Anita Desai’s novel Fasting, Feasting looks at the consumption of food between families in both India and the United States. The first part of the novel is focused on the life of Uma, a daughter who is tied to her parents’ every want and need in India, while the second part of the novel looks at how her brother, Arun, in how he adapts to life in the American suburbs. It’s interesting how Desai chose to put one family member, the one who has the most freedom to try new things, in American society to compare and contrast the two social systems. Food is a central issue in this novel, and Desai does a remarkable job in showing how in both societies food takes precedence over everything else. The way in which she set up her novel shows that the societies are both very different although the importance of food remains important in both. Her formatting of the novel is up for interpretation though. Does the dual structure of Fasting, Feasting allow for an easier comparison of consumption in India and the United States since they are separated in such a manner? I believe that in separating the narratives written about India and America, Desai has made it easier for her readers to see how consumption takes place in both societies.
Desai has her novel divided into two parts with the first part taking up almost three-fourths of the entire book and the last part taking up just one-fourth. The way in which she formats the two sections helps her set up the distinctions between the societies that are worlds away from each other. When it comes to the first part that is focused on India, the chapters are very long and drawn out, and overall it moves very slowly. The second part, however, is quite the contrary. Its chapters are very short and it seems to flow a lot quicker than the beginning of the book. This is symbolic in the way that the two societies run. America is a very fast paced society that never slows down while India seems to be a calming land with a flow of its own. I believe that in separating the novel into two parts, Desai was able to focus more on each country at hand to develop a more detailed description of how life takes place there. Literary scholar, Angelia Poon, agrees with my point here. She says:
Thus, rather than interspersing Uma’s story with Arun’s narrative or splicing both stories, Desai realizes her insistence on an unequal world by literally dividing her novel into two parts. This bifurcated and bifocal narrative structure, part of the novel’s transnational politics, shows us two fairly circumscribed worlds where there is little room for border-crossing, seepage, and hybrid identities (Poon, 37).
Poon believes that in focusing on the narrative as two separate structures, the readers are able to see Uma’s story and Arun’s narrative for themselves. Although they are occurring simultaneously, their separation allows for no confusion as to which ideals belong to which society. The reader is still able to juxtapose Indian society and American society in terms of consumption by reading the stories separately.
It is a justifiable case that Poon states here as India and America do differ very much in regards to politics and power. India was recently under control by the British colony while America has been a free country for many years. It is important for readers to keep this in mind as they look at each part of the novel because it is easier to understand why people act a certain way in society due to how they are ruled. Indian society, again, seems very old-fashioned with an easy pace because they’re used to following orders and living out their daily lives in a uniform manner. American society is much quicker and more open because they have been a free country for quite some time. She also brings up border-crossing and hybridity as ideas that don’t really come to focus too much because the societies are so separate. Arun physically crosses a border as he moves from India to America and he could be faced with hybridity as he tried to merge the culture of his homeland with America, but being that these two sections are separate readers don’t concentrate on that aspect of the story as much.
It is easy to think of Arun as a hybrid character at the start because you can assume that he will merge the two cultures together, but in fact he becomes very caught up in the society in America and starts to lose his Indian ways for American traditions. He struggles finding food to eat in this new society because everything seems to be very raw. Arun was used to his vegetarian lifestyle in Indian, but that food choice in America is very different. His host mother, Mrs. Patton, tried her best to make him meals with vegetables, but they were still very Americanized with raw vegetables. Yet, he didn’t back down because they weren’t what he was used to. He suffered through it and ate the food that she had made (Desai, 184-5) Although he is able to point out many American ways of life that are quite foreign to him, like buying food in bulk, he still falls into living that lifestyle when he is with the Patton family. One may argue that he does let go of his Indian culture as he gives his shawl and tea to Mrs. Patton at the end as well (Desai, 228). These are the only two pieces that Arun has to remind him of his homeland, and he realizes he doesn’t need them anymore. Therefore, he makes the best use out of them and gives a little bit of his culture away. Sybil Steinberg agrees in her book review of the novel because he says, “…his final act in the novel suggests both how far he has come and how much he has lost” (Steinberg, 56). By living in American society for just a short while Arun was able to think, act, and eat American. Anita Poon looks at this in a more theoretical way in connecting it with the separation aspect.
Poon goes on to say, “The attempt to capture simultaneity and coevality, in order to suggest disjunction as well as possible connections between gendered subjects and different cultures, forms part of Desai’s novelistic vision or what we may call her ‘imagined world’” (Poon, 37). This idea of an imagined world comes from the work of Arjun Appadurai, and it looks at the combined worlds of different cultures that come together to form another world that becomes a vital part of the global economy (Appadurai, 25). This imagined world becomes real in Arun’s America as he joins in the Indian Diaspora and his home culture crosses the border into his new country. By creating this imagined world, readers are able to look at the two societies and easily compare them in ways of consumption and beyond.
As the title suggests, Desai sets up a very distinct food system in both parts of her novel. In India, they seem to always be thinking about food and what they‘re going to be eating at the next dinner, but they don’t eat besides at dinner. In America, food is bought in bulk so people can snack on it throughout the day. Uma is part of a society that eats to live and Arun is living in a society that lives to eat. This imagined world that Desai sets up with the two cultures could very well change the outlook on globalization, or at least it could help establish the fact that similarities can be found in areas of difference around the world. Although America is more consumer-minded and food seems to be held on a higher scale than in India, food is just as important in Arun’s homeland as it is in the country he is now living in, and by placing these realizations at opposite ends of the novel it is easier for readers to understand that comparison.
Along with food, the idea of consumption seems to be a large part of this novel. Food is made to be consumed in both societies, but a different light is cast on the way it is consumed based on how the society is run. As mentioned earlier, America is a very consumer-minded society while Indian society is very tradition in that they don’t have supermarkets on every corner. The ways in which these societies have been run in the global world have a lot to do with this situation. The freedom of American society has allowed for a capitalist system to be set up with a free market. This is why America is full of so many restaurants and businesses. When it comes to India though, just getting away from British rule, they’re working to build back their political power in the world. Naturally, they wouldn’t have as big of a business industry to disperse on food.
Interestingly enough, this idea of consumption goes beyond just the quantity of places in which you can get food in each country. Dinner time is connected with consumption in a very close manner, and because of the way each society is set up dinner occurs very differently in each. In India, the family sits down together and eats the same meal and overall the meal seems to be healthy mix. There is a hierarchy at the table as the women have to help the man with different aspects of his meal such as peeling his orange, but I believe experiences like that really help the family bond and connect over dinner. It is, in fact, much the contrary in American society. As the Patton family doesn’t even eat with each other in the book. Everyone seems to do their own thing as they pick what they would like to eat, but there is a large disconnect between the family. Dinner time should be a time of collective consumption between families, but this isn’t so in America and problems occur because of it. In the novel, the Patton’s daughter only eats certain foods and she is found to be bulimic because she doesn’t always keep her food down, on purpose, after eating it. This is one of the largest issues of consumption in the book, and it happens because society in America is so open. Once again, if these two families were side-by-side in the novel it would be hard to see this connection while hooking each individual case back to something in that society.
I believe that while looking at consumption in regards to each society in this novel, it helps that Desai wrote two separate parts. In connecting the idea in a postcolonial light while looking at the power in each country, the author was able to write vivid parts that could stand alone as single stories or move together as one. It is interesting that consumption of food although very different in each society in quality and quantity, is actually a factor in India as well as American. Having a little universality in the book helps connect the theme across borders for the two distinct parts, but making the two distinct parts really helps set apart the idea of consumption in both societies for readers to easily compare.
Work Cited
- Aldama, Fredrick Luis. “Book Review-Fasting, Feasting.” World Literature Today 74.1 (2000): 240. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
- Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theorizing Diaspora. Ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 25-27. Print.
- Desai, Anita. Fasting, Feasting. New York: Mariner Books, 1999. Print.
- Moeller, Dianna. “Book Review-Fasting, Feasting.” Library Journal 125.2 (2000): 115. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
- Poon, Angelia. “In a Transnational World: Exploring Gendered Subjectivity, Mobility, and Consumption in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting.” Ariel 37.2/3 (2006): 33-48. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
- Ravichandran, T. “Entrapments at Home and Abroad in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting.” Indian English Literature: A Post Colonial Response. Ed. Gajendra Kumar and Uday Shankar Ojha. Darya Ganj, New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2005. 80-89. Print.
- Steinberg, Sybil. “Forecasts: Fiction.” Publishers Weekly 246.49 (1999): 55. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
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