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

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Culinary Narratology 21 practice of culinary skills represents her “arts of existence” which are, in Foucault’s words, “those intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria” (The Use of Pleasure 10-11). In coping with the dispossessed life in diaspora, cookery has become an important way to ease Ashima’s sense of uprootedness and to further re-build a certain degree of self agency and autonomy. In the first half of the novel, Ashima is portrayed as typical immigrant woman who fears that her previous life will vanish and be replaced by “something more complicated and demanding” (49-50). Hence, in the cultural aspects of everyday life, she privileges India over America, as demonstrated by her choices of wearing traditional Indian sari and preserving Bengali food recipes, despite all the inconveniences this entails (65). Dress and food thus become salient cultural possessions that Ashima adheres to in her daily life in order to maintain her familiar cultural identity. In the first half of her immigrant life in the US, Ashima, a faithful, submissive wife as well as a caring mother, considers her husband and children’s interests the most. After the births of Gogol and Sonia, children become Ashima’s second focus with regard to networking with other Bengali immigrant families. Her son Gogol’s baptism, the “annaprasan, his rice ceremony” (38), is the first big event that brings other Bengali families into Ashima’s circle. Though Ashima tries her best to replicate the authenticity of this important ritual, she still feels a sense of loss for she cannot help wishing that her own siblings and parents could be there to feed and bless her son (40). Initially as a newly arrived immigrant, Ashima perceives the US as a foreign country where her son Gogol’s birth “so alone, so deprived” (25) due to the absence of elder relatives’ prayers and blessings for the new born baby. Therefore, the Bengali community serves as her only “acquaintances” or “substitutes for the people who really ought to be surrounding them” (24), providing solace and support. Whenever a decision is to be made, Ashoke and
Culinary Narratology 22 Ashima constantly discuss the issue within this community: “Each step, each acquisition, no matter how small, involves deliberation, consultation with Bengali friends” (64). After Gogol’s annaprasan, there come more gatherings with elaborate feasts, including Sonya’s annaprasan, birthday parties and every Indian as well as American festival. Gradually, the Gangulys acquire new patterns in their immigrant life: “Every weekend, it seems, there is a new home to go to, a new couple or young family to meet. They all come from Calcutta, and for this reason alone they are friends” (38). Communal gatherings have become an important facet of Ashima’s diasporic life. Being a dutiful hostess and preparing all the foods, though exhausting, has become a way that she can define herself in the US. The role of Indian feasts is reconfigured as a cultural signifier in The Namesake, as they are shown as being crucial for the construction and maintenance of Indian communities in the US. On the intertwined relationship between foodways and identity formation, food and its various representations function as markers of cultural difference which generate the formation of collective as well as individual identities within diasporic contexts. This apparent mundaneness and anchorage in everyday life has always endowed Indian food with a significance that is reinforced in another country, and it is consumed as both material and cultural sustenance. To borrow Rushdie’s notion, Kunow notes that, on a cultural level, Indian food is essentially a representation deployed to support the construction of Indian diasporic communities as an “Imaginary Homeland” (157-58). In this regard, what is of particular significance here is how food and related behaviors have been invested with the potential to mediate distances from the subcontinent. Among all food related behaviors, the routine gatherings of Indian immigrant families is of particular importance in The Namesake. The close relationship between food and communal identity can also be traced back to premodern or primitive societies, where “the rituals of eating, sharing food and other activities around food serve to be an integrative mechanism for the whole community” (Falk 24-25). This notion of sharing food and forming a collective identity is further enhanced
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