Story: \"Rice\"

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Jhumpa Lahiri was born inLondon in 1967. Her family moved to the United States, where sheattended Barnard College and received multiple graduate degrees,including a Ph.D. in Renaissance studies from Boston University.She is the author of three books, including Interpreter of Maladies(1999) and The Namesake (2003), as well as many short stories.Lahiri has won several literary awards, including a Pulitzer Prizeand a PEN/Hemingway Award. Her fiction often explores Indian andIndian-American life and culture — as does this personal essay,which originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine. Background onrice Along with corn and wheat, rice remains one of the mostimportant crops in the world, especially in Asia, where it has beencultivated for thousands of years. Rice accounts for between 35percent and 85 percent of the calories consumed by billions ofpeople living in India, China, and other Asian countries. Indeed,the ancient Indian word for rice (“dhanya”) means “sustainer of thehuman race.” But rice can be symbolic as well: we throw rice atweddings because it suggests fertility and prosperity. For Lahiri,the significance of rice is personal rather than universal. Shedescribes her father’s pulao dish as both an expression of hisidiosyncratic personality and a symbol that binds her familytogether. My father, seventy-eight, is a methodical man. Forthirty-nine years, he has had the same job, cataloguing books for auniversity library. He drinks two glasses of water first thing inthe morning, walks for an hour every day, and devotes almost asmuch time, before bed, to flossing his teeth. “Winging it” is not aterm that comes to mind in describing my father. When he’s drivingto new places, he does not enjoy getting lost. In the kitchen, too,he walks a deliberate line, counting out the raisins that go intohis oatmeal (fifteen) and never boiling even a drop more water thanrequired for tea. It is my father who knows how many cups of riceare necessary to feed four, or forty, or a hundred and fortypeople. He has a reputation for andaj — the Bengali word for“estimate” — accurately gauging quantities that tend to baffleother cooks. An oracle of rice, if you will. But there is anotherrice that my father is more famous for. This is not the white rice,boiled like pasta and then drained in a colander, that mostBengalis eat for dinner. This other rice is pulao, a baked,buttery, sophisticated indulgence, Persian in origin, served atfestive occasions. I have often watched him make it. It involvessautéing grains of basmati in butter, along with cinnamon sticks,cloves, bay leaves, and cardamom pods. In go halved cashews andraisins (unlike the oatmeal raisins, these must be golden, not 1 23 08_KIR_67684_CH7_151_210.indd 172 Achorn International 11/04/201103:45PM 08_KIR_67684_CH7_151_210.indd 173 Achorn International11/04/2011 03:45PM lahiri /Rice 173 black). Ginger, pulverized intoa paste, is incorporated, along with salt and sugar, nutmeg andmace, saffron threads if they’re available, ground turmeric if not.A certain amount of water is added, and the rice simmers until mostof the water evaporates. Then it is spread out in a baking tray.(My father prefers disposable aluminum ones, which he recycled longbefore recycling laws were passed.) More water is flicked on topwith his fingers, in the ritual and cryptic manner of Catholicpriests. Then the tray, covered with foil, goes into the oven,until the rice is cooked through and not a single grain sticks toanother. Despite having a superficial knowledge of the ingredientsand the technique, I have no idea how to make my father’s pulao,nor would I ever dare attempt it. The recipe is his own, and hasnever been recorded. There has never been an unsuccessful batch,yet no batch is ever identical to any other. It is a dish that hasbecome an extension of himself, that he has perfected, and to whichhe has earned the copyright. A dish that will die with him when hedies. In 1968, when I was seven months old, my father made pulaofor the first time. We lived in London, in Finsbury Park, where myparents shared the kitchen, up a steep set of stairs in the atticof the house, with another Bengali couple. The occasion was myannaprasan, a rite of passage in which Bengali children are givensolid food for the first time; it is known colloquially as a bhath,which happens to be the Bengali word for “cooked rice.” In the ovenof a stove no more than twenty inches wide, my father baked pulaofor about thirty-five people. Since then, he has made pulao for theannaprasans of his friends’ children, for birthday parties andanniversaries, for bridal and baby showers, for wedding receptions,and for my sister’s Ph.D. party. For a few decades, after we movedto the United States, his pulao fed crowds of up to four hundredpeople, at events organized by Prabasi, a Bengali culturalinstitution in New England, and he found himself at institutionalvenues — schools and churches and community centers — working withindustrial ovens and stoves. This has never unnerved him. He couldprobably rig up a system to make pulao out of a hot-dog cart, weresomeone to ask. There are times when certain ingredients aremissing, when he must use almonds instead of cashews, when theraisins in a friend’s cupboard are the wrong color. He makes itanyway, with exacting standards but a sanguine hand. When my sonand daughter were infants, and we celebrated their annaprasans, wehired a caterer, but my father made the pulao, preparing it at homein Rhode Island and transporting it in the trunk of his car toBrooklyn. The occasion, both times, was held at the Society forEthical Culture, in Park Slope. In 2002, for my son’s first tasteof rice, my father warmed the trays on the premises, in the giantoven in the basement. But by 2005, when it was my daughter’s turn,the representative on duty would not permit my father to use theoven, telling him that he was not a licensed cook. My fathertransferred the pulao from his aluminum 4 5 6 708_KIR_67684_CH7_151_210.indd 174 Achorn International 11/04/201103:45PM 08_KIR_67684_CH7_151_210.indd 175 Achorn International11/04/2011 03:45PM trays into glass baking dishes, and microwaved,batch by batch, rice that fed almost a hundred people. When I askedmy father to describe that experience, he expressed no frustration.“It was fine,” he said. “It was a big microwave.”

Comprehension

1. How does Lahiri describe her father? What is his mostimportant character trait?

2. According to Lahiri, what is special about pulao? Why is itserved just on festive occasions?

3. What is an annaprasan? Why is this occasion so important toBengalis?

4. Why, according to Lahiri, would she never try to makepulao?

5. What does Lahiri mean when she says that pulao is a dish forwhich her father “has earned the copyright” (4)?

Purpose and Audience

1. How much does Lahiri assume her readers know about Bengaliculture? How can you tell?

2. Is this essay simply about rice — more specifically pulao —or is it also about something else? Explain.

3. Does this essay have an explicitly stated or an impliedthesis? What dominant impression do you think Lahiri wants toconvey?

Style and Structure

1. Why does Lahiri begin her essay by describing her father?

2. This essay is divided into three parts: the first describesLahiri’s father; the second describes the making of pulao; and thethird describes the occasions on which her father cooked pulao. Howdoes Lahiri signal the shift from one part of the essay to another?What other strategies could she have used?

3. Why does Lahiri go into so much detail about her father’spulao recipe?

4. What does pulao mean to Lahiri? Does it have the same meaningfor her father? Explain.

5. Why does Lahiri end her essay with a quotation? Is this aneffective closing strategy? What other strategies could she haveused? 174 Description 08_KIR_67684_CH7_151_210.indd 174 AchornInternational 11/04/2011 03:45PM 08_KIR_67684_CH7_151_210.indd 175Achorn International 11/04/2011 03:45PM Lahiri /Rice 175

Vocabulary Projects

1. Define each of the following words as it is used in thisselection. methodical (1) colander (3) deliberate (2) sanguine (6)oracle (2) 2. Throughout her essay, Lahiri uses several Bengaliwords. What might she have gained or lost if she had used Englishequivalents?

Journal Entry

What food do you associate with a specific member of yourfamily? Why do you think this food has the association it does?