Mira looks at her Gujarati inheritance with a clear eye. There are beliefs and practices that those from another time and place would find difficult to accept without question. Thus, Mataji, the family goddess, protects the family from coming to harm by preventing the bullocks pulling their cart from continuing toward her temple because it would have been unsafe for them to arrive till later. At other times, the drivers of their cars keep getting lost, presumably because the goddess is determining the correct time of their arrival. In Kathiawar, everything is interpreted as a sign freighted with meaning.
Nothing happens by chance.
The young Mira, nevertheless, is only half Gujarati and cannot help being surprised when Bapuji, Mira's grandfather, stops her from giving food to a beggar woman because she was known as a witch and obtaining something from the house would have given her power over the family. One cannot help wondering why, in South Asia, such evil powers seem to be prevalent among the poor while the rich, who may harbor other evils, are free from them. America is not without poverty, but there is little of the absolute poverty so prevalent in most of the developing world and in many large cities of South Asia. There you see it every day and there is little that you, as an individual, can do about it. It is not that you are insensitive, but you have to live.