One of the characters from the Interpreter of Maladies I felt the most
attached to is Mrs. Sen, and only after finishing the story I realized that
maybe it’s because I’ve never seen a character who is a more exact copy of my
grandmother. Maybe my grandma doesn’t have a full closet of saris or wear
bright red lipstick, but I’m pretty sure the only things she cares about in her
life are family and… food! (well, and maybe soccer matches) And I actually
think there is nothing she likes more than fish. When I go to Russia in the summer,
my grandmother seems to have a goal to feed me and my mom the most nutritious,
freshest food, and get us to eat as much as possible. When I call her on a
weekend, at any time I’ve learned to expect her to have to run turn off the
stove because she has something cooking. Sometimes my mom and I can’t stand the
food anymore, but I think after reading this story I sort of understand my
grandmother better.
The first thing that appeals to Elliot
about Mrs. Sen is her cooking. “He especially enjoyed watching Mrs. Sen as she
chopped things […].” No wonder. I imagined if I were a little boy, I would have
been fascinated by this lady’s cooking.
“[…] she took whole vegetables between her
hands and hacked them apart: cauliflower, cabbage, butternut squash. She split
things in half, then quarters, speedily producing florets, cubes, slices, and
shreds. She could peel a potato in seconds.”
It’s not just the cooking but also Mrs.
Sen’s stories about her life in India that drew Elliot closer to his
baby-sitter with each visit. One day, she explains the mysterious hour-long
daily chopping routine by telling Elliot about a tradition in her “home”:
“’Whenever there is a wedding in the
family, […] or a large celebration of any kind, my mother sends out word in the
evening [and] all the neighborhood women
[…] sit in an enormous circle on the
roof of our building, laughing and gossiping and slicing fifty kilos of vegetables
through the night.”
The impression I got is that, yes, Mrs. Sen
loves to have a good meal and to get a fresh fish from the store, but what’s
more important isn’t the food itself but the connections of these foods to her
heritage and to her home in India. While Mr. Sen is usually away at his work
teaching classes, socializing with his American colleagues and students and
slowly becoming more American himself, Mrs. Sen always wants to greet him with
a traditional Indian dinner and to stick to the traditions of the many
generations of her family.
It’s interesting what contrast Elliot sees
between Mrs. Sen and his mother. Of course there are the cultural differences in
clothing and the way they keep their homes, but I wanted to focus on food and
cooking. It’s not just for her husband that Mrs. Sen cooks. When Elliot is
over, she always makes sure he has enough food, giving him snacks like crackers
with peanut butter, Popsicles, “peeled wedges of an orange, or lightly salted
peanuts, which she had already shelled,”
and any food she and Mr. Sen happen to be eating while Elliot is over. Every
day when Elliot’s mom comes to pick her up, Mrs. Sen makes sure to have her
come inside and have some food as well (which Elliot’s mom never likes but
calls “delicious” out of politeness). In contrast, we see Elliot’s mother who
never eats lunch herself and, when she comes home, drinks wine and gorges
herself on bread with cheese, often leaving the store-bought pizza for Elliot
to eat alone. It’s true that Elliot’s mother can’t afford to spend the whole
day cooking at home like Mrs. Sen, and I think Elliot understand that and seems
to be okay with that lifestyle, but he’s surprised to see the values of his
Indian babysitter so different from his mother’s. I also often got a feeling
that he respects Mrs. Sen for putting so much care into preparing food and,
maybe without realizing it, sometimes wishes his mother was more like her.
For Mrs. Sen, food helps her retain her
family’s culture and remember her life before she came to America. It’s not as
much about the pleasure of eating good food as the pleasure from sharing a
traditional meal with someone. Somehow this care about food made Mrs. Sen very
appealing to me, especially after contrasting her to Elliot’s mother and
thinking about many other typical Americans who don’t consider family meals or
family time in general as important.
Getting back to my grandma, I think the
biggest reason she takes such care to cook a lot when my mom and I come over is
to keep us healthy and vitaminized, but another big reason must be that it’s a
family tradition. She wants me to have the traditional Russian food that can’t
be quite the same if we cook it with American products, and she wants my mom to
enjoy traditional well-cooked meals that she wouldn’t have enough time to cook
after she gets back from work. My grandma enjoys sitting at a table and
drinking tea and talking after each meal. I think I will now appreciate her
efforts to feed me even when I’m full a little bit more.
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