Lahiri, When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

I found “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” by Jhumpa Lahiri to be an interesting story. It’s about a little girl, Lilia, and her parents who invite Mr. Pirzada over for dinner every night. Lilia and her family are Indian and even though Mr. Pirzada is from a different place then them, Lilia doesn’t quite understand how he is different from them, as her father says he is. Lilia is the most interesting character to me. She’s an American and she just doesn’t understand how physical borders can affect someone. Every night when Mr. Pirzada goes over to Lilia’s house, he and her father watch the news and her father makes Lilia watch it with them. She isn’t aware of all the bad going on in the world until then. While Lilia is learning about the American Revolution and celebrating Halloween, Pakistan is about to go to war. In America, the bad in the world is seemed to be hidden from the children. When Lilia and her friend are in the library working on a report, she decides to look up a book about Pakistan and when her teacher finds her reading this, she seems quite upset, like she didn’t want Lilia knowing things about a whole different world. These two borders and cultures prove to be more different than Lilia could ever know.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1999. Print.