This Blessed House

          Lahiri presents a newly formed Indian marriage through the short story “This Blessed Home”. The characters of Sanjeev and Twinkle present the difficulties of developing a multicultural identity as an Indian immigrant in the United States. Through their arranged marriage, Lahiri depicts the implausible task of maintaining Indian religious, and gender role traditions in America, due to the juxtaposing nature of both cultures.        

The Christian relics in the couple’s household serve as catalysts for their transition towards American based traditions and routines. After each new article that Twinkle finds, she becomes liberated from Indian standards. As she finds these items she convinces Sanjeev to keep them, causing the stereotypical authority of a husband over his wife in Indian culture to vanish. Soon, Sanjeev can’t even tell her to clean, and lets her do as she pleases. Twinkle goes out to get pedicures and at one point refuses to cook Indian food. The author states, “Indian food, she complained, was a bother; she detested chopping garlic, and peeling ginger, and could not operate a blender…” (Lahiri, 144). This action is the embodiment of the loss in cultural ties to India the couple faced. Although Sanjeev always tried to keep the traditionalist and regimented actions of an Indian culture, Twinkle veered away from them through her liberal view. In Lahiri’s stories, immigrant Indian families in America, maintain their ties to Indian culture by consuming typical dishes of their homeland. However, in “This Blessed House” the fact that Twinkle refuses to cook Indian meals and adorns the house with Christian figures, an action of the upmost disrespect to the Hindu religion. The aforementioned acts show the couple has lost all connections with their heritage and will fully appropriate American values.

Works Cited

Lahiri, Jhumpa. "This Blessed House." Interpreter of Maladies. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 136-157. Print.