In an interview with Sujata Shekar, Divakaruni shares that, “At Berkeley, I started volunteering at the Women’s Center, and became aware of women’s issues, including violence against women” (“para”. 10). After being graduated Divakaruni volunteered with Support Network, a mainstream organization, there she observed that South Asian American’s didn’t come in often and therefore realized the need of:

An organization that was culturally sensitive to these women, where they’d feel comfortable sharing their stories. Even if they had to go into a shelter, they’d know we’d be there holding their hands through the process, doing simple things like making sure there was culture-specific or religion-specific food. (“para”. 10)

In the immensely sensory world of Divakaruni’s writing, food is often at the core and it appears as a manifestation of immigrants’ longing to connect with their homeland and past, as she asserts that the, “taste brings the India of my childhood back to me. In this, I believe I’m not alone. Food is an easy way to transport our culture to a strange land, and transport ourselves back to familiar landscapes at the same time” (“Divakaruni”). In a television program titled as The Connection Special, Divakaruni also acknowledges that:

When I was going to the University at Berkeley, for example, I used to work in the Kitchen, the University kitchen, and so I did a lot of like food related stuff and food is very important in my book, the food and the need for (. . .). There a kind of emotional component that is attached to food becomes awake theme in many of my books. (“Divakaruni”)

An anthology entitled Cooked Up: Food Fiction from Around the World, also honours the author by retreating to her short story entitled “Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter,” wherein struggling with the memories of her native land and the feelings of isolation in the US, the older woman, Mrs. Dutta “uses food to maintain homeland culture, while making herself useful, even indispensable, to her son’s family by cooking for them” (as cited in Maxey, 2012), while on the other hand, Shyamoli, the daughter-in-law, “affected by American-inspired medical concerns senses, through these food-based power struggles, that she is losing influence over her husband and children” (as cited in Maxey, 2012). As according to, “Appadurai’s formulation of what he terms ‘gastro-politics’, ‘disharmony’ between Indian female in-laws, ‘revolves critically around food transactions’ (as cited in Maxey, 2012). Once an adjusting bride and mother, the old Mrs. Dutta fails to adjust in the, “silhouette-man, wife, children-joined on a wall, showing her how alone she is in this land of young people. And how unnecessary” (TUEOL 33). Thus cooking food for family loses its importance and the disillusioned Mrs. Dutta, suddenly feels an ultimate desire of “drinking cha” with her friend Mrs. Basu, and sharing the real meaning of happiness as comprehended by her in an alien land, as she writes to Mrs. Basu:

I cannot answer your question about whether I am happy, for I am no longer sure I know what happiness is. All I know is that it isn’t what I thought it to be. It isn’t about being needed. It isn’t about being with family either. It has something to do with love . .

Perhaps we can figure it out together, two old women drinking cha in your downstairs flat” (TUEOL 33).

“Tea, instead of wine as in Western culture, is part of a ritual of pleasure, a social drink in India, and especially among Bengalis” (Gamez-Fernandez and Dwivedi, 2015), and thus the Indian (Bengali) cuisine, working as an index of Mrs. Dutta’s life stages, prevails her life and demarcates the lineage between the young and the old generations, traditional Indian practices and the American lifestyle and the societal characteristics or briefly the collectivism and the individualism of the two distinct countries, but finally successfully projects the essential desire of life i.e. to love and live happily. As the book entitled Shaping Indian Diaspora: Literary Representations and Bollywood Consumption Away From The Desi, discusses that:

Food is an important and endlessly fascinating lens for social and cultural analysis- not only for anthropologists, but also for scholars of history, literature, cultural studies and political economy. As food and drink are at the very center of the body politic, one can easily say that food is power and power, food. (Gamez-Fernandez and Dwivedi, 2015)

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni exquisitely intertwines several objects, i.e. the wedding dreams of women, festivities, gaudy colours, beautiful sarees and clothing, sepia photographs, distinct places, conjugal scenes, and the children along with the familial and cultural conflicts, suddenly arisen desires for individuality, and aspirations about the future, to form a vital short stories collection entitled Arranged Marriage. The New York Times Book Review also commends this distinctive collection labelling it as irresistible as the impulse which leads her characters to surface to maturity, raising their heads above floods of silver ignorance. While the Midwest Book Review reveals that these are excellent, hard-hitting stories . . . revealing and engrossing. The Indian cuisine, kitchen, and recipes’ introduction in this literary enactment emerges as a powerful cultural representative and not only implies belongingness, attachment, inclusiveness but also signify exclusiveness, generate stereotypes and feelings of repulsion and disgust which demarcate boundaries between different societies and cultures. As in interview with Sujata Shekar, Divakaruni also states that, “I’m interested in food in my personal life, too. But food exists on many levels in my books. It reflects changes in our culture as we take shortcuts in how we cook our food, how it remains a comfort regardless” (“para”. 29).

The present study discusses the selected stories of Arranged Marriage wherein the inscribed Indian cuisine draws migrants towards their culture, ignite their sense of self, strengthens familial bonds, clarifies their perception of the outer world, and finally offers them solace. Though culinary customs and activities as practised by Indian American diasporans or more specifically the Bengali American diasporans as suggestively portrayed in this collection, have distinctively intense patterns that universalistic theories cannot fully uncover, but an attempt has been made to use an interdisciplinary approach towards food rituals and the lives of these diasporans. As Cristina M. Gamez-Fernandez and Veena Dwivedi (2015) also discusses that:

The significances of food and eating are psychologically, socially and politically constructed, and their symbolisms are indicators and results of cultural conditioning. In Indian culture, women in idle-class households have traditionally borne almost all the burden of cooking and nourishing others. In Bengal too, food constitutes an integral aspect of the intellectual and cultural milieu, and culinary activities of Bengali women are inextricably intertwined with their various rituals, social customs and daily routines. (p. 55)

The story entitled “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs”, presents the two generations of the Indian immigrants; Aunt Pratima characterizes the first generation while second generation is formed by Jayanti, the protagonist, who dreams of marrying, “a prince from a far-off magic land” (AM 56), but witnesses her Aunt Pratima experiencing the actuality of being married to, “a prince from far-off magic land” (AM 56). Jayanti arrives in the United States to pursue her higher education with many dreams about America and her enthusiasm for America, is quite discernible in this rhetorical language as, “I’ve looked forward to this day for so long that when I finally board the plane I can hardly breathe. . . . The air is dry and cool and leaves a slight metallic aftertaste on my lips. I lick at them, wanting to capture that taste, make it part of me forever. The little tray of food is so pretty, so sanitary” (AM 36). As it is also mentioned in a research study entitled Indian Diaspora: Ethnicity and Diasporic Identity that, “since the immigration countries are known for their welfare and social system there is always an attraction to go there” (“para”. 5). The transformation that occurs in the life of Jayanti has been distinctly marked by the depiction of two different food customs as Jayanti enjoys the American chocolate, “Almond Rocas” and pictures “Prema, Vaswati, Sabitri-who will never see any of this” (AM 36), “standing outside Ramu’s pakora stall, munching on the spicy batter-dipped onion rings” (AM 36). After reaching her “magic land” (AM 46), Aunt Pratima welcomes Jayanti and cooks food happily for her as it is depicted that:

The dinner turns out to be an elaborate affair- “a spicy almond-chicken curry arranged over hot rice, a spinach-lentil dal, a yogurt cucumber raita, fried potato pakoras, crisp golden papads, and sweet white kheer. . . . As I watch aunt ladle more dal onto his plate, I have a strange sense of disorientation, and for a moment I wonder if I have left Calcutta at all” (AM 41).

Aunt Pratima’s ladling dal onto her husband’s plate projects the distinctive image of the typical Bengali families wherein women treat themselves as secondary to others in the family, as they serve the food “first to guests, second to men, then to their children, and lastly to themselves” (Gamez-Fernandez and Dwivedi, 2015), which, “in turn testifies the fact that other more serious issues of discipline, control and cultivation of conformity are involved, as food rituals and eating etiquettes effectively function as key components of the power dynamics in the domestic realm” (Gamez-Fernandez and Dwivedi, 2015). As Claude Levi-Strauss, in The Culinary Triangle (1965), states that the cuisine of a society is an unconscious language in which its own structure is figured and if the culinary history and food rituals of Bengal and the topographical conditions are taken into consideration, the paddy or the rice cultivation, being the chief crop produced in this fertile Gangetic basin, can be said to be a code which symbolically structure the Bengali society as well as decipher the relation of Bengalis to the outer world and culture. In his commentary on Claude Levi-Strauss, Leech (1970) explains that, “when we eat, we establish, in a literal sense, a direct identity between ourselves (Culture) and our food (Nature)” (as cited in Turner, 2013).

Jayanti also becomes the witness of her Aunt Pratima’s compromises which she has had to make after getting married to Bikram-uncle and is shocked how her high-class, sophisticated Aunt tolerates the indiscretions by her “low class” (AM 39) husband. When Jayanti asks her aunt to go outside, she gets shocked out of her fantasy of life in America when she experiences violent racism when the neighbourhood white boys’ racialist slurs of “nigger, nigger” (AM 52). Moreover Bikram-uncle’s suppression of aunt Pratima due to his fear of being assaulted as an outsider or very fact of being a kalaadmi, makes Jayanti to reflect over her dream of being married with an American “Prince”. As she reflects and questions, “Will I marry a prince from a far-off magic land, Where the pavements are silver and the roofs all gold?” (AM 56).

Though Bikram-uncle apologizes for his behaviour and says to aunt Pratima that, “I tried so hard, Pratima. I wanted to give you so many things- but even your jewellery is gone. Grief scrapes at his voice” (AM 54). After forgetting the racialist slur and the frightened husband’s subsequent misbehaviour towards her, Aunt Pratima draws herself into cooking dinner, and by respecting her husband’s decisions and continuing to stand by him, she presents an ideal image of a traditional Indian bride. Food, being an integral part of the basic and necessary daily needs, draws Aunt Pratima back to kitchen and thereby she maintains her place in the family and asserts the Indian ethnicity in American culture. This story can be said to bring forth the:

Imagery of family which is widely tied to the success of Asian immigrants in the United States. And like other Asians, Indian immigrants themselves consider traditional family values to be a cornerstone of their culture, and a key distinguishing feature between themselves and Americans” (as cited in Khandelwal 117).

Not only this, Aunt Pratima’s retreating to the kitchen which has been, “viewed as the traditional female ghetto of domesticity, and home cooking as an ambiguous unpaid domestic labour. But, while food rituals compartmentalize the women into culturally conditioned specific roles, simultaneously they also provide them with agencies to transcend the doldrums of domesticity” (Gamez-Fernandez and Dwivedi, 2015). Protima Deb, the author of the article entitled, “Rice and Fish”, rightly remarks that, “Interestingly, the wife’s role- a construct of patriarchal power- as one providing nourishment and care for the family is cleverly socially cultivated to ascertain their sense of responsibility for others’ gastronomical needs” (p. 62). The report also inscribes that, “the individual as the carrier of cultural baggage transports it into new cultural surroundings where he sorts out his experience and adapts himself in a new country” (p. 5). On the other hand, Bikram-uncle sits on the sofa and gulps this racial slur down with the help of, “Budweiser” (AM 43), which shows his proclivity for the Western drink and produces an ironical situation and as Jayanti watches she also states that, “the beauty and pain should be part of each other” (AM 56). The American dream overcomes the distressed feelings and at the end of the story, while Jayanti thinks of all the many-colored hands she has encountered in America and the complexities of race and class, white snow falls to soften “forgivingly, the rough noisy edges of things” (AM 55). And “The snow becomes an anesthetizing agent, a symbol of the kind of erasure that Jayanti is about to embrace in order to survive in America” (Kuortti and Tajeshwar 84). As Divakaruni also states that:

The promise of America was always oversimplified in immigrant consciousness. Once

people came, they realized it was much more complicated. But if you look at how many people are still applying, coming on H-1B [work] visas, and waiting and waiting for their companies to get them a green card, the dream of America is alive and well in these people’s lives. (“para”. 19)

Divakaruni continues her peerless exploration of the tensions between the old and the new, the complex dynamics of families and the clash between the social obligations and the personal freedom through the pungent metaphor of food in her other two stories entitled “Affair” and “Meeting Mrinal” as well. In “Affair”, Abha, the protagonist, maintains her eight years’ marriage with Ashok until the kitchen work ignites her sense of self and with these culinary skills she paves her way of freedom from both; Ashok or arranged marriage and the image of a traditional Indian woman or a domestic worker. While chopping vegetables in the kitchen, Abha gets to know, “that Meena is having an affair” (AM 231) from her husband Ashok, and, “the knife slipped and nicked her finger” (AM 231), which infers the shock and resentment of Abha and feels offended by her friend, Meena, who rather choose Ashok to share this than her. “Feeling betrayed” (AM 232) she busies herself chopping onions and gets a valid reason of crying. To revenge this hurtful feeling, she dumps, “a couple of extra teaspoons of red pepper powder into the chicken curry” because she knows that, “hot food gives Ashok the most terrible heartburn” (AM 233). After this clash Ashok moves to watch MTV, while Abha retreats to the, “kitchen with its shiny rows of canisters . . . its gleaming tiles and faucets” (AM 233), and this organised kitchen makes her sane and provides her strength to be well-balanced like, “its racks of spices all carefully labeled” (AM 233). Here the moves of both Ashok and Abha symbolizes their cultural and sexual proclivities, on one hand, Ashok’s moving to an American channel shows his interest in American ways of life while Abha’s moving to kitchen reveals her domesticity learned from traditional atmosphere of her Indian family but which is “prudish Indian upbringing” (AM 234), according to Ashok. For Abha sex was a, “matter between married people, carried out in the silent privacy of their bedroom and resulting, hopefully, in babies. I preferred not to think of its other aspects, and I resented American TV for invading my home with them” (AM 234). Though married to Ashok, Abha seems to be unaware of his ways and interests, and wishes, “the translucent curls of the onions waiting on the cutting board”, to tell her, “About Ashok and myself and our constant sparring?” (AM 234), and the dinner is left “uncooked” like the questions of Abha remain unanswered. The Bengali diasporan womenfolk seems to have been endowed with the knowledge of mystical and auspicious qualities of vegetables, spices and herbs, and remain conscious about the omens related to the daily food rituals as depicted in this text. Unlike Abha, Meena represents American ways of life, from cuisine skills to dressing and even her approach towards marriage and life were poles apart from Abha’s and its only reason was Srikant’s business with computer that she drifted towards the individualistic consciousness of American culture. The fumes of the memories of Meena, who used to suggest Abha to dress right for, “all women need to look good” (AM 235) and the sharing of her miscarriage because something was wrong with her uterus and that pain of being childless, rampant in Abha. In this traumatic state, Abha moves to her pristine kitchen:

Which was a mess, half cooked food, unwashed dishes, vegetables peelings in the sink- and now crusts of pizza lying in an open Domino’s box. . . I considered leaving everything the way it was, but I knew I’d just have to deal with it in the morning. It was 2 A.M. when I sat down to eat my rice and extra peppery chicken. (AM 241)

Being struck amidst her assumed concern about Meena’s affair with Ashok, the consciousness and different practical over her looks, and above all the regret about her marital relationship, as she reflects, “I hadn’t loved Ashok all these years, not really, though I believed I had. I’d been too busy being a good wife” (AM 249) and which was being a household worker, but out of her culinary skills, Abha shapes her career and now gets the proposition of writing a cookbook as the “Courier” (AM 256) wants, “to put out a cookbook-glossy cover, color pictures, the whole bit-of selected dishes from all the Bay Area Indian restaurants” (AM 253). As in an interview by Sujata Shekar, Divakaruni also reveals that, “Food is an important symbol. It’s particularly important for immigrants as the one thing they hope to be able to carry forward” (“para”. 29). Divakaruni spells the magic of culinary job and revives Abha who defiantly dress herself up in the celebration of her new job and comes across of the divorce between Meena and Srikant, which awakens Abha from her own hopeless marriage and all of a sudden, Abha desires for a new and vibrant life which would be free from Ashok who only proved a taunting husband, ever discouraging, as she says:

To want more out of life than fulfilling duties you took on before you knew what they truly meant?. . . . The old rules aren’t always right. Not here, not even in India. . . . We are spiralling toward hate. And hopelessness. That’s not what I want for the rest of my life. Or yours. . . . It’s better this way, each of us freeing the other before it’s too late . . .” (AM 270).

Thus Abha starts to pull the unravelled edges of her life into a new pattern, as she goes to the Mughal restaurant to seek a new job of cooking to pay the lodging and leaves her, “beautiful, calm kitchen” (AM 271) behind, “In spite of the pity in the eyes of the Indian women when they hear. The gossip in India. My parents’ anger. Family dishonour” (AM 271). As Williams has also observed that, “In Asian American literature, food as a metaphor frequently constructs and reflects relationships to racialized subjectivity and also addresses issues of authenticity, assimilation and desire” (p. 78). Abha seems to follow American notion of individualistic societies which emphasize, “I consciousness, autonomy, emotional independence, individual initiative, right to privacy, autonomy, pleasure seeking, financial security, need for specific friendship and Universalism” (Brake, et al., 40), and she gives priority to her individual interests over the concept of arranged marriage and Ashok.

“Meeting Mrinal” presents a profound relationship of a single mother, Asha and her son, Dinesh, who probably constructs the second generation of Indian immigrants, through the representation of the cuisines of India and America and thus expresses the idea of integration. As it is depicted that:

I put the pizza in the oven and began rummaging for salad material in the refrigerator, where several plastic wrapped vegetables displayed various stages of fungal growth. After a search, I managed to come up with a quarter of a tired-looking lettuce, some radishes shrivelled to half their size, a passable cucumber, and a couple of tomatoes” (AM 274).

In this story the refrigerator develops as, “another covertly protected space uniquely controlled by the female head of the house” (Gamez-Fernandez and Dwivedi, 2015), and the salad concept suggests that the integration of many different cultures of United States’ residents assimilate as the salad, and like the different vegetables in the salad bowl, the distinct cultures retain the juxtaposition and do not assimilate into a single homogeneous culture. But as Asha “brought the knife down hard on the lettuce and watched with satisfaction as brown pieces flew out” (AM 277), as if the memories of her rotten marriage were flying out. After getting estranged from her husband, Mahesh, Asha becomes unburdened from the imposed Indian ways of cooking, tamed lifestyle, and the stretched arranged marriage, “Since Mahesh left, I hardly cook anymore, specially Indian food. I’ve decided that too much of my life has already been wasted mincing and simmering and grinding spices” (AM 275). Thus, it is not only food itself, but the choice of it as well as the aversion to or liking for it, projects the mental state, idiosyncrasies and the shifting moods through the states of different food and the ways food is cooked. Now the food choices of Asha and her son, Dinesh, symbolize the larger choices in their lives and:

the different food practices of the two generations of diasporic characters reveal the distinct ways in which they construct their subjectivity and how they relate to both Bengali cultural practices and to American or other more international, global food practices” (as cited in Awadalla, 2013).

As Asha reflects that, “I wonder if Dinesh, too, misses the curries and dals flavoured with cumin and cilantro and green chillies, the puris and parathas rolled out and fried, puffing up golden brown. Now- a days he mostly eats at Burger King, where he has taken a job” (AM 275).

Asha being the first generation Diaspora somehow wants to, “retain her native culture” and “transfer it to the second generation, it is through the eyes of the older generation that the younger generation perceives and learns about homeland culture” (Agarwal 32). Drifting from his mother, Dinesh sinks into the loneliness and silence, which frightens Asha who subsequently, “fix salads, lots of salads, as though the cucumbers and celery and alfalfa could protect him from failing grades, drugs, street gangs, AIDS. As though the translucent rings of onions and the long curls of carrots could forge a chain that would hold him to me, close, safe forever” (AM 276), and thus wishes her native cuisine to assume the role of a protector and save her son from the issues of an alien country as the Mistress helps her customers with the use of the magical powers of spices in the novel entitled The Mistress of Spices by Divakaruni. But one day the sudden call from Mrinal, Asha’s best friend and competitor in everything, activates Asha who, hiding the sordid reality of her estranged relationship with Mahesh, shares the dreamt image of perfect life. It relieves Asha but give voice to the resentment of Dinesh who abruptly questions, “Why couldn’t you just tell her the fucking truth-that he got tired of you and left you for another woman. . . . You make me sick” (AM 283). The words baffles the mother and when she comes out, “the smell” reminds her of the pizza in the oven, which was “by now a charred black mass” (AM 284), and thus the different states of food symbolizes the different stages of their relationship. To pacify her son, Asha retreats to the native cuisine and make “kachuris” (AM 284), as she states, “I thought we could have dinner together. Dinoo, I’m sorry for what happened” (AM 285). Asha revives the Indian food rituals and etiquettes which leads to the uniformity of the family but fails to pacify her son. It was only when Asha meets Mrinal, shares their conditions and drinks wine, that the reality of a perfect life gets revealed as Asha reveals that, “the perfect life is only an illusion” (AM 299). By the end of the story, Asha wishes to celebrate the imperfection of their precious lives with her son, and thus prepares Pista milk as she says that, “my son and I, and drink to our imperfect precious lives” (AM 300). The different sorts of recipes and culinary works represent the idea of Americanization and the different stages of their relationships, for example, pizza, kachuris, Burger, Wine, and the Pista milk, represents the notions of Americanization and the assertion of the ethnicity in the lives of both the mother and the son. This exquisite relationship which takes shape from Divakaruni’s life, has been shared as, “Mother’s Day reminds me of how important my mother, who pretty much brought us up as a single parent, has been in my life. . . . In the final story in my collection Arranged Marriage, there is the mother who must, in the wake of her failed marriage, establish a new kind of bond with her teenage son” (“Divakaruni”).

CONCLUSION:

Thus the cuisine of India, practised by Indian immigrants in America, being an important symbol, strongly represents the notions of disorientation, establishes the existence of women in Indian diaspora, their assertions and questions of the unique identity as an Indian-American, and the negotiations which they have to exercise to assimilate in the western culture i.e. of America. It can also be asserted that, “Ultimately, it is about much more than food; it is about the people who make and eat that food and the ways in which they create lives for themselves- work identity, communities, meaningfulness-through the food traditions they have inherited and constructed” (Long, 2015). With its obsolete and time consuming nature, the Indian cuisine or the Bengali cuisine provides the haven and comfort to its immigrant practitioners ultimately. As a writer and poet, Divakaruni succeeds in bringing alive the stifling situations which causes the hubbub in the lives of the protagonists with the use of vital images and mesmerizing symbols, and thus achieve the admiration of a number of readers. Her characters rise above the divisions between religions and beliefs so as to overcome the differences among people and cultures.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

I, Gunjan Kapil, pay my regards and thanks to my guide Dr. Gunjan Agarwal for her expertise and insight that greatly assisted this work.

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< http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/blog/2013/6/27/mothers-in-my-fiction>.

Received on 01.07.2016

Modified on 18.07.2016

Accepted on 30.07.2016

Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 7(3): July - September, 2016, 198-204.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2016.00032.2