Ashima Ganguli is a Bengali woman living in Boston with her husband, Ashoke, who is doing his PhD in electrical engineering at MIT. Ashima is eight and a half months pregnant with her first child. As she is preparing food that she craves from her birthplace of Calcutta, India, she feels the first contractions.

In hospital, she awaits the birth of her child, which takes a full day; for the first time in her life, she spends the night alone with strangers. She has lived in the US for 18 months, feeling displaced, and missing her home country. She fears having to raise a child outside of India.

She remembers how Ashoke came with his parents to arrange a wedding between them. Seeing his American shoes in front of the room, she secretly tried them on, feeling excited. Ashoke is “slightly plump, scholarly-looking but still youthful” (9), and he refuses to look at her during the first meeting. Ashima is tall for a Bengali woman and slender. She learns his name only after the betrothal, and they begin to get to know each other slowly while in Boston.

While waiting for news, Ashoke distances himself from other fathers-to-be.