Lecture Notes Jhumpa Lahiri (born 1967) • “Once in a Lifetime” (2006) Material Quoted from the Text Appears in Pink Font Some Biographical Highlights ¶¶¶ Jhumpa Lahiri’s first name is a nickname, given to her by a grade-school teacher who found her given name challenging to pronounce. An acclaimed writer of short stories and novels, Lahiri (pictured on the left of this paragraph) mixes cultures, both in her own life and in the lives of many of her fictional characters. She was born in 1967 in London, England, to immigrant parents from Calcutta (now usually spelled Kolkata), capital of the northwest Indian state of West Bengal. When she was just three, the family moved to the U.S. because her father had secured employment as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island. She earned an undergraduate degree (in English) from Barnard College, the women-only college of Columbia University, New York. Next, she obtained three literature-related master’s degrees from Boston University before completing, at the same institution, a PhD in Renaissance Studies. Her international sensibility is further reflected in her mastery of Italian; she has both written and translated fiction in that language. In 2014, President Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal; and the following year Princeton University appointed her a professor of creative writing. ¶¶¶ Lahiri’s short story titled “Once in a Lifetime” was first published in The New Yorker magazine in 2006 and later republished as part of Unaccustomed Earth (2008), a book of short stories. Hema, the narrator or speaker, may, from early in life, have been pressured by her parents to over-achieve academically. One wonders if Lahiri, too, may have felt similar pressure, if not from home then from elements within Indian- American society, which numbers around four-and-a-half million people. When stereotyping that community as fixating on its children’s scholastic success (a phenomenon often called “tiger parenting”) some observers cite the disproportionate representation of Indian-Americans in the top-tier of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. In 2019, eight of the nine young people declared co-winners of the competition were of that ethnic background. We note that, in adolescence, Hema was “quizzed” each Sunday by her father in anticipation of her “weekly [school] spelling test.” ¶¶¶ For several centuries, India was colonized by the British: initially by a for-profit commercial enterprise, the British East India Company; then by the regular British state or crown (a regime known as the Raj). Arguably, the priority on achievement manifest among members of the Indian diaspora (i.e. those who identify as Indian but live abroad) is a response to India’s long history of being treated as second-class and dependent — as a subservient, oriental (or Eastern) unit 1 within the British Empire. “Once in a Lifetime” is peppered with pop-cultural references, such as one, at the conclusion of a discrete sequence within the narrative, to The Empire Strikes Back, the second release in the Star Wars series and the highest-grossing film of 1980. (Its famous plot twist is Dark Vader’s revelation to Luke Skywalker that they are father and son.) Modern Indians who relocate abroad and then accomplish great things have sometimes been seen as instances of India’s “striking back” against the British Empire in particular and the West in general. One notes that the top slot on the “rich list” in present-day Britain is occupied by two Indian-born brothers, the Hindujas, whose Hinduja Group is an industrial behemoth that embraces truck-manufacture, petrochemicals, banking, media, and more. One can also readily acknowledge the disproportionate impact of Indian-born scientists and entrepreneurs upon the US technology sector, a matter merely touched on in the following graphic: ¶¶¶ Hana, the narrator of “Once in a Lifetime,” and Kaushik, her teenage infatuation, represent two different responses to the Indian diaspora’s emphasis on achievement. Given her references to school, piano, and other related activities, we can assume that Hana’s parents strongly encouraged — and perhaps even actively compelled (or harassed) — her to build an outstanding resume. It seems that, by contrast, Kaushik resented and resisted similar pressure from his parents. Hema observes that he “eluded [his] parents’ grasp,” in part by “not … talk[ing] to them very much.” Behind his back, his father would criticize Kaushik as “a typical American teen-ager,” implying that the youth refused to align with the norm for his ethnic community. Tellingly, the 16-year-old Kausik declined Hema’s invitation to go to the movies to catch The Empire Strikes Back. In general, he may have wished to avoid “epic” gestures in asserting Indian attainment; however, as we shall see, he was not always passive as regards claiming a piece of the colonial pie — or, in his case, the colonial trifle. ¶¶¶ Lahiri’s first major published work, Interpreter of Maladies (1999) — a collection of nine short stories — won the Pulitzer Prize; and she has garnered several other top literary and humanities honors in addition, not least the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. ¶¶¶ Of particular relevance to key plot details in the short story “Once in a Lifetime” is Lahiri’s debut novel The Namesake (2003), which traces a Bengali family’s odyssey from Calcutta to suburban Boston, “eight thousand miles away.” While the husband, Ashoke, adjusts fairly well 2 to graduate school at M.I.T. (where his PhD focuses on fiber optics), the wife, Ashima, battles homesickness for Bengal. One instance where the diaspora’s psychological and emotional discomfort echoes in “Once in a Lifetime” is the characterization (by the narrator or speaker, Hema) of living in the U.S. as “the struggle that my parents and their [fellow Bengali-immigrant] friends … embarked on.” In Boston in August 1968, Ashima gives birth to a son, who receives from his dad the nickname Gogol. The boy, thus, is the namesake of the Ukrainian-born, Russian-language author Nickolai Gogol, a book of whose short stories Ashoke had once received from his beloved grandfather, a literature professor. Mira Nair directed a 2006 movie version of The Namesake, whose tagline declared, “the greatest journeys are the ones that bring you home.” Some Plot Basics Kaushik’s Family Hema’s Family !কৗিশক or Kaushik means “sentiment [feeling] of !হমা or Hema means “golden” love” and traditionally referred to a sage or wise man Choudhuri Family Name not given Means “land-holder” and traditionally referred to the leader within a community Shibani Parul Mother Refers to the Hindu goddess of war, Durga, in her capacity as the wife of Shiva, destroyer of Means “graceful” or “gracefully flowing water” evil, one of the supreme beings not given Father Teaches economics at Northeastern University, Dr. Choudhuri Boston Choudhuri Family Leaves Greater Boston Area for Bombay in 1974 ¶¶¶ “Once in a Lifetime” is narrated by Hema, an adult who may be in or beyond her twenties. She does not address the reader but, instead, a “you.” That individual turns out to be Kaushik Choudhuri, three years her senior. Both Hema and Kaushik are only children. In 1974, when Hema was six, her parents (whose family name we never learn) hosted a “farewell” party for Kaushik and his parents, who had determined to leave Cambridge (near downtown Boston), Massachusetts, and return to India. At that time, Hema’s family was living in Inman Square, a neighborhood in Cambridge; later, they moved to Sharon, a town almost 30 miles south of Cambridge. (Sharon is a half-hour direct train ride from Northeastern University, Hema’s father’s place of employment.) Both families are Bengali Hindus who emigrated from the city of Calcutta (Kolkata), capital of Bengal, so the fathers could earn doctoral degrees, probably from “Harvard [or] M.I.T.,” prestigious universities located in Cambridge. As an adolescent, Hema was perplexed by her parents’ insistence that she always refer to and address Kaushik’s father as Dr. Choudhuri; she complains, “Baba [daddy] has his Ph.D. and no one calls him a doctor.” ¶¶¶ In 1974, the Choudhuri family was not going back to Calcutta or some other part of Bengal, but instead was moving to the city of Bombay (Mumbai) — almost 1,300 miles from Calcutta — where Dr. Choudhuri had been hired by “Larsen & Toubro”: an offer “too good to turn down.” Natives of Bengal speak Bengali (230 million native speakers), while the dominant language in Bombay is Marathi (83.1 million native speakers). At one juncture, Kaushik emphasizes that “Bombay is nothing like Calcutta.” Further complicating the identity calculus is the fact that Larsen & Toubro, a multinational corporation, was founded in Bombay in 1938 by two immigrant engineers from the European nation of Denmark. It is a major industrial conglomerate with substantial presences in several sectors, including, but by no means limited to: construction, engineering, and manufacturing (of ships, trains, defense systems, and more). 3 ¶¶¶ Yet another addition to the ethnic and religious landscape is the Choudhuris’ decision to hire, as they established themselves in Bombay, “Zareen, [a] fabulous Parsi cook.” The term Parsi means “Persian” (or Iranian), and it refers to how in the seventh century a community of Persians who followed the prophet Zoroaster migrated to India (and South Asia more generally) due to a Muslim invasion of their homeland. While Parsis are numerically few (only around 61,000 in present-day India), they are especially concentrated in Bombay. Their entrepreneurial, commercial, and military contributions to India have been exceptional. In 1966, the Parsi Cyrus Poonawalla founded Serum Institute of India, now earth’s largest manufacturer of vaccines.