Another young and one of the most important diasporic characters in the text is Ila. Ila appears in the text as perpetually locked in the present although a materially elite, cosmopolitan who, is not able to transcend the “shadow lines” even on a circumambulate tour of the world. In a way both the narrator and Ila can be seen as diasporic. Since, both of them are dislocated from their native land, to the other side of the globe but in separate respects. While, for Ila the different countries she has travelled to and their memories are equally insignificant, the narrator is capable of traveling through the agency of his imagination in the allegorical sense. As the narrator is of the view that “a place does not merely exist, that it has to be invented in one’s imagination; that [Ila’s] practical, bustling London was no less invented than [his own], neither more nor less true, only very far apart” (21). Even, the entire narrative of The Shadow Lines shifts backward and forward betwixt India and England, to accentuate the narrator’s composite status, as we witness that he too is an Indian citizen who has acquired an English education. The narrator’s attraction to Ila is intensified because he feels that she is concealing something from him and that her stories are a way of counterbalancing the disillusionments she underwent abroad. The narrator is able to see through her deceptions and miseries even though she tries to hide them from him. He is able to gauge that