Culinary Conflicts: A Study of the Evolving Significance of Indian Food in the Select Diasporic Fiction by Jhumpa Lahiri and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Food has emerged as one of the basic components of culture preservation among the Indian Diaspora throughout the globe. Indian food with its unique blend of flavours and tastes establishes its separate identity from the food consumed in the orient as well as in the occident. The strong attachment of the first-generation diaspora towards Indian culinary practices and their attempt to recreate elaborate Indian meals in their adopted homes in the foreign land, is a part of the nostalgic longing for homeland that the diaspora experiences; however, it may also be read as the resistance to the western influence that most of the first-generation migrants consider corrupting for their children. In this paper a close reading of selected works by Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies) and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’ Mistress of Spices has been made, in order to study the importance of food as a device of culture preservation as well as an instrument of resistance against the foreign cultural hegemony by the Indian Diaspora.