When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

As I sip my coffee, and the mist clears from my eyes and mind, I imagine living in the times of Kishore Kumar, partition, hunger, fear and politics. In a time, when the daily monotonies are lost in the chaos of reality. And maybe in a time when you have the luxury to observe and comment on the same from the safe havens of your plush living room.

In her second short story, Jhumpa Lahiri masters the art of a linear story teller. The  first person narrator,Lilia situates the reader “In the Autumn of 1971” in the natural foliage of Boston University. It is a story which grows with its narrator, as she learns of the partition, the civil war, the riots through her dad, the television and an old history textbook on her school library.

The author has paid special attention to time in this short story as compared to the last one,  with Lilia remembering her old days through dates. March 1971 : Dacca is invaded by West Pakistan; Autumn 1971 : Mr Pirzada comes to dine with them; End of Summer 1971 : death toll mounts to 3,00,000 and Mr. Pirzada has become a regular at their home, October 1971 : footage from Dacca heavily censored, December 4 : after 12 days of war, Pakistan army surrenders and in January, Mr. Pirzada leaves for home.

Lahiri paints a black and white picture of the story, the black part being the story of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; and the white one the story of Lilia. The black begins with Dacca being invaded : “teachers were dragged onto streets and shot, women dragged into barracks and raped” and the white set in the Boston foliage with Lilia’s parents going through the phone directory to increase their circle of Indian friends. The black darkens with Pakistan engaging in civil war: a scarcity of resources, and the white thickens with Lilia’s parents bickering about the shortage of mustard oil (in the local market), no house-calls and no neighbors. There is this particular scene when Lilia’s father takes her into the black, explaining life in India in 1947, while her mother slowly pulls her back into the white with “a safe life, an easy life, a fine education and every opportunity”.

A subtle dig is taken at the US education system here, in which the students are taught about US history, US geography and US political affairs and a lot is said in the few words of Lilia’s teacher when she finds the girl reading a book on Pakistan :

“Is this book a part of your report, Lilia?”

“No, Mrs. Kenyon.”

“Then I see no point to consult it, do you?”

In the end of the political discussion of the story, it’s safe to conclude that the little girl is lost in the amalgamation of life outside and inside her home. Mr. Pirzada is instrumental in the sudden push of the girl into the confusing world of politics, the process of which I will write about soon.

A temporary matter : halt, avoidance, silence and disintegration.

The free indirect disperse begins with a notice that is delivered to the couple. No formal introduction of characters, no background details : Lahiri just pushes the reader right into the middle of the story. Though as the story unfolds, the past is very methodically amalgamated into the present.

On a very shallow ground, plot-wise the first short story is about a couple, where the wife has recently had a miscarriage and how their fairy –tale wedding has turned into a torturous routine. Both the man and wife have been described almost completely, a little more attention paid to the detailing of the lady, as the narrator fluctuates between third person and Shukumar, the husband. They have a house, she has a job, he is a phd student, she had a miscarriage, he is working on a thesis, she is earning, he cooks and she gyms. One normal day, they get a notice that their lights will be cut out for an hour in the night and it is during these nights that they start opening up to each other again, till the point that they have nothing more to hide and can peacefully part.

If one reads carefully, it is very easy to notice that language becomes an emotional tool for Lahiri. Their marriage is disintegrating, just like the language of the text. And the disintegration, from the characters seeps into to their household, into their daily lives. Shoba, in happier days planned ahead of her time, whether it be that extra toothbrush for an unexpected night guest, the endless food supplies , or the savings from her promotions into a separate bank account for the rainy days. But after the tragedy, she not only physically disintegrates : “looking at 33, like the type of woman she’d once claimed she would never resemble” or “she looked like that sometimes…on mornings after a party or a night at a bar, when she’d been too lazy”, but allows the disintegration to slowly settle in into a monotony : the late coming from work, the casual littering of things around and the late payment of bills.

It begins with subtle avoidance : the “no-longer looking into each other’s eyes” , the “not reaching out for each other before sleeping”,  the "not having dinner together", the "avoiding of friends" and the avoidance reaches to the extremity of not talking to each other. And the avoidance soon grows into indifference.

As the couple get self-conscious and engrossed in to their own lives : him with the cooking and her with the work, we can feel the disintegration settling in. With Shukumar, the same is depicted through his cooking. Food is a prominent theme in most of the nine short stories, and in this one, Lahiri very beautifully evokes the olfactory sense with the smells and sights of the Indian cuisine. The dishes are well prepared which makes the reader want to believe that the husband is still hoping to salvage the relationship but the description of the running out of food supplies, the quick-fix techniques he has to use to put together a nice dish, provoke a strong sense of a calamity at short hand.

The strong feeling of disintegration is reinforced with silences of the characters. A lively young couple, with curiosity unbound, turned into mute figures of hopelessness.

The reader is fooled into believing that their one-hour dark conversations every night might save them, but as they slowly confide into each other, their secrets, the illusion of re-union is very delicately shattered. So yes, the story has a sad undertone. Lahiri seems part modernist, with a subtle description of reality and no malice in the text : no false hopes and no fairy tale endings.