Food & Melancholia
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Having reread The Namesake recently for the podcast assignment, Jhumpa Lahiri's descriptions of food in the diasporic context were fresh on my mind as I did the readings for this class. Ashima's character is a perfect example of how migrant melancholia lives on through food - the novel opens with her trying to recreate Bengali jhalmuri using commonly found American snacks, an attempt at bridging the gap between Boston and home using whatever she had on hand. As Mannur writes in Culinary Fictions, "the desire for Indian food is mediated by a form of nostalgia that can only exist once she has left the physical borders of India" (31). Ashima's nostalgia for Bengali street food is inherently melancholic, since she is aware that she can no longer eat it as often as she craves it; she has to grapple with this loss, among many others, as a result of moving to America. Food becomes a symbol of lack and desire, with Ashima always coming close to fulfilling this desire through her own cooking but never quite reaching satisfaction.
I also think her use of American snacks like Rice Krispies as a replacement for Indian muri (puffed rice) provides an alternate perspective to Buettner's analysis of culinary fusions in British-Indian cooking. She writes that the adoption of chicken tikka masala as a "British national dish" suggests that it has been "assimilated" and "possessed" by Britain, in a way that continues to reinforce white British hegemony by only allowing multiculturalism on British terms (Buettner 146-7). Here, the fusion of chicken tikka and the non-traditional "masala gravy" is a useful performance of multiculturalism for Britain to use since it does not threaten their national identity. It does more for the British than it does for the South Asian immigrants who only invented this dish to appease British tastes. In Ashima's case in The Namesake, however, she uses American flavours to create a Bengali dish that appeases only herself - which flips the script around, allowing culinary fusions to also serve as a personal way of coming to terms with a new country.
Food is one of the most important markers of identity for anyone simply due to its ubiquity, but it is especially important for immigrants since it is one of the main ways through which they can preserve their heritage even in foreign lands. Eating makes you feel you belong - a necessary sentiment for those who are so far away from their homes.