Week Five: Blog Response

Jhumpa Lahiri, 48, is an Bengali author who was born in the UK and has won the Pulitzer prize for her first novel, Namesake, in 2000. She is also the author of this short story, Pulao. Pulao is a traditional rice of the Bengali culture. Lahiri uses this dish to give her readers an experience in her culture. Bangladesh is a very small country and being next to India, it is overlooked frequently. Interestingly, a lot of Bengalis are taken for Indians which shows they are heavily overlooked. Lahiri's true intention was to use something from her culture to distinguish herself from other cultures, such as Indian, and to make her culture as dynamic and unique as possible. I believe her method of displaying this message was effective because she opened her readers to a new culture that is not represented. Lahiri includes many terms from her culture. This includes andaj, meaning estimate, and annaprasan, meaning right of passage. She successful emerges us into her culture. Lahiri also tries to display her father as the prototype Bengali man. He plays an important role in this story because he is person actually making the rice for his daughter. She details that he was a very methodical man who did everything a specific way. He was so particular in making the Pulao, she was able to describe his method from years of watching him. The rice he made represents him as a man. He made the rice with such precision and this is also how he approached life; everything done with precision. This short story was also very effective in symbolizing. An important symbol is the microwave towards the end. Her father was unable to use the oven; so instead, he unconventionally used a microwave to complete his dish. The microwave, in my opinion, symbolizes that her father was a modest man. Usually, one who is meticulous about everything they do gets frustrated when they do not get their expected outcome. However, Lahiri’s father showed that he is capable of completing this traditional dish is any way possible. Lahiri succeeded at displaying her father as a great man even when he is put in a tough situation. One thing I found to be odd is how short this story is. I assumed that Lahiri would give her readers more examples of her culture to further separate Bengali traditions from other similar traditions. Including maybe a few more examples or anecdotes about her culture would have rid the ignorance of those who confuse Bengali with other cultures due to the fact it is often overlooked. I did enjoy this story because I have personal experience with the Bengali culture and Lahiri helped me get a better understanding of the culture. This was my favorite reading because any reader can relate. Rice is a common dish in many cultures and every culture has different methods of making the rice. Lahiri is also trying to connect all of these cultures by displaying a commonality between almost every culture. Again, I enjoyed this piece.