Interpreter Of Maladies By Lahiri Use Of Food

Good Morning, today I will be presenting on interpreter of Maladies by Jumpa Lahiri and the topic of my presentation is the use of food as a metaphor in Lahiri’s stories. I will be dividing my presentation into two parts, the first part will address the use of food to establish love and the second part will talk about the use of food to establish family. To explain these I will be looking at four stories from the text. The stories are: A Temporary Matter, Interpreter of Maladies, Blessed House and The Third and the Final Continent.
I will address the theme of ‘Love’ through the stories ‘A Temporary Matter’ and ‘Blessed House’ and then I will also be discussing the use of the notion of canned food and fresh food in these stories.
Now, coming

I chose this story because it has a husband and a wife in it who are newly married and have not found love yet. Food is playing a big role in building this relationship. The first reference to food in the story is in the first paragraph itself. The “vinegar bottle” which twinkle finds in the house with the statue acts as a hint of the relationship between twinkle and Sanjeev’s response to both the things. While he does object to both the statue and the vinegar, we see that twinkle finds both of them interesting and wants to keep them both. After that throughout the story we have the vinegar mentioned everywhere in every dish that twinkle makes one such dish is the ‘Stew with fish and the vinegar’ therefore the vinegar become very important throughout the story and serves as a “”. Then we also have other food material which she detested like chopping the garlic, peeling the ginger etc. which all show that she loves the normal ready made food as opposed to any Indian marriage in which a normal wife prepares the food for her huunband out of love. This also indicating to the absence of love in the relationship which is also indicated to by Sanjeev in one of his thoughts when he says that ‘he is not sure whether he loves her or not’. Finally the last thing that I want to refer to from this story is the content of their conversation. As the story reflects, most of their conversation is not normal. Both of them generally

The two stories that I would be looking at are ‘The Third and the Final Continent’ and ‘Interpreter of Maladies’. I have picked up these two stories because in the Third and the final Continent we see a virtual establishment of family while in Interpreter on Maladies we see the exactly opposite happening. A family is getting destroyed. In one the food is a constructive entity while in other the food is a destructive