Sister of My Heart

Food is a multifaceted symbol throughout the novel that often represents the nature and quality of the characters’ relationships with one another. In the early chapters, food is a status symbol, a demonstration of wealth and opulence. The novel gives long descriptions of the preparations for the feasts in honor of the girls’ graduations, their first meeting with the Sanyal family, and their weddings. Similarly, at Ramesh’s house, a “daunting feast” is prepared in response to the arrival of Aunt Tarini, Mrs. Sanyal’s sister-in-law and fierce rival. However, as the novel progresses, food takes on a more complex figurative quality, paralleling the deconstruction of what being a family entails.

Food is most nourishing and healing when offered with love, which the novel frames as food offered freely, that is, free of restraints and free of implied requirements. When Sudha returns to the mothers’ house after leaving Ramesh, their straitened finances are apparent in the simple meal they serve: “a frugal meal of rice and dal and sautéed spinach” (266). Sudha is nonetheless comforted by the meal because it is an expression of the mothers’ love for her: “I didn’t know how starved I’d been for food served with love” (266). In contrast, the dysfunctional dynamics of Sunil’s family are dramatized at the dinner table. Sunil’s narcissistic father uses his elaborate dietary requests to dominate and constrain his wife and son; he demands that each dish serve a specific physiological function, denying the intimate, sensual pleasure of food and the creative agency of his wife. When he discovers his wife has secretly prepared a rich dish for her son, he hurls the dish at her. Sunil metaphorically redresses the wrongs of his father by bringing Anju a rich meal later the same evening, which she consumes voraciously. They make love before and after the meal:

I take big starving bites of the crisp, fried bread and spicy potatoes. I tell him it’s the best tasting meal I have ever had. He catches my hand and licks my fingers one by one and I shiver (185).

The contrast between this voluptuous, loving act of feeding and the repression and humiliation of the earlier scene symbolically distinguishes the marriage of Sunil and Anju from that of Sunil’s parents.

In addition, after Anju moves to the United States, the cultural specificity of food becomes increasingly apparent and, on some levels, emblematic of the diasporic experience. Anju’s first experiences of Chinese cuisine become emblematic of the new world that Sudha enjoys vicariously through her cousin’s letters: “I try out the delicious, exotic syllables—chow fun, mu shu, braised tofu—delighted that she is experiencing so many brave new things. In my reply I address her as Anju, mistress of chopsticks” (201). Over time, though, Anju’s relationship with food becomes problematic. Her homesickness and sense of displacement as she enters her empty flat are associated with the feeling of hunger and, at the same time, a reluctance to cook. Her dislike of cooking becomes emblematic of her rejection of stereotypically feminine roles. In pregnancy, she associates dietary requirements with other patriarchal constraints, neglecting her own health and that of her unborn child, leaving herself with terrible feelings of guilt after her pregnancy loss.