The author intentionally avoids elevating one side of the war over another in this story, and a key aspect to achieving that goal comes from the commonality of suffering on both sides. As early as the upstairs-downstairs division of the Wellawatte house, neighbors from opposing ethnicities make passive-aggressive complaints about one another. They make similarly petty domestic complaints, complaining about one another’s food, noise, and methods of child-rearing. These domestic complaints are repeated when the Rajasinghe family finds themselves as the foreign renters with a landlord from the majority ethnic group in Los Angeles, a twist in positions that emphasizes that such basic complaints are common across ethnicities, cultures, and geography.

Much greater suffering is also common. Visaka is shocked to realize that Alice understands her heartache, the emotional rivalry between Visaka and Ravan’s wife ends after they share the experience of childbirth, and Yasodhara opens up to Lanka again once they have both experienced a broken heart. Even Saraswathi at her most desolate knows that “other people have been hurt in this room. Many have died” (153). Knowing that she is not alone, even in such an isolating moment, gives Saraswathi the strength to endure and push through her physical and emotional pain.