Western Lane: Squash, Discipline and Belonging
Explore what squash gives Gopi, what it costs her family and how her sense of belonging develops.
Discipline that helps and hurts
The whole-text route covers all eight chapters. Use the supplied passages for focused reading and the complete novel you have studied for whole-text arguments.
Begin with the literal sequence. Ma has died before the main action, and Aunt Ranjan worries that Pa's three daughters are becoming “wild”. Pa responds by intensifying their squash training at Western Lane. The regime is therefore not freely chosen by Gopi at first: it is an adult answer to grief, fear and judgement.
Yet an imposed routine can still give genuine support. In Chapter 1, Gopi is physically exhausted, but the rhythm of a shot from the neighbouring court focuses her attention and enables her to continue. Squash replaces a mass of feelings she cannot control with an immediate, answerable demand: listen, move, serve, return. This is coping, a way of living through pressure, rather than proof that grief has been cured.
The novel then tests that benefit against its costs:
| Stage | What squash gives | What it places under pressure |
|---|---|---|
| Chapters 1-2 | routine, outward concentration and shared time with Pa | exhaustion, a punishing timetable and Pa's narrowed attention |
| Chapter 3 | skill, daily partnership with Ged and a goal beyond the household | increasing distance from Mona and Khush |
| Chapters 4-5 | preparation, equipment and competitive possibility | Mona's money and labour, Pa's work, family tension and finally bodily harm |
The Chapter 5 injury is decisive. Gopi's angry shot strikes Pa in the face. The ball that has helped father and daughter communicate now carries feeling that their training has not contained. A defensible interpretation must therefore keep both truths: discipline gives Gopi focus, but discipline without space for other needs can become control, exclusion and risk.
Read the passages
Text
Western Lane — Chapter 1
By Chetna Maroo
[1] Much later, Khush would say that that night was really the start of it, of Pa’s thinking about what he would do with us. It wasn’t Aunt Ranjan. It was Uncle Pavan talking about the past. But I think Pa told us himself what moved him. He sat beside us one morning on the bench outside the squash court and said, “I want you to become interested in something you can do your whole life.”
[2] AUNT RANJAN HAD orange juice and pancakes with lemon and sugar ready on the table for us in the morning. She said nothing about Pa and Uncle Pavan sitting out drinking and smoking all night. She made them coffee and stood near them so she could refill their cups. Pa spoke kindly to her. Outside in the driveway when Uncle Pavan was closing the door of the car boot over our luggage, Aunt Ranjan asked Pa to think about what she had suggested, and he said he would. She said that she and Uncle Pavan would come to our house next year. We will know how things are by then, she said.
[3] PA BEGAN OUR regime as soon as we returned home from Edinburgh. During the week, he drove us to Western Lane before school, and we got the bus there after school. On weekends, if Pa had work we rode our bikes and he joined us when he was done. We needed rest days at first because everything hurt so much: arms, legs, shoulders. Everything. Pa told us we would get used to it, and we did. Before long we could hardly remember when we used to play only once or twice a week as if it was for fun.
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this supplied selection.
Text
Western Lane — Chapter 5
By Chetna Maroo
[1] Pa opened the door to our court and I followed him. We warmed up the ball with easy drives and a few volleys. There was a strange feeling in my body, a precariousness; the precariousness you feel inside a dream where you are guilty of something.
[2] Pa stood for a moment with the ball in his hand.
[3] He said, “A game.”
[4] Pa and I had not played a game in months. I took my place. Pa served a high drifting lob close to the wall, and then gradually drew me into one long rally in which I was beaten, followed by another. He didn’t hit hard, but he held the T and made me move. He gave me no time to think. I wasn’t thinking. I don’t know what happened. I was moving, stepping into my backhand, turning my shoulder with my racket up, when I heard Pa’s voice very close to me, calm and clear, and suddenly the whole court was tilting, the air throbbing, and everything was covered in a mist of red.
[5] I knew where I was and where Pa was in relation to me when I let my racket arm fly. I was far enough from the backhand corner to strike well, and Pa was at a diagonal from me. I can see him even now, on the T, body open, face turned towards me to check my position. But at the time, I wasn’t seeing him from that angle. I saw him and myself from above. I had my whole body behind my racket, so that when the ball made contact with his jawbone there was such a resounding crack that you might have imagined for a second that the ball had passed right through him and split against the side wall.
[6] Outside the court I kept saying to Pa that I was sorry, and that it wasn’t me, and then I was saying it to Ged’s mother. They were sitting on the bench. She was tending to his jaw with ice from behind the bar, wrapped in a thin towel.
[7] She said, “It’s okay, pet,” but her voice was shaking and she didn’t look at me. Even she understood enough about the game to recognise that Pa had been standing well out of the way of any stroke I should have played.
[8] Ged got my racket from the service box where I had dropped it. He stood at my side. His face was dark. When he handed me my racket, our fingers didn’t touch, but somehow it was the same as when we stepped off the Twister, only this time the thing that moved between us came from him.
Notes
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Making space for independence
As Gopi improves, discipline changes meaning. In Chapter 3, Pa pairs her with Ged because she needs a stronger partner. Daily practice develops her ability to anticipate movement, use the centre of the court and create space. Her interest in the tournament matters because she is no longer only completing Pa's regime; she is beginning to want a sporting future for herself.
Squash involves a fight for space: a player tries to move an opponent while returning to the central T. That practical idea helps explain Gopi's independence. She cannot remove the court's walls, but she can read what is around her and make choices inside them. In the same way, she cannot remove grief, family expectations or racial pressure, yet she can become more skilful in deciding how to respond.
Here is the complete reasoning chain:
- Interpretive claim: squash develops Gopi's agency, but not complete freedom.
- Precise evidence: Pa chooses Ged as her partner in Chapter 3, but Gopi's own tactical thought and desire to compete grow through their daily practice.
- Consequential meaning: repeated instruction becomes knowledge she can use rather than merely obey. Her independence is therefore learned within a relationship before it becomes increasingly her own.
- Whole-text qualification: in Chapter 8, she competes away from Pa's direct coaching only after Pavan persuades Ranjan to allow it. Gopi acts with growing confidence, but family permission and support still matter.
- Return to the idea: Maroo presents independence as making room to act inside constraints, not escaping every constraint.
The claim that squash simply makes Gopi independent is too absolute because it hides who teaches, pays, permits and plays alongside her. A stronger claim is that Gopi gradually takes ownership of skills first imposed by Pa. An alternative remains possible: her sporting purpose may also continue Pa's control and postpone conversations the family needs. The novel sustains both readings because Gopi's competence grows while the family's pressures remain.
Read the passages
Text
Western Lane — Chapter 3
By Chetna Maroo
[1] It seemed to me that he was going to walk away and so I said, quickly, “Do you want to play?” I blushed. “I mean, with me.”
[2] Ged looked at the top of the water cooler. He was thinking about how to put something.
[3] “If you want to,” he said carefully. “We don’t have to.”
[4] Pa had spoken to him.
[5] “It’s up to you,” I said.
[6] He was quiet.
[7] “Why d’you play?” he asked at last.
[8] Ged had lost his stammer over the Christmas holidays, but it was still there underneath. It made him speak slowly, always. And with Ged, you would suddenly feel you were deep inside a conversation. I looked at the water in my cone. It didn’t occur to Ged that it was a strange question to ask. It was something he wanted to know, and so he asked, and I wanted to attempt an answer. I thought of Pa, and of being on the court with Pa watching, and of the feeling when I forgot about Pa and I was just moving or striking the ball, and then the feeling when I wasn’t playing. Ged stood waiting for me to work out what I thought. I thought: A game can seem endless. I said, “I don’t know.”
[9] IN THE COURT with Ged, I had the feeling that we were making something, and it wasn’t anything we could see or touch. I hit well. I saw the ball. It was as big as a tennis ball; I couldn’t help but hit it well. I changed direction and lunged and there was a soft throbbing in my body from my toes to my fingertips. I moved easily and without effort. It was all Ged. He wasn’t pushing me, exactly, but I felt that he was completely aware of me. He was also aware of the walls and the red out line and of the glass behind us and the corridor and the whole of the sports centre building: the empty swimming pool somewhere, the empty bar, the windows looking over distant fields. I felt his awareness of it all becoming mixed up with mine. Then I hit a volley drop that made Ged stop and look at me as if he did not know me, and that look made me stop too.
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this supplied selection.
Text
Western Lane — Chapter 3
By Chetna Maroo
[1] “There is a tournament in the winter,” Maqsud said. His voice through the glass was low and confiding, but somehow projected so that it included Ged. “Durham and Cleveland. You should enter, both of you.”
[2] We passed Durham whenever we went to Edinburgh. It was a long drive. There was a castle that was always lit orange at night. I wanted Maqsud to say something more. It was hypnotising, the way his voice was both hard and soft. Pa went to the bench to look at his notebook and now Maqsud spoke only to me.
[3] “Your father believes in you,” he said. “Because inside that court you are as tough as a boy. Do you know that?”
[4] I looked down at my racket and tremblingly adjusted my strings. I heard Ged’s racket knock the wall and I jumped because I felt as if he was knocking on something right in front of me. I felt very close to Ged, and to Pa, and to this man. Maqsud was waiting for me to speak. I brushed my hand over the face of my racket, trying to keep my fingers still.
[5] “Not any boy,” I heard myself say.
[6] There was silence and then Maqsud was laughing. I glanced up and so did Pa. I could see he was surprised and pleased.
[7] “Durham and Cleveland,” Maqsud said, and joined his friend next door.
[8] From that day on, Ged and I listened out for Maqsud’s voice in the corridors whenever we were training. The words Durham and Cleveland began to accumulate meaning for us. We imagined a dark landscape covered in snow, glass courts glittering in the winter sun. Or we imagined somewhere entirely ordinary, grey, concrete.
[9] “Durham and Cleveland,” one of us would say suddenly for no reason, and we’d sit for a while.
[10] I GOT UP earlier and earlier in the mornings. On weekends and holidays, when the sky was still black outside, I laid out eight slices of bread on the kitchen table and made sandwiches that I pressed into a lunch box. Then I cycled to Western Lane in the dark. By the time I was locking my bike, the sky was lighter but there was no colour in the grass or the trees. I did timed sprints on the running track outside until the sports centre opened and I could go in and practice on one of the courts. You couldn’t use the courts until 7:30 a.m. so if I was early I sat on a bench and waited. The manager stood in the corridor watching me practice one morning, and later he found me and told me that as long as a court was free, I could use it, it didn’t matter what time it was.
[11] Pa and Maqsud talked about Durham and Cleveland, and then Pa talked to me. He said Ged’s mother had agreed to let Ged compete. He said the tournament would be good for me, but there was a fee, and the family would have to contribute towards the petrol for the drive and towards accommodation if one of us got through the first day. I didn’t know if he meant that I could go or not.
[12] “We don’t have the money?” I said.
[13] “It’s not so much,” Pa said.
[14] I looked at his hands turning the steering wheel. I felt that he was waiting for me to speak.
[15] He glanced at me and back at the road.
[16] “It’s up to you,” he said.
[17] I tried to read his face.
[18] “I want to go,” I said.
[19] Pa smiled. “That’s what I thought,” he said.
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this supplied selection.
Belonging across borders
Gopi belongs to a British Gujarati Jain family living in Britain. The daughters grow up in Britain within a family that maintains Indian cultural and linguistic connections. This is not a choice between two neat cultures. The family already belongs across several places, languages and generations.
Squash adds another route of belonging. The game developed within British institutions and travelled through imperial networks. By the 1980s, when the novel is set, Pakistan had dominated elite squash for decades. Pa's champion stories and footage therefore turn a British-origin sport into a diasporic inheritance. His sporting admiration can suggest affiliation across national divisions, rather than simple assimilation into white British culture.
Belonging is still insecure. Gopi and Khush seek relief at the fort from people who spit at them and tell them to leave. In Chapter 6, Gopi recalls classmates looking towards her while Miss Holloway reads about Native Americans after stopping a computer game. The classmates conflate distinct identities under the word “Indians”, imposing a category on Gopi. Historical evidence of anti-Asian hostility and Asian youth resistance in late-1970s and 1980s Britain makes these moments socially grounded, not merely examples of private shyness.
Context should sharpen the textual reading in this order:
| Start with the text | Add only relevant context | Explain the relationship |
|---|---|---|
| Gopi is singled out in the Chapter 6 school recollection. | Racial labelling and anti-Asian hostility were visible in Britain around the novel's period. | Her discomfort can suggest the pressure of being publicly classified and treated as less securely British. |
| Pa admires Pakistani squash champions. | Squash travelled through British imperial networks and Pakistan dominated the sport in the 1980s. | The game can carry colonial history while also becoming a source of South Asian excellence and shared pride. |
Avoid two shortcuts. First, do not describe the family as caught between a modern Britain and a fixed traditional culture; both Britain and the family are internally varied. Second, do not turn every white character into an emblem of racism. Linda's decision to stop Ged training with Gopi follows Pa's injury and has an immediate safety reason, even though the novel's wider relationships remain shaped by racial and community boundaries.
Read the passages
Text
Western Lane — Chapter 1
By Chetna Maroo
[1] That was when Pa began talking quietly into the empty court. At first he was talking about Jahangir Khan’s family: Jahangir’s father, Roshan Khan, and uncles Hashim and Azam Khan, who between the three of them won the World Open twelve times, his uncle Nasrullah Khan, his brother, Torsam, his cousin and coach Rahmat. The whole dynasty. But at some point we must have stopped listening because suddenly he was no longer talking about the Khans, but about an Australian player named Geoff Hunt who beat his own brother to win a state championship at the age of fifteen and went on to dominate the game for almost a decade. A generation of Pakistanis were unable to overcome Hunt, Pa said. He was too fit. It didn’t matter how brilliant the Pakistanis were if they couldn’t even get to the ball. And then Jahangir came along and he saw what he would be up against and he got fit, and he beat Hunt.
[2] “Because you have to have something.” Pa’s voice was so strange and unlike his voice that we had to concentrate to understand him. “You have to address yourself to something,” he said.
[3] Mona fixed her eyes on Pa.
[4] “We’re not Khans,” she murmured.
[5] Pa came to the bench and bent down to put his notebook inside his bag.
[6] “We’re brothers,” he said. “Indians and Pakistanis.”
[7] Mona didn’t answer. There was enough hostility in her face without putting it into words, and Pa saw it. It wasn’t because of anything he had done. It was because he had not forced us to do anything. It was because we had spent an hour in the court of our own free will, and we would do it again tomorrow.
Notes
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