Fasting, Feasting

The contrasting role of food and diet within the novel’s two prominent families both develops the appearance of masculine authority and exposes the limitations of its communal control. In India, food and diet are a way to project status within the family. For example, Papa refuses to eat the orange until his wife prepares it with utmost ceremonial precision and systematic perfection. Mama “divides each segment” and then peels away all the “pips and threads till only the perfect globules of juice are left” (23). This ceremonial orange peeling not only reinforces Papa’s symbolic power within the household, but it establishes an image of perfect structural order and symmetry to accompany that power. 

While Papa’s power seems unlimited on the surface, Arun’s vegetarianism reveals the limitations of Papa’s authority. So desperate to project power and status, Papa’s insistence on serving meat within the household is an outward sign of his social progress and advancement. Once limited by humbler circumstances and forced to subsist on a vegetarian diet, for Papa, “a meat diet had been one of the revolutionary changes brought about in his life…by education,” which, like “cricket and the English language” are outward symbols of his social elevation (32).