Write a character sketch of Rakesh concerning his overall personality and the cause of his change of behaviour towards his father towards the end...

The character of Rakesh is presented as having all
excellent personality qualities. He is kind, studious, dedicated, loving, intelligent,
and, most of all, he is devoted to his parents. He even shows them the greatest sign of
respect and devotion by reverentially touching their feet. After returning to his home
in India from his doctoral studies in the U.S. and marrying a rural village girl his
mother chose, it came to pass that his mother died. Rakesh increased his devoted kindly
care of his father, even helping him downstairs and reading newspapers to him. As his
father's health deteriorated over time, Rakesh found he could not diagnose his father's
condition. This is the first event causing the change that overtook Rakesh's
personality.

Rakesh acted upon his best medical
understanding and restricted his patient's diet--only this time his patient is his
father. One of Desai's objectives is to question where ethical boundaries lie in
relation to applying Western scientific principles to traditional cultural situations:
Should Rakesh have treated his father, of all people, like a patient? Would Rakesh have
been violating medical ethics if he did not apply strict principles to his father in the
same way he did to his other patients?

Two things occured
as a result of Rakesh's restrictions on his father's diet. At least one of these things
also caused the change that overtook Rakesh's personality. One thing is that his
village-raised wife meanly and ungenerously took pleasure in denying and depriving her
father-in-law of things he wanted. The other is that the father bribed Rakesh's children
to get him the things he wanted that Rakesh prevented him from having. When Rakesh
discovered the trickery and the deception, he was enraged, as any parent might be. He
not only upbraided his father in the harshest terms--something he had never done
before--he deepened the restrictions on and increased the supervision of his
diet.

The question is raised as to whether Rakesh's anger
was justified; whether it had always been part of his personality but not shown because
his father had never incited it before; was because he deemed his father an inferior and
corrupting influence. The story ends with more questions than it started out with. In
fact, there is a question raised about the culture that encourages such strictly defined
and expressed roles that can be so destructive when reversed or interfered
with.