• Comment on the role of brotherhood in diaspora in “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine.

Intro: Imperialism (সাম্রাজ্যবাদ) has torn and dehumanized the world and its people. The big wars have left people homeless; many were forced
to leave their motherland to live in a different soil. Yet, the mind of man is rooted to his past; as he progresses towards the future, he takes the
past memory with him. Hence sometimes we live in a shadow line, between reality and memory.

1st: Jhumpa Lahiri’s story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” is about a journey from ignorance to knowledge. The narrator, ten-year-old Lilia,
remembers that in 1971 Mr. Pirzada from Dacca used to visit and spend his evenings very often with her parents in the north of Boston. At that
time Pakistan was engaged in civil war. The East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was fighting the West Pakistan for autonomy. Mr. Pirzada held a
lectureship in Botany at the Dacca University and lived there with his wife and seven daughters. At that time, he was in America on a fellowship
from the government of Pakistan. He came to Lilia’s house to eat dinner and watch the evening news.

2nd: Lilia’s parents missed their homeland. Pirzada was an emissary from that root. Lilia called him “the Indian man” and was corrected by her
father that Mr. Pirzada was not considered any longer an “Indian, not since Partition.” Lilia was told that India was divided in 1947.

3rd: Ten-year-old Lilia thought it to be so unreasonable. Mr. Pirzada and her parents “spoke the same language, laughed at the same jokes, looked
more or less the same.” But her mother pronounced proudly: “We live here [America] now, she was born here.” She was happy that Lilia was
assured a safe life, an easy life, a fine education, every opportunity. Yet for Lilia Mr Pirzada was a link to a lost world. Lilia coveted (desired) the
candies Mr. Pirzada gave her as she would covet a jewel or a coin from a buried kingdom.

4th: Mr. Pirzada had two watches-one plain silver watch he kept in his breast pocket. It was set to the local time in Dacca, eleven hours ahead of
the time in New England. Lilia felt very uneasy when she realised that life was being lived in Dacca first. In America, their meals, their actions,
were only a shadow of what had already happened in Dacca, “a lagging ghost of where Mr. Pirzada really belonged.”

5th: On December 4, war was declared; after twelve days Pakistani army surrendered in Dacca. The anxiety for relatives and family members in
that part of the world brought Lilia’s parents and Mr. Pirzada very close. They operated during that hard time “as if they were a single person
sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence and a single fear.”

6th: Lilia’s identity with India and Pakistan was reflected in her search for book on Pakistan in library. She used every chocolate Pirzada had given
her as an act of prayer for the safety of his wife and seven daughters. Unconsciously she became a part of Pirzada family.

7th: In January, Mr. Pirzada returned to his home in Dacca and Lilia and her parents did not hear from him for long. For Lilia, the map in her room
became outdated. A new country had been carved out-the world had been further partitioned.

8th: Thus, the story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” truly reflects the diaspora of immigrants, or people living away from home. Jhumpa Lahiri
very effectively weaves the plot to imply the brotherhood that is occasionally betrayed by bloodshed and war.