or even a hand at times, and contriving to touch the little, flustered, excited creatures, then followed them home on their bicycles, weaving through the traffic and singing ardently along the way. While Mama searched energetically for a husband for Uma, families were already 'making enquiries' about Aruna. Yet nothing could be done about them; it was imperative that Uma marry first. That was the only decent, the only respectable line of behaviour. That also explained why MamaPapa responded so eagerly to an advertisement in a Sunday newspaper placed by 'a decent family' in search of a bride for their only son. MamaPapa went together to meet them and found it was a cloth merchant’s family from the bazaar which had recently begun to prosper and was building a new house on the outskirts of the city. They had purchased a large piece of land in what had formerly been a swamp but was being reclaimed by the municipality by filling it in with city refuse; it was now marked into plots and even had some gates and walls coming up to show the beginnings of urbanisation. The merchant’s family had laid the foundation of what would clearly be a palatial dwelling compared to the cramped quarters they had occupied for generations in the city. But, the father explained – disarmingly – they could not proceed until they came into some money, and here the dowry mentioned by Papa would come in useful. He was being frank with Papa, but then it was Papa’s daughter who would come to his house as a bride. Papa looked dubious at this confession, but Mama was so delighted by the sight of prospective prosperity that she could not be restrained. They themselves owned no house; Papa had always refused to move out of their rented one with which he was perfectly content, leaving Mama with an enormous, unfulfilled desire for property. Why should Uma not fulfil it if she could not? A negotiated sum was made over as dowry, and the engagement ceremony arranged simultaneously. [from Chapter 7] What does Desai's writing make you feel about Mama and Papa at this moment in the novel?