Assimilation vs. Tradition Theme Analysis

From 1858 to 1947, India was under British colonial rule, and the British exploited India’s labor and natural resources. As a result of this long occupation, many elements of British culture became commonplace in India. “Of White Hairs and Cricket” takes place in India 17 years after the country gained its independence from Britain, and the 14-year-old narrator and his family members have very different relationships to Indian culture and Western influence. The narrator’s grandmother, Mamaiji, is more aligned with traditional Indian culture: she loves spicy food from street vendors, for instance, and encourages the narrator to eat it too. But Mummy and Daddy are more aligned with British influences: they eat “tasteless” Western food and try to keep the narrator from eating traditional spicy dishes, so those foods make him violently ill when he tries them. Moreover, Daddy wants the narrator to eventually immigrate to the U.S. because there is “no future” in India, and he instills a love of cricket (a British sport) in his son. Mamaiji and Daddy’s different expectations of the narrator reflect the conflict between preserving tradition and conforming to outside influences that colonized people are forced to navigate. The narrator’s physically painful experiences with traditional symbols of both Indian and British culture (spicy food and cricket, respectively) suggest that there is no clear solution to this dilemma, and that trying to fulfill the expectations of either culture will involve some level of suffering.

Although the narrator and his family members all hold onto some Indian traditions, Mamaiji’s and Mummy and Daddy’s different views of Indian cuisine reflect how different generations respond to colonialism in different ways. The entire family comes together in their devotion to the Parsi faith, wearing the traditional kustis that Mamaiji spins thread for and regularly attending prayers. By maintaining their religious beliefs, the family resists total assimilation into Western culture. Yet the adults’ relationships to British and Indian cultures also differ in some ways. For instance, Mamaiji largely rejects Western culture, carrying on the tradition of spinning thread and insisting on cooking traditional spicy meals and eating street food from vendors that travel door to door. Her habits represent a further resistance to assimilation and a desire to keep her own culture alive. Mummy and Daddy, on the other hand, try to keep spicy food out of the house and forbid the narrator and his brother Percy from eating it, thinking that it is unhealthy for their stomachs or somehow contaminated. This suggests that they have, to some extent, conformed to Western culture and now see certain elements of Indian culture as inferior, and even dangerous or dirty—a worldview that was common among British colonizers.

As a result of these clashing attitudes, the narrator is caught between his parents’ and grandmother’s expectations of how he should embody Indian and British cultures. When the narrator was younger, Daddy taught him to play cricket, a British game that was only introduced to India because of colonization. On the other hand, Mamaiji seems to want the narrator to stay in touch with his Indian roots by learning how to haggle with vendors and eating traditional foods. But Daddy doesn’t see this as worthwhile, because he believes India as a lost cause. He tells the narrator that the narrator should eventually move to the U.S. because there is “no future” in India, suggesting that his push for the narrator to assimilate to Western culture is partly for his own good (though he doesn’t appear to consider what the narrator might want for himself). The conflict between these different sets of expectations comes to a head through food: the narrator often gets caught in the middle of the arguments between his parents and grandmother over what, and how much, he should be eating. Mamaiji wants him to eat spicy Indian food (which represents keeping tradition alive) while Mummy and Daddy do their best to keep him from eating it (which represents assimilating to Western culture). These arguments give the narrator headaches, and his literal pain is symbolic of the more figurative pain of trying to navigate one’s identity in a postcolonial society.

Beyond headaches, the narrator suffers in various ways while trying to meet both Mamaiji’s and Mummy and Daddy’s expectations, which suggests that navigating the conflict between tradition and assimilation is painful, no matter how a person goes about it. When the narrator plays cricket with his father, he knows that putting himself in harm’s way and enduring pain—like he did when he blocked a shot with his bare shin—will gain his father’s approval. But it comes at his body’s expense, and he doesn’t enjoy the pain. The physical suffering he experiences while playing this British sport represents the idea that although Daddy wants the narrator to assimilate to Western culture, the process would be emotionally and psychologically difficult, because it would mean giving up part of his identity. Conversely, the narrator’s actually enjoys eating Mamaiji’s spicy food even though it makes him violently sick. This subtly suggests that the narrator may feel more connected to Indian culture than British culture, but that trying to preserve one’s traditions in an environment that’s hostile to those traditions can be just as painful as assimilating. Importantly, cricket causes the narrator external pain (much like British colonialism is an external influence) while the Indian food causes him internal pain (which corresponds with the idea that his Indian identity is something inborn). This suggests that there is no clear way out of the conflict between British and Indian cultures that the narrator feels, because the conflict exists both around him and within him. Whether he assimilates, resists colonial influence, or chooses a combination of the two, he will have to endure some form of personal suffering and will inevitably disappoint some of the adults in his life.