Portrayal of Food in Literature

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Food has a universal value to it because it is an essential need for the survival of all living beings. At this level, it forges an ontological equality among living beings. Of course food is quintessential to the existence of living beings from the point of view of necessity, nourishment, staples and survival. However, food in literature more recently is being perceived with notions of extravagance- excess, luxury and desire. Jhumpa Lahiri in her collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies combines the two schools of thought and uses food as a leitmotif to signify material, moral, metaphysical, social, cultural, and political aspects. In this collection of short stories, food serves to retrace identity, to address issues of authenticity, assimilation, and desire, to denote cultural hierarchies, to assert agency and subjectivity in ways that function as an alternative to the dominant culture, to reflect the emotional isolation through a contrast of deficiency and surplus and to create personal relationships between characters. Particularly in the case of diasporic communities, food induces a sense of belonging and rootedness in the people of these communities. The role of food as a metaphor in Lahiri’s book is most illustrated in “A Temporary Matter”, “Mrs. Sen’s”, “The Third and Final Continent” and “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine.”

In “A Temporary Matter”, the first story of the collection, Lahiri portrays a dysfunctional relationship between Shoba and Shukumar. The erstwhile smooth relationship changes into one where the couple consciously begins to cultivate isolation due to the stillbirth of their child. “For months now they'd served themselves from the stove, and he'd taken his plate into the study, letting the meal grow cold on his desk before shoving it into his mouth without pause, while Shoba took her plate to the living room and watched game shows.” (8) Lahiri uses food in this story to contrast the emotional state of Shoba before and after the stillbirth of the child. The deficiency and surplus of food supplies serves to display the ups and downs in the emotional state with excess signifying marital bliss, while deficiency marital failure. The profusion of ingredients in the house indicated the existence of compassion and love the couple shared while deficiency pointed towards a deteriorating relationship setting a tone of dejection in the story. Before the miscarriage, Shoba was highly inclined to make efforts in cooking and the kitchen was always stocked with food. “When she used to do the shopping, the pantry was always stocked with extra bottles of olive and corn oil, depending on whether they were cooking Italian or Indian. There were endless boxes of pasta in all shapes and colors, zippered sacks of basmati rice, whole sides of lambs and goats from the Muslim butchers at Haymarket, chopped up and frozen in endless plastic bags.” (6) The couple "invariably marveled at how much food they'd bought." However, after the stillbirth of the child, the relationship begins to rot figuratively and Shukumar notices, "She wasn't this way before." Shoba develops a disinterest in cooking because a sense of isolation overcomes her. Shukumar reflects, "if it weren't for him, he knew, Shoba would eat a bowl of cereal for her dinner" (8). Shoba loses her interest so much so that Shukumar takes up her job of cooking and we witness a gender role reversal. “Shukumar had been going through their supplies steadily, preparing meals for the two of them, measuring out   of rice, defrosting bags of meat day after day.”(7) But Shukumar’s culinary knowledge is restricted to what he’s learnt from Shoba and in a way dependent on her’s, which is synonymous to his position in his marital life. He cooks "following her penciled instructions to use two teaspoons of ground coriander seeds instead of one, or red lentils instead of yellow" (7). Yet, it is through food that Shukumar tries to, in what he interprets, build communion in the relationship by dining together in the dark. Though Shoba is characterized by the excess and deficiency of food ingredients in the household, Shukumar is characterized by his consumption of food. It is by the act of consuming food that Shukumar wishes to build communion in the nights when there was no power supply. Here again, Lahiri uses the symbols of wine and rogan josh as perfect truce and the reader is made to believe that the relationship will be renewed with vitality. But, little does Shukumar realize that the act of consumption only leads to exhaustion of the relationship. Thereby, in the story, Lahiri offers a glimpse into the psychology of the relationship between Shoba and Shukumar by both through the quantity and quality of the food and its accumulation or consumption.

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In “A Temporary Matter”, Lahiri uses food as a metaphor, but in “Mrs. Sen’s,” food acquires a character too. The story begins with Eliot’s mother looking for a caretaker. Eliot's previous caretakers have been portrayed through their culinary inappropriateness. Whereas “Mrs. Linden’s thermos contained more whiskey than coffee” and Abby “refused to prepare any food for Eliot containing meat”, Mrs. Sen “came to them in tidy ballpoint script.” The quest for culinary appropriateness leads Eliot’s mother to Mrs. Sen. After all, food, flavor and fish dominated Mrs. Sen’s daily life. “Brimming bowls and colanders lined the countertop spices and pastes were measured ...

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