How we cite our quotes: (Abbreviated Title.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Outside the evening was still warm, and the Bradfords were walking arm in arm. As he watched the couple the room went dark, and he spun around. Shoba had turned the lights off. She came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment Shukumar joined her. They wept together, for the things they now knew. (ATM 104)
The Bradfords are presented here as basically your perfect, suburban American couple. Even though Shoba and Shukumar live in the same neighborhood as the Bradfords though, you might as well think of Shoba and Shukumar as a couple from a totally different planet. They're that different from the Bradfords and they feel it. Is it a cultural difference? Does it matter that Shoba and Shukumar are Indian-American? Or is it the experience of losing their baby that sets them apart?
Quote #2
"Lilia has plenty to learn at school," my mother said. "We live here now, she was born here"
"How can you possibly expect her to know about Partition? Put those nuts away."
"But what does she learn about the world?" My father rattled the cashew can in his hand. "What is she learning?"
We learned American history, of course, and American geography. (WMPCTD 13-15)
Does it seem strange that a child of Indian immigrants knows so little about India's history? Her mother recognizes that Lilia identifies with American culture now, but her father wants her to understand and care about what is happening in India and Pakistan.
Lilia watches (on TV) the events unfolding in Pakistan with detachment. Do you think that the second generation (Lilia's future children, e.g.) will care about their history?
Quote #3
Now that I had learned Mr. Pirzada was not an Indian, I began to study him with extra care, to try to figure out what made him different. I decided that the pocket watch was one of those things. When I saw it that night, as he wound it and arranged it on the coffee table, an uneasiness possessed me; life, I realized, was being in lived in Dacca first. I imagined Mr. Pirzada's daughters rising from sleep, tying ribbons in their hair, anticipating breakfast, preparing for school. Our meals, our actions, were only a shadow of what had already happened there, a lagging ghost of where Mr. Pirzada really belonged. (WMPCTD 28)
We're just amazed by how Lahiri can make a simple difference in time zones (US eastern time vs. Pakistani time) seem like an entirely different reality. For Mr. Pirzada, it is. That's his real life. It makes sense. Wouldn't you be living according to the time of your homeland if your family were still there trying to survive a war?