Jhumpa Lahiri Heritage

969 Words2 Pages

The author of the story was born in 1967 in London, and soon after she moved to Rhode Island in the United States. Although Lahiri was born in England and raised in the United States and her parent’s still carried an Indian cultural background and held their believes, as her father and mother were a librarian and teacher. Author’s Indian heritage is a strong basis of her stories, stories where she questions the identity and the plot of the different cultural displaced. Lahiri always interactive with her parents in Bengali every time which shows she respected her parents and culture. As the author was growing up she never felt that she was a full American, as her parents deep ties with India as they often visited the country. Most of Lahiri’s …show more content…

Kapashi and Das’s both share Indian heritage but their marriage revels how they are from two different cultures. As the family and Mr. Kapashi spend sometime during this travel, he tried to find a common ground between him and Mrs. Das as both of them are unhappy from their current marriage situations but the connection of the common ground fails as, on one hand according to Lahiri states that “Kapashi’s marriage was totally planned by his parents which ended into an arrange marriage hence there was nothing common or similar between the husband and wife where they can tell the younger generation how both Mr and Mrs. Kapashi were totally made for each other” (Lahiri 1024). On the other hand if we look at Mr. and Mrs. Das, they found themselves in love at a very young age, although his parents encouraged their marriage but it was not an arranged marriage. Little later in the story the Lahiri make the major character in the story to Mrs. Das. Her fundamental from the very begging of the story is falling, where she is a very selfish and attention seeking lady. Her selfishness has been proven more then multiple times in the text “as the family was traveling in the car she was putting her make up on, where she denies to help her little daughter to pain her figurea nails” (Lahiri 996). Her cruelty just did not stop there she also denies to share her food with her daughter and there seemed no motherly feeling when she decides not to take her little four year old daughter to the …show more content…

Das shows a stereotypical American flaw where she did not care about her children and went and openly started discussing her personal life and also in the process she found guilty for disrespecting the country and the cultural believes, where she believes it or not she still got the Indian heritage in her. Lahiri’s proves us that Mrs. Das is a messy; lazy and over all a bad parent. She simply has no concern for the environment, as she was completely fine after dropping rice snacks all over the floor riling the local wildlife. Mrs. Das simply represents what’s called “Ugly American” who always stands out in the crowd for her own needs and is very narrow minded and only cares about her self. This showed a complete lack of understanding among them shows a complete difference between the family and culture. Both of these marriages may be unhappy but the cultural difference among them, which results into shattering the idea of Mr. kapashi’s friendship with Mrs. Das. Mr kapashi felt the cultural difference between him and Mrs. das was way to vast and hence he did not even wanted to think about having any further personal conversations. This teaches us how two entirely different people can carry one mutual heritage but being brought up into different cultures can be very different and UN mutual. Looking back in the story we realize and feel how important it is to keep our cultural believes when it comes to interact with different people as we are not only representing

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