When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine: SS Creation Question

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When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine: SS Evaluation Question

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When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine: SS Analysis Question

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When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

“Really, Mr. Pirzada,” my mother protested. “Night after night. You spoil her.”
“I only spoil children who are incapable of spoiling.”
It was an awkward moment for me, one which I awaited in part with dread, in part with delight.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

"The reporter mentioned Dacca, and we all turned to listen: An Indian official announced that unless the world helped to relieve the burden of East Pakistani refugees, India would have to go to war against Pakistan. The reporter’s face dripped with sweat as he relayed the information. He did not wear a tie or a jacket, dressed instead as if he himself were about to take part in the battle. He shielded his scorched face as he hollered things to the cameraman. The knife slipped from Mr. Pirzada’s hand and made a gash dipping toward the base of the pumpkin."

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

“Lilia has plenty to learn at school,” my mother said. “We live here now, she was born here.” She seemed genuinely proud of the fact, as if it were a reflection of my character. In her estimation, I knew, I was assured a safe life, an easy life, a fine education, every opportunity. I would never have to eat rationed food, or obey curfews, or watch riots from my rooftop, or hide neighbors in water tanks to prevent them from being shot, as she and my father had. “Imagine having to place her in a decent school. Imagine her having to read during power failures by the light of kerosene lamps. Imagine the pressures, the tutors, the constant exams.” She ran a hand through her hair, bobbed to a suitable length for her part-time job as a bank teller. “How can you possibly expect her to know about Partition? Put those nuts away.”

It was an awkward moment for me, one which I awaited in part with dread, in part with delight . I was charmed by the presence of Mr. Pirzada's rotund elegance, and flattered by the faint theatricality of his attentions, yet unsettled by the superb ease of his gesture, which made me feel, for an instant, like a stranger in my own home.

When Mr.Pirzada Came to Dine

"Don't worry," I said. It was the first time i had uttered those words to Mr.Pirzada, two simple words I had tried but failed to tell him for weeks, had said only in my prayers. It shamed me now that I had said them for my own sake.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

(In Mom's perspective)

You have a good organization of memory, my son. Your memory is like a film. That is why you are really good at remembering things, like the conversations you have written down in this book, and what people were wearing, and what they smelled like, because your memory has a smell track which is like a soundtrack. And when people ask you to remember something you can simply recall them just like pressing Rewind and Fast Forward and Pause on a video recorder, but more like a DVD player because you don’t have to Rewind through everything in between to get to a memory of something a long time ago. And there are no buttons, either, because it is happening in your head.

If someone says to you, “Christopher, tell me what your mother was like,” you can Rewind to lots of different scenes and say what I were like in those scenes.

I know you could still Rewind to 4 July 1992 when you was 9 years old, which was a Saturday, and we were on holiday in Cornwall and in the afternoon we were on the beach in a place called Polperro. And I was wearing a pair of shorts made out of denim and a light blue bikini top and I was smoking cigarettes, which is bad, called Consulate which were mint flavor. And I wasn’t swimming. I was sunbathing on a towel which had red and purple stripes and I was reading a book by Georgette Heyer called The Masqueraders. And then I finished sunbathing and went into the water to swim and I said, “Bloody Nora, it’s cold.” And I said you should come and swim, too, but I know you don’t like swimming because you don’t like taking your clothes off. And I said you should just roll up your trousers and walk into the water a little way, so you did. And you stood in the water. And I said, “Look. It’s lovely.” And I jumped backward and disappeared under the water, I wasn’t meant to scare you but you thought a shark had eaten me and you screamed and I stood up out of the water again and came over to where you was standing and held up my right hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and tried to lead you, “Come on, Christopher, touch my hand. Stop screaming. Touch my hand. Listen to me, Christopher. Come and try with me.” And after a while you stopped screaming and you held up your left hand and spread your fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other and I soothed you, “It’s OK, Christopher. It’s OK. There aren’t any sharks in Cornwall,” and then you felt better.

Just like these, I know you could remember even the slightest detail. Except you can’t remember anything before you was about 4 because you wasn’t old enough and your brain was still too small, so they didn’t get recorded properly.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

" I remember some nights helping my mother spread a sheet and blankets on the couch so that Mr. Pirzada could sleep there, and high-pitched voices hollering in the middle of the night when my parents called our relatives in Calcutta to learn more details about the situation. Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear. " ( When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine)

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

"When I said I thought that was the date of India’s independence from Britain, my father said, “That too. One moment we were free and then we were sliced up,” he explained, drawing an X with his finger on the countertop, “like a pie. Hindus here, Muslims there. Dacca no longer belongs to us.” He told me that during Partition Hindus and Muslims had set fire to each other’s homes. For many, the idea of eating in the other’s company was still unthinkable" (When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine).

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

"He stepped into the foyer, impeccably suited and scarved, with a silk tie knotted at his collar. Each evening he appeared in ensembles of plums, olives, and chocolate browns. He was a compact man, and though his feet were perpetually splayed, and his belly slightly wide, he nevertheless maintained an efficient posture, as if balancing in either hand two suitcases of equal weight. His ears were insulated by tufts of graying hair that seemed to block out the unpleasant traffic of life. He had thickly lashed eyes shaded with a trace of camphor, a generous mustache that turned up playfully at the ends, and a mole shaped like a flattened raisin in the very center of his left cheek. On his head he wore a black fez made from the wool of Persian lambs, secured by bobby pins, without which I was never to see him. Though my father always offered to fetch him in our car, Mr. Pirzada preferred to walk from his dormitory to our neighborhood, a distance of about twenty minutes on foot, studying trees and shrubs on his way, and when he entered our house his knuckles were pink with the effects of crisp autumn air. "

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

"Eventually I took a square of white chocolate out of the box, and unwrapped it, and then I did something I had never done before. I put the chocolate in my mouth, letting it soften until the last possible moment, and then as I chewed it slowly, I prayed that Mr. Pirzada's family was safe and sound. I had never prayed for anything before, had never been taught or told to, bur I decided, given the circumstances, that it was something I should so. THat night when I went to the bathroom I only pretended to brush my teeth, for I feared that I would somehow rinse the prayer out as well. I wet the brush and rearranged the tube of paste to prevent my parents from asking any questions, and fell asleep with sugar on my tongue"(462).

When Mr. Prizida Came to Dine

"Mr. Pirzada handed me his coat, for it was my job to hang it on the rack at the bottom of the stairs. It was made of finely checkered gray-and-blue wool, with a striped lining and horn buttons, and carried in its weave the faint smell of limes. There were no recognizable tags inside, only a hand- stitched label with the phrase “Z. Sayeed, Suitors” embroidered on it in cursive with glossy black thread. On certain days a birch or maple leaf was tucked into a pocket. He unlaced his shoes and lined them against the baseboard; a golden paste clung to the toes and heels, the result of walking through our damp, unraked lawn. "

When Mr. Prizida Came to Dine - Quotation

Though I had not seen him for months, it was only then that I felt Mr. Pirzada’s absence. It was only then, raising my water glass in his name, that I knew what it meant to miss someone who was so many miles and hours away, just as he had missed his wife and daughters for so many months. He had no reason to return to us, and my parents predicted, correctly, that we would never see him again.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

Since January, each night before bed, I had continued to eat, for the sake of Mr.Pirzada's family, a piece of candy I had saved from Halloween. That night there was no need to. Eventually, I threw them away.

Quotation of "Mr.Pirzada Came to Dine"

"What are you doing back here? Mrs.Kenyon's in the library. She came to check upon us." I slammed the book shut, too loudly. Mrs.Kenyon emerged, the aroma of her perfume filling up the tiny aisle, and lifted the book by the tip of its spine as if it were a hair clinging to my sweater. She glanced at the cover, then at me. "Is this book a part of your report, Lilia?" "No, Mrs.Kenyon.""Then I see no reason to consult it," she said, replacing it in the slim gap of the shelf. "Do you?"

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time 500 Words

These are the things Christopher told me that he remembers. There are 19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white.
There is a village in the distance which has 31 visible houses and a church with a square tower and not a spire.
There are ridges in the field, which means that in medieval times it was what is called a ridge and furrow field and people who lived in the village would have a ridge each to do farming on.
There is an old plastic bag from Asda in the hedge, and a squashed Coca-Cola can with a snail on it, and a long piece of orange string.
The northeast corner of the field is highest and the southwest corner is lowest (He had a compass because his family were going on holiday and he wanted to know where Swindon was when they were in France) and the field is folded downward slightly along the line between these two corners so that the northwest and southeast corners are slightly lower than they would be if the field was an inclined plane.
Christopher can see three different types of grass and two colors of flowers in the grass. The cows are mostly facing uphill.
And there were 31 more things in this list of things Christopher noticed but I said that he  didn't need to write them all down. And I told him that it is very tiring if he is in a new place because he see all these things. Christopher remembers them so well that if someone asked him afterward what the cows looked like, he could ask which one, and he could do a drawing of them at home and say that a particular cow had patterns on it like this:
Then Christopher realize that he told a lie in Chapter 13 because he said “I cannot tell jokes,” because he does know 3 jokes that he can tell and he understands and one of them is about a cow, and I told him that he didn't have to go back and change what he wrote in Chapter 13 because it doesn't matter because it is not a lie, just a clarification. And this is the joke.There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (Christopher doesn't know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).
And the economist says, “Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.”
And the logician says, “No. There are cows in Scotland of which one at least is brown.”
And the mathematician says, “No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side
appears to be brown.”
And it is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more
clearly, but mathematicians are best.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

"Though I had not seen him for months, it was only then that I felt Mr. Pirzada's absence. It was only then, raising my water glass in his name, that I knew what it meant to miss someone who was so many miles and hours away, just as he had missed his wife and daughters for so many months."

Quote Analysis: When Mr. Prizada Came to Dine

My father rapped his knuckles on top of my head. “You are, of course, aware of the current situation? Aware of East Pakistan’s fight for sovereignty?” I nodded, unaware of the situation. We returned to the kitchen, where my mother was draining a pot of boiled rice into a colander. My father opened up the can on the counter and eyed me sharply over the frames of his glasses as he ate some more cashews. “What exactly do they teach you at school? Do you study history? Geography?” “Lilia has plenty to learn at school,” my mother said. “We live here now, she was born here.” She seemed genuinely proud of the fact, as if it were a reflection of my character. 

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

"It made no sense to me. Mr. Pirzada and my parents spoke the same language, laughed at the same jokes, looked more or less the same. They ate pickled mangoes with their meals, ate rice every night for supper with their hands. Like my parents, Mr. Pirzada took off his shoes before entering a room, chewed fennel seeds after meals as a digestive, drank no alcohol, for dessert dipped austere biscuits into successive cups of tea. Nevertheless my father insisted that I understand the difference, and he led me to a map of the world taped to the wall over his desk."

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine Quotation

In the Autumn of 1971 a man used to come to our house, bearing confections in his pocket and hopes of ascertaining the life or death of his family. His name was Mr. Pirzada, and he came from Dacca, now the capital of Bangladesh, but then a part of Pakistan. That year Pakistan was engaged in civil war. The eastern frontier, where Dacca was located, was fighting for autonomy from the ruling regime in the west. In March, Dacca had been invaded, torched and shelled by the Pakistani army. Teachers were dragged onto streets and shot, women dragged into barracks and raped. By the end of the summer, three hundred thousand people were said to have died. In Dacca Mr. Pirzada had a three-story home, a lectureship in botany at the university, a wife of twenty year, and seven daughters between the ages of six and sixteen whose names all began with the letter A.  

By the Waters of Babylon Quotation - by Hantine Hsu

“There was also the shattered image of a man or a god. It had been made of

white stone and he wore his hair tied back like a woman’s. His name was ‘ASHING’,

as I read on the cracked half of a stone. I thought it wise to pray to ‘ASHING’, though

I do not know that god.”

Comment: I found this part of the story very amusing, because from where he said

the stone was cracked in half, the reader could tell that the words he read was a

portion of someone’s name we made a statue of. This passage really shows the

irony of the story. We, the reader knows that it was a statue of a man, even though

we might not be able to guess who. (Who is it?) However, John, our main character

has no idea who the statue was, and then he even prayed for “the god, Ashing’s”

protection. To me it was quite hilarious of how a first person narrative could be so

blind and bring so much irony from the story.