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 and blended, and eventually a collection of broths simmered over periwinkle flames on the stove.” As with Shoba in “A Temporary Matter”, Mrs. Sen’s emotional state too has been described by the deficiency and surplus of food ingredients. However, in her case, its consumption too which goes on to signify her emotional being. "Whenever there is a wedding in the family, “she said to Eliot, "or a large celebration of any kind, my mother sends out word in the evening for all the neighborhood women to bring blades just like this one, and then they sit in an enormous circle on the roof of our building, laughing and gossiping and slicing fifty kilos of vegetables through the night. "Her profile hovered protectively over her work, a confetti of cucumber, eggplant, and onion skins heaped around her. (115) However on the depletion of the food ingredients Mrs. Sen would sulk like a child. When Mr. Sen tells her, “No more fish for a while. Cook the chicken in the freezer.”(124), she makes the effort of finding out bus schedules and she even risks driving the car (something she disliked) only to be able to get access to fresh fish. As for Mrs. Sen, fish acquires the status of a friend, family and community. It also gives her a sense of closeness to her home. By the end of the story, “Mrs. Sen put away the blade that was still on the living room floor and threw the eggplant pieces…She prepared a plate of crackers with peanut butter.” This description reflects the poverty of emotional nourishment of Mrs. Sen as well. In Mrs. Sen’s case, food also becomes an alternative means for her to exert her agency in the dominant American culture. It is through food she tries to create her own identity. Her preparation of food is a culinary act that reaches across continents to places where women sit on rooftops with blades and vegetables slicing through the night. Interestingly, in the entire story, Lahiri narrates only about the ingredients of food but never food itself except for a rare occasion, which goes on to show the emphasis placed on food preparation. Also, in contrast to “A Temporary Matter” where culinary knowledge facilitates Shoba’s flight, culinary knowledge in Mrs. Sen’s case strengthens her ethnic identity. Eliot is appreciative of Mrs. Sen because of her culinary knowledge and he dislikes the fact that his mother does not possess any. “The first thing she did when they were back at the beach house was pour herself a glass of wine and eat bread and cheese, sometimes so much of it that she wasn’t hungry for the pizza they normally ordered for dinner.” Mr. Sen was initially unaware of Mrs. Sen’s connection with her food but he realizes it gradually and intentionally takes her to the fish market to buy ample amount of fish when she was unhappy having pondering over the letter.
While food preparation dominates the aforementioned stories, food-consuming habits dominate 'The Third and Final Continent'. In this story, the narrator and his wife Mala are trying to retain their cultural identity in a foreign atmosphere. Both characters in their own ways retain their cultural identity through food and food habits in their own manner. While the narrator continues to restrict himself from eating beef, Mala shrouds the house with the smell of steamed rice. Mala, in fact, expects the narrator to cling on to his cultural identity, which is evident from her preparation of rice in the morning, something that most Bengalis did. Gradually as food consumption changes from frugality and simplicity of cornflakes to fresh garlic and ginger lined up on the stove, the relationship between Mala progresses too making the extravagance of food consumption analogous to growth of relationships. The food habits of both, the narrator and Mala, induce a sense of belonging to a common ethnic background. The narrator, who ate egg curry with his hands in London, continues to eat steamed rice with his hands in America too. Even the relationship between Mrs. Croft and Helen, exists because of the need of one to nourish the other by bringing groceries and cooking. This weekly act keeps the relationship between the mother and daughter going. Also, in the beginning of the story, the narrator’s first question to Mala in America is about whether her food requirements were met, reiterating the need of food for nourishment. “What did they give you to eat on the plane?”(191). As the story progresses, the role of food as a necessity is challenged when the narrator tells us that he was able to find a man named Bill who sold fresh fish and that another sold bay leaves and cloves, signifying food as an extravagance. A crucial moment comes towards the ending of the story when the narrator expresses his wish to pass down his cultural identity to his son through food habits. “So we drive to Cambridge to visit him, or bring him home for a weekend, so that he can eat rice with us with his hands, and speak in Bengali, things we sometimes worry he will no longer do when we die. (197) Thus, Lahiri makes the use of food habits essentially in the story to tell a tale of a couple retaining their cultural identity, yet letting it penetrate to the younger generation.
In “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine,” the symbolism of food as a means to assert ethnic identity and to create personal relationships between characters, finds resonance. The title of the story itself contains the word ‘dine’ signifying that food would serve as a leitmotif in the story. The story begins with Lahiri immediately revealing Mr. Pirzada to the reader. Mr. Pirzada belongs to Dacca, while on the other hand Lilia’s parents belong to India. But all of them share some common food habits exclusive to the Indian subcontinent, which ties them together in a foreign land. “They ate pickled mangoes with their meals, ate rice every night for supper with their hands. Like my parents, Mr. Pirzada took off his shoes before entering a room, chewed fennel seeds after meals as a digestive, drank no alcohol, for dessert dipped austere biscuits into successive cups of tea.” (25) In the story, the most conspicuous reference of food inducing a sense of belonging is present. The sole reason of Mr. Pirzada’s having dinner with Lilia’s parents is his looking for refuge from homesickness. The food that Lilia’s mother serves helps to drive away that sickness because it makes him feel at home itself. The ambience of ‘home’ is further built by the common food habits they share. Mr. Pirzada used to create “ a well in his rice to make room for a second helping of lentils” while also taking off his watch while eating, some habits typical to the Indian subcontinent. Lahiri continues to represent the emotional state of her story’s characters in this story too. Mr. Pirzada’s act of bringing confections for Lilia reflects his emotional state. He brings with him “a steady stream of honey filled lozenges, the raspberry truffles, the slender rolls of sour pastilles”(29) which reflects his affectionate manner and happy emotional state. But later on when the news of tensions in Bangladesh came to the front, Lilia remarked, “Mr. Pirzada stopped bringing me candy.”(40) This act of Mr. Pirzada also forged his relationship with Lilia. The candy tied Lilia with Mr. Pirzada. With a candy in her mouth, “letting it soften until the last possible moment” Lilia would pray for the well being of Mr. Pirzada’s family. Even after Mr. Pirzada left America, she continued to “eat, for the sake of Mr. Pirzada’s family, a piece of candy” but she stopped this practice the day she is informed that Mr. Pirzada was safe thereby fulfilling the aim of her prayers.
In the story, food also serves to complicate its own binary role of symbolizing survival, yet extravagance. Lilia’s mother remarks in the story that had Lilia been in India, she would have to live on rationed food, which goes on to symbolize the survival aspect of food. Yet, on another instance, she brought forth the succession of dishes: lentils with fried onions, green beans with coconut…”(30) symbolizing the extravagant aspect of food. On another note, the outbreak of war had profound consequences on Lilia’s family and especially Mr. Pirzada. Lahiri portrays these consequences using food. The day the war broke out Lilia’s mother “refused to serve anything other than boiled eggs with rice for dinner,” while on learning from Mr. Pirzada later that his family was fine, “she prepared a special dinner that evening.”(42) Mr. Pirzada was most significantly affected by the news and the pumpkin symbolized his emotional distress in a most vivid manner. The grimace on the pumpkin “straight across, neither mournful nor friendly” is subtly suggestive of Mr. Pirzada’s facial expression having known the poor condition in Bangladesh. The news of the war made the knife slip from Mr. Pirzada’s hand making the pumpkin bear “an expression of placid astonishment, the eyebrows no longer fierce, floating in frozen surprise above a vacant geometric gaze.” When Lilia came back from tricking-n-treating she found the pumpkin “shattered, its thick shell strewn in chunks across the grass,” suggesting the emotional state of Mr. Pirzada who was absolutely dejected by the news of the war breaking out.
Lahiri has been able to use food as a metaphor with great skill in her works. Food runs as a leitmotif throughout her stories with differential intensity. Food serves as a metaphor for different events in each story, yet holding a common symbolic meaning. The types of metaphor used in the story are based on the context of the piece and emphasis on onomatopoeic, visual or gustatory effects. Food determines the relationship between characters, sets the context, setting and tone and most importantly runs through all the stories acting as an adhesive to bind them all.
The emphasis on food facilitates the setting of the stories in a foreign land inhabited by Indian nationals because food continuously helps them retrace their identity.
The representation of emotional state of characters through food helps in the development of the characters in each story.