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Lilia’s Father
Lilia’s mother—who, like Lilia’s father, is originally from Calcutta—now works at a bank in Boston. While Lilia’s father fears that his daughter does not know enough about the world, Lilia’s mother is grateful for Lilia’s particularly American kind of innocence. She remains troubled by her own memories of childhood in India during Partition (the division of British India into India and Pakistan), when she ate “rationed food,” “watched riots from [her] rooftop,” and hid “neighbors in water tanks to prevent them from being shot.” Lilia’s mother is also an excellent cook, and she is almost always preparing or serving traditional South Asian dishes to her husband and daughter—as well as Mr. Pirzada—throughout the story.
Lilia’s Mother Quotes in When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
The When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine quotes below are all either spoken by Lilia’s Mother or refer to Lilia’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
Quotes
It was a small campus, with narrow brick walkways and white pillared buildings, located on the fringes of what seemed to be an even smaller town. The supermarket did not carry mustard oil, doctors did not make house calls, neighbors never dropped by without an invitation, and of these things, every so often, my parents complained. In search of compatriots, they used to trail their fingers, at the start of each new semester, through the columns of the university directory, circling surnames familiar to their part of the world.
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[My father] led me to a map of the world taped to the wall over his desk […] his finger trailed across the Atlantic, through Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and finally to the sprawling orange diamond that my mother once told me resembled a woman wearing a sari with her left arm extended. Various cities had been circled with lines drawn between them to indicate my parents’ travels, and the place of their birth, Calcutta, was signified by a small silver star. I had been there only once and had no memory of the trip.
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Lilia’s Mother Quotes in When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
The When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine quotes below are all either spoken by Lilia’s Mother or refer to Lilia’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
Quotes
It was a small campus, with narrow brick walkways and white pillared buildings, located on the fringes of what seemed to be an even smaller town. The supermarket did not carry mustard oil, doctors did not make house calls, neighbors never dropped by without an invitation, and of these things, every so often, my parents complained. In search of compatriots, they used to trail their fingers, at the start of each new semester, through the columns of the university directory, circling surnames familiar to their part of the world.
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Explanation and Analysis:
[My father] led me to a map of the world taped to the wall over his desk […] his finger trailed across the Atlantic, through Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and finally to the sprawling orange diamond that my mother once told me resembled a woman wearing a sari with her left arm extended. Various cities had been circled with lines drawn between them to indicate my parents’ travels, and the place of their birth, Calcutta, was signified by a small silver star. I had been there only once and had no memory of the trip.
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