Quote 4
Ashima has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks and on railway platforms throughout India, spilling from newspaper cones. (1.1)
Poor Ashima. She wants desperately to recreate Calcutta life in the United States, be she has to resort to Rice Krispies and Planter's nuts. No wonder the snack doesn't taste quite right.
Quote 5
The apartment consists of three rooms all in a row without a corridor […] It is not at all what she had expected. Not at all like the houses in Gone with the Wind or The Seven-Year-Itch. (2.46).
For Ashima, America is not all it's cracked up to be. Can you blame her for being disappointed? Life as the wife of a graduate student is a humble one. She will not be living the Scarlett O'Hara life.
Quote 6
Somehow, this small miracle causes Ashima to feel connected to Cambridge in a way she has not previously thought possible. (2.74)
In the first couple of years in the United States, Ashima gradually warms to American life, particularly when she experiences random acts of kindness. When someone takes her shopping bags to the lost and found, it tells her that not everyone here is a mean stranger. There are nice folks, too.