Anita Rutter
The Attraction of Anita Rutter
When Meena first sees Anita Rutter, the effect is immediate and overwhelming. “I wanted to be them. I wanted their life,” Meena admits, describing her fascination with the Rutter sisters. Anita is everything Meena is not: bold, loud, fearless, and utterly unconcerned with what adults think. She swears, she steals sweets from Mr Ormerod’s shop, she walks through the village as if she owns it. For Meena — a girl who constantly monitors how others see her, who lies to smooth over her difference — Anita represents a thrilling kind of freedom.
Syal presents Meena’s attraction to Anita in language that is almost romantic in its intensity. Meena does not simply want to be Anita’s friend; she wants to become her. This is a consuming identification rather than ordinary friendship. Meena watches Anita from her window, studies her movements, and rehearses what she will say to impress her. The power imbalance is clear from the start: Meena needs Anita far more than Anita needs Meena.
Meena’s line “I wanted to be them. I wanted their life” reveals that her attraction to Anita is really about escape. She does not want Anita’s specific life (which is, in reality, chaotic and neglected); she wants what Anita appears to have — the confidence to exist without apology, without constantly checking whether she belongs.
Anita’s Background: Deirdre and Neglect
Beneath Anita’s bravado is a girl who has been profoundly neglected. Her mother, Deirdre Rutter, is one of the novel’s most complex minor characters. Deirdre is variously absent, drunk, distracted by a string of boyfriends, and openly resentful of the demands of motherhood. The Rutter household is chaotic: meals are irregular, the house is dirty, and Anita is left to fend for herself. Syal does not present Deirdre as a villain but as a woman ground down by poverty, loneliness, and the limited options available to working-class women in 1960s England.
The contrast with the Kumar household could not be starker. Where Mama cooks elaborate meals and monitors Meena’s every move, Deirdre barely registers Anita’s existence. Where Papa tells stories and plays music, Anita’s father does nothing of the kind, and halfway through the novel Deirdre runs off with a butcher and leaves the girls with him. Syal uses this parallel to make a subtle but powerful point: the culture that Meena is so desperate to escape (her warm, structured Indian home) is actually far healthier than the culture she wants to join (Anita’s chaotic, loveless English home).
Syal resists easy judgement of Deirdre. On one hand, her neglect of Anita is clear and damaging: Anita raises herself, learns manipulation as a survival skill, and has no model of healthy love. On the other hand, Deirdre is trapped. She has no job prospects in the village, no support system, and a community that gossips about her rather than helping. When Deirdre collapses emotionally, the village women shake their heads but do nothing. Syal suggests that Deirdre’s failures are partly a product of the working-class environment that offers her no escape.
This complexity matters for the exam. If asked about Anita or Deirdre, a strong response will acknowledge both their individual failings and the social context that shapes them. Syal is not excusing neglect — she is explaining it.
The Power Dynamic
The friendship between Meena and Anita is not between equals. Anita is the leader: she decides what they do, where they go, and who is included or excluded. Meena is the follower, constantly adapting herself to please Anita. She laughs at jokes she does not find funny, joins in cruelty she knows is wrong, and suppresses her own intelligence and curiosity to avoid seeming “different” or “posh.”
Anita uses emotional manipulation to keep Meena in line. She alternates between warmth and coldness, drawing Meena in with moments of apparent intimacy and then pushing her away when someone more useful comes along. When Anita befriends other children, Meena is devastated — not because she has lost a friend, but because she has lost her ticket to belonging. Syal shows that this is not real friendship but a toxic dependency.
Anita’s power over Meena is not based on physical strength or violence — it is emotional. She offers and withdraws approval, making Meena desperate to earn her favour. This mirrors the broader social dynamic in Tollington: the white working-class community holds the power to include or exclude the Kumars, and the Kumars must constantly perform “belonging” to be tolerated.
Anita is more than just a character — she is a symbol of the English working-class culture that Meena idealises. Her confidence, her aggression, her refusal to obey rules — these are qualities that Meena associates with “real” Englishness. But Syal gradually reveals that Anita’s toughness is a mask for vulnerability. Her aggression comes from insecurity. Her independence is really abandonment. Her cruelty to others is learned behaviour, passed down from a community that has taught her to see the world in terms of power and weakness.
By the end of the novel, Meena recognises this. She learns that “the place in which I belonged was wherever I stood” is a better idea than trying to become someone she is not. Her rejection of Anita is also a rejection of the idea that she needs to be white, working-class, and tough to have value.
Anita and Meena: A Mirror and a Contrast
Syal structures the relationship so that Anita and Meena are both mirrors and opposites. Both girls are outsiders in different ways: Meena because of her race, Anita because of her class and family dysfunction. Both use performance to survive: Meena tells lies, Anita performs toughness. Both crave love they are not getting: Meena wants the acceptance of the village, Anita wants the attention of her mother. But their paths diverge. Meena has the Kumar family — a foundation of love, education, and cultural pride — that ultimately saves her. Anita has nothing comparable, and the novel suggests that without that foundation, she will remain trapped in Tollington’s cycle of poverty and resentment.
This parallel structure is important for the exam. Syal uses Anita as a foil for Meena: by showing us what Meena could become without her family’s support, Syal makes the reader appreciate the Kumar household — and by extension, the immigrant culture that Tollington dismisses.