The Roses of May challenges the idea that grief fades with time by showing how Priya Sravasti continues to live with the loss of her sister Chavi Sravasti over a period of five years, where grief remains present throughout. Priya’s experiences show that healing does not restore an earlier version of herself. Instead, she develops a sense of self shaped by this loss, and her grief continues to influence how she engages with her surroundings, relationships, and sense of self. The novel presents grief as something that becomes integrated into identity over time and continues to shape how Priya lives.

Priya shapes her days around an ongoing bond with Chavi. She keeps journals she writes as letters to her sister, turning a private habit into a continuing conversation. Her photography plays a similar role. She explains that she takes pictures “for Chavi, so she can see the things I see” (13). These images let Priya share her world and keep Chavi present. The small shrine in the family’s home performs the same function. Together, these practices show that Priya maintains an active relationship with Chavi, where memory remains part of her present life. These practices do not cling to the past. They fold Chavi into Priya’s current life and make her absence an active presence.

Priya’s grief also appears in her physical and emotional responses. At times, her eating behavior reflects moments when the intensity of her feelings becomes difficult to manage, as she describes binging in her own words as a way for the hurt “to make sense” because the sickness that follows matches the weight of her pain (14). She also wakes from nightmares “in a sweat, throat raw from screaming” (51), showing that the effects of the trauma continue over time. These recurring experiences show that grief is lived through her body and everyday routines as well as her thoughts. Her identity develops alongside these patterns of response, where grief becomes part of how she exists in the world. She moves forward by learning how to carry her grief, with the novel emphasizing ongoing adjustment and continuity over time.

The novel also shows that grief is shaped by how it is seen and interpreted by others. Priya’s loss becomes public through media coverage, where her image circulates and strangers respond to her experience through messages and reactions directed at her and her family. She reflects that “the public steals tragedies from victims,” pointing to the way personal grief becomes subject to external attention and response. Letters from strangers, including both sympathy and hostility, further place her grief under scrutiny, adding external commentary to her private experience. These interactions show that grief unfolds within a social context and is influenced by how others interpret and respond to it. As a result, Priya’s identity develops through her experience of loss and through her engagement with these external pressures, where her responses to these interactions become part of how she continues to live with grief.