Culinary Narratology in Everyday Life: Foodways and Identity ...

Culinary Narratology 18
In this specific context, fish is regarded as a floating signifier that simultaneously reveals
and resists the colonizing imprint of otherness in the form of reconfigured culinary heritage.
The consumption of fish plays an essential part in Calcutta life. As Mrs. Sen recalls, she has
grown up eating fish twice a day, and people in Calcutta eat fish “first thing in the morning,
last thing before bed” (123). Eating fresh fish has become an inscribed urge within Mrs.
Sen’s body, incorporated in her daily life. In the US, where fresh fish is not easily to be
acquired, “[i]t was always a whole fish she desired,” the narrative voice observes, “not
shellfish, or the fillets that Eliot’s mother had broiled one night when she’d invited a man
from her office to dinner” (123). Due to its scarcity, each time when she has fresh fish Mrs.
Sen treats it very carefully: “she pulled the blade out of the cupboard, spread newspapers
across the carpet, and inspected her treasures. One by one she drew them from the paper
wrapping, wrinkled and tinged with blood . . .” (127). This behavior with the fish is a way
for Mrs. Sen to practice an important ritual in which she can find solace. To a certain degree,
the fresh fish gives Mrs. Sen the security of cultural belonging.
Lahiri uses Mrs. Sen’s hardships and set-backs in acquiring fresh fish as ways of
defining the external parameters of her terrain, which is understood in terms of her kitchen or
apartment (Kunow 168). Tragically, the route from Mrs. Sen’s apartment to the fish market
symbolizes an obstacle course that exposes her predicament as an immigrant whose lack of
mobility indicates a lack of capability in constructing a flexible identity. These
inconvenience and hindrance do not impede Mrs. Sen’s determination on cooking a fish in a
traditional as well as authentic Bengali way. Due to the humiliating experience Mrs. Sen
confronts on the bus while she was on her way home from seaside shop, 6 the second time
when Mrs. Sen has to get the fish by herself, she prefers to risk driving to the seaside rather
than take a bus. For once, she overcomes her fear and decides to use the car, taking Eliot
along with her. Yet on the way to the fish shop she has an accident: “she is startled by other
cars’ horn and hits a telephone pole on the opposite corner” (134). When the policeman