Interpreter of Maladies

Interpreter of Maladies Summary The Das family is on a trip. It is made up of the parents and their three children: Tina, Ronny, and Bobby. They’ve hired a tour guide named Mr Kapasi. The story is told from thirdperson limited point of view—that is, the story is told by an objective narrator who reveals the perceptions of Mr. Kapasi’s perceptions but not those of the other characters. The events unfold through his thoughts and experiences. As Jhumpa Lahiri begins the narration, the parents are arguing who would guide Tina to the available bathrooms. Their mother offers to take her while the father has to stay and keep Bobby and Ronny under close watch. While Mrs. Das is away, Mr. Das finds a chance to narrate to Kapasi their origin. Both Mr. and Mrs. Das were born from Indian families that lived in America. Their parents went back to India, and the Das family has to visit them occasionally. Mr. Kapasi is a driver and has done that job for five years while Mr. Das is a teacher in New Jersey. Tina comes back without her mother. Mr. Das makes inquiries of her whereabouts in a way which sounds disrespectful in Mr. Kapasi’s view. Mr. Kapasi has seen that sort of uncaring behaviour in American tourists and finds it shocking that the same can be seen from an Indian family. Mr. Kapasi notices other characteristics from the Das family that are similar to American tourists. For example, the family members fail to confront Tina when she damages the locks of the car, they do not advise Tina about sharing her snacks, and they keep complaining about the lack of an air conditioner in the car. Moreover, they demand to take photos of peasants on the road. Later on, Kapasi finds out that Mrs. Das is interesting as he interacts and takes photos with her. He notices how beautiful she is and keeps fantasizing about her. The children, together with their father, proceed to the abbey and leave their mother with Mr. Kapasi. She reveals to Kapasi that Bobby isn’t Mr. Das’ son but a product of a relationship she had with Mr. Das’ friend. Additionally, she reveals that her relationship with her husband isn’t good and that she finds family life uninteresting to her. She wishes that Kapasi can make her have a better feeling. The revelations, however, make Mr. Kapasi lose the romantic feelings he had for her. Bobby gets attacked by monkeys. Mr. Das has no idea what action to take. Mr. Kapasi scares the monkeys away and frees Bobby. Mrs. Das scoured for a comb in her big bag to fix the child’s hair. And the piece of paper with Mr. Kapasi’s address flew away indicating that they’ll never meet each other again. Only Mr. Kapasi noticed it. I. Answer the following questions in one or two sentences. 1. What was the first job of Mr. Kapasi? Mr. Kapasi had been teaching English in a grammar school 2. How did Mr. Kapasi become an interpreter? He bartered his skills as an interpreter for the doctor to treated his seven year old son who contacted typhoid. 3. Why did Mr. Kapasi feel flattered? Mr. Kapasi was flattered when Mrs. Das remarked his work as an interpreter was “Romantic.” 4. Why did Mr. Kapasi think that the travellers are siblings? Mr. Kapasi thought that Mr. And Mrs. Das were behaving like an older brother and sister who were in charge of the children for a day. It seemed like they don’t care for the responsibility of anything other than themselves. They’re immature and incapable of managing the three children. 5. Why did Mr. Kapasi wonder that Mr. And Mrs. Das were a bad match? After Mrs. Das addressed his job as a romantic one, Mr. Kapasi wondered if the couple was a bad match just as he was with his own wife. Mrs. Das didn’t seem half as much as interested about her husband or family as she was with Mr. Kapasi. II. Answer the following in about hundred words. 1. Write a brief note on the wheels of Konark. The temple, made of sandstone, was a massive pyramid-like structure in the shape of a chariot. It was dedicated to the great master of life, the sun, which struck three sides of the edifice as it made its journey each day across the sky. Twenty-four giant wheels were carved on the north and south sides of the plinth. The whole thing was drawn by a team of seven horses, speeding as if through the heavens. The temple had been built between A.D.1243 and 1255, with the efforts of twelve hundred artisans, by the great ruler of the Ganga dynasty, King Narasimhadeva the first, to commemorate his victory against the Muslim army. The wheels of the chariot, higher than any human being, nine feet in diameter. The wheels are supposed to symbolize the wheel of life, ‘They depict the cycle of creation, preservation, and achievement of realization. Each wheel is divided into eight thick and thin spokes, dividing the day into eight equal parts. The rims are carved with designs of birds and animals, whereas the medallions in the spokes are carved with women in luxurious poses, largely erotic in nature. 2. Why did Mr. Kapasi find Mrs. Das different from other women? After Mrs. Das calls Mr. Kapasi’s job “romantic,” Mr. Kapasi begins to daydream about how they will become great friends. The international nature of their friendship appeals to him because it makes him feel like a diplomat or cultural broker. The daydream, however, will never come to pass. Mr. Kapasi fails to see the true Mrs. Das, and vice versa, and there is no way to bridge the gap between them and reach any sort of genuine connection. These fantasies illustrate how lonely Mr. Kapasi’s life has become and how much he wants and needs a friend. They underscore his frustration with his daily existence, especially his feelings of failure about how he uses the languages that he spent his youth working hard to acquire. Mrs. Das makes Mr. Kapasi feel important, which makes him happy. This exaltation intensifies the disappointment Mr. Kapasi feels when Mrs. Das confesses her secret. Mr. Kapasi had misinterpreted Mrs. Das’s comment, mistakenly believing it gestured to a deeper understanding between them. The truth is that there is no hope for a correspondence, much less a friendship. When his address flutters out of her handbag, ending all possibility of their ever communicating, Mr. Kapasi has already realized the impossibility of his fantasies. 3. Write a brief note on Bobby. The second son of Mr. Das and Mrs. Das, Bobby, eight years old, is different in appearance from his younger sister Tina and his older brother Ronny. This is because he is in fact not Mr. Das’s biological son, but rather was conceived as a result of an affair that his mother had with a friend of her husband’s. Neither Bobby nor his father knows the truth about his paternity. Born and raised in the United States, Bobby is dressed like an American and speaks English with an American accent. The sights and sounds of India—where his family is vacationing—are new to him. He’s also a brave and adventurous boy. When the family encounters Hanuman monkeys, Bobby takes a stick and passes it back and forth with one of the animals. At one point, however, he is threatened by danger when he wanders away from the family and is surrounded by a group of monkeys who begin to attack him. Mr. Kapasi comes to the boy’s rescue. 4. Discuss the romantic disillusion undergone by Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das. Every time a character in “Interpreter of Maladies” fails to see the truth about another person, the results are in some way harmful. The main conflict of the story centers on two people who romanticize each other, although in different ways. Mr. Kapasi sees Mrs. Das as a lonely housewife who could be a perfect companion to him in his own loneliness. He misses or ignores cues that she may not be interested in him for his own sake because, at some level, he wants her to be this companion. He sees many details about her, such as her bare legs and Americanized shirt and bag, but he passes over others, such as the way she dismisses her children’s desires and her selfishness with her snack. Such unflattering details do not fit with his conception of her. Likewise, Mrs. Das wants Mr. Kapasi to become a confidante to her and solve her personal and marital difficulties. She views him as a father figure and helper and misses or ignores indications that he may not fit those roles. For example, she doesn’t notice that he is uncomfortable with her personal revelations and presses him for help even when he explicitly tells her that he cannot give it to her. 5. Why is Mrs. Das irritated by Mr. Kapasi’s question, “Is it pain or guilt?” How does this question qualify for the title ‘Interpreter of Maladies’? This question appears near the end of the story, after Mrs. Das has confessed to her affair and to the fact that Bobby is another man’s son. Mr. Kapasi responds to Mrs. Das’s confession in the worst possible way, from her perspective. He believes that he is beginning a conversation, but for her, his comment is the end of all possible discussion. She believes that she has privileged him by confiding her secret in him, but he is insulted that she would tell him such sordid personal matters and disgusted by her behavior in general. Mr. Kapasi here performs the ultimate act of interpretation: he reveals to Mrs. Das the true nature of her problem. He tells her the precise word for what she feels. For Mrs. Das, however, the diagnosis is too accurate. She cannot forgive such a judgmental proclamation of her situation. The heart of the matter is that Mrs. Das wants absolution, not questioning; she wants relief, not reflection. And Mr. Kapasi wants a friend whose actions and motives he can understand, even relate to. This breakdown in communication is heart wrenching because they are both lonely and believed they were reaching out to the other. Their differences, however, keep them apart. 6. Bring out the symbolism in the story Interpreter of Maladies Mr. Das’s camera represents his inability to see the world clearly or engage with it. Because he views the world through his camera, Mr. Das misses the reality of the world around him, both in his marriage and in the scenes outside the cab. Mr. Das chooses to have Mr. Kapasi stop the cab so that he can take a photograph of a starving peasant, wanting the picture only as a souvenir of India and ignoring the man’s obvious need for help. His view of the man’s reality is distorted because he sees the man only through the camera lens. Mr. Das snaps pictures of monkeys and scenery, taking the camera from his eye only when he turns back to his guidebook. Rather than engage actively with the India that surrounds him, he instead turns to the safety of frozen images and bland descriptions of ancient sites. He has come to visit India, but what he will take away with him—pictures and snatches of guidebook phrases—he could have gotten from any shop at home in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Mr. Das also uses the camera to construct a family life that does not actually exist. His children are insolent and his wife is distant, yet Mr. Das tries to pose them in pictures that suggest harmony and intimacy. When Mrs. Das refuses to leave the car when they visit the monastic dwellings, Mr. Das tries to change her mind because he wants to get a complete family portrait—something, he says, they can use for their Christmas card. This “happy family” that Mr. Das aspires to catch on film is pure fabrication, but Mr. Das does not seem to care. He would rather exist in an imaginary state of willful ignorance and arm’s-length engagement than face the disappointments and difficulties of his real life. Puffed rice, insubstantial and bland, represents Mrs. Das’s mistakes and careless actions. Physically, Mrs. Das is young and attractive, but she is spiritually empty. She does not love her children or husband and is caught in the boredom of her life as a housewife. Her depression and apathy distance her from her family, but she harbors a secret that could tear the entire family apart. She carelessly scatters the puffed rice along the trail at the monastic dwellings, never thinking about the danger her actions pose to others. Even when she realizes the danger to Bobby, as monkeys surround and terrify him, Mrs. Das does not take any responsibility for the situation, just as she refuses to acknowledge any guilt about her affair with Mr. Das’s friend. If Mrs. Das’s secret is ever revealed, Bobby will be the true victim of that carelessness as well. Conceived out of anger, boredom, and spite and then lied to about his real father, Bobby is surrounded by deceit. Mr. Kapasi feels the urge to tell Bobby the truth as he carries him away from the monkeys. He knows that the safety he is providing for the boy scattering the monkeys and lifting Bobby away from danger is insubstantial. He delivers Bobby back to Mrs. Das, whose distance and carelessness fail to provide true safety. III. Answer the following questions in about 300 words 1. Discuss how Jhumpa Lahiri expresses the difference between Indian and American culture in the short story. Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author is celebrated for her depiction of immigrant and Indian-American life. Her stories also capture universal themes of longing, loneliness and barriers of communication. She is renowned for the finesse of her prose, with the ability to subtly, mesmerizingly build an emotional connection to characters. is a book collection of nine short stories. The story “Interpreter of Maladies” is the third story in this collection. The stories are about the lives of Indians and Indian Americans who are caught between their roots and the "New World". “The Interpreter of Maladies” is set in India, and the story’s main characters are all of Indian origin. While both the Das family and Mr. Kapasi share a certain cultural heritage, however, their experiences of the world are very different. The members of the Das family have all been born and raised in America, whereas Mr. Kapasi has lived and worked his entire life in India. Lahiri emphasizes the subsequent gulf between the affluent, very American Das family and their Indian-born tour guide to suggest a specific cultural tension between Indians and Indian-Americas, as well as the notion that identity in general goes beyond heritage. While one’s understanding of and response to the world is certainly, in part, the product of their cultural history, the story suggests that identity is above all shaped by one’s environment and social status. Mr. Kapasi repeatedly notes the cultural differences that separate him from the Dases. He is particularly struck by the family’s appearance, noting, for example, that while they “looked Indian,” they “dressed as foreigners did.” He observes that they sound like characters on American television, and that the children have English names (“Tina,” “Bobby,” and “Ronny”). Sometimes Mr. Kapasi is unsure of the Americanized expressions that the characters use, such as when Mrs. Das uses the word “neat” to mean that something is interesting. The members of the Das family embody a different cultural identity not only in the way they dress and speak, but also in the way they behave. Mr. Kapasi is surprised, for example, that in speaking to his daughter, Mr. Das refers to his wife using her first name. By using Mr. Kapasi’s perspective to register all the ways that the Das family comes across as foreign, Lahiri suggests that having shared roots does not necessarily mean that people will share an automatic sense of connection or understanding. The Das family’s attitude and reactions during the excursion with Mr. Kapasi suggests that they, too, approach their country of origin as strangers. Mr. Das carries a travel guide entitled “INDIA,” which he uses to learn about the different sights that the family visits on the trip. He also takes pictures of things with his camera that, in the context of India, are normal. For instance, he snaps a picture of a barefoot man wearing a turban. In this way, Mr. Das is positioned as a tourist despite his ethnic background. The family is often depicted as surprised by or wary of the environment surrounding them, further underscoring their sense of foreignness in their ancestral land. Mr. Das tries to dissuade his son Ronny from touching a goat, for example, even as Mr. Kapasi reassures him that the goat is harmless. The children are also excited upon encountering Hanuman monkeys on the way to the temple—a common sight in the area, but a new experience for the American children. They are even surprised that the driver’s seat that Mr. Kapasi occupies is on the “wrong side” of the car (in India, the driver’s seat is on the right, rather the left, side). Such details suggest that, whatever their roots, the Das family aligns far more closely with their familiar American home than an Indian past they never knew. Importantly, the divide separating Mr. Kapasi from the Das familyis not just cultural, but also one of affluence and wealth. Mr. And Mrs. Das are clearly of a higher economic status than Mr. Kapasi. For one thing, they can afford to go on a family vacation in India. Their clothes and the expensive accessories they carry (such as the camera with a “telephoto lens” that Mr. Das continually snaps pictures with), all signal their relative material comfort. The story sets up a hierarchy based on this material privilege. Mr. And Mrs. Das pay Mr. Kapasi to accompany them as a tour guide, and in this regard are in a position of power; Mr. Kapasi literally serves the Das family in exchange for money. Mr. Kapasi’s different economic status is further underscored by the fact that he has to work two jobs—one as a tour guide and one as an interpreter in a doctor’s office—in order to support his family. Although, like Mr. Das, Mr. Kapasi had once worked as a teacher in a school, he was unable to afford his sick son’s medical bills. It was for this reason that he took on working as a translator at the doctor’s office. In setting up a parallel between Mr. Das and Mr. Kapasi through their shared occupations as teachers, and then revealing that only Mr. Kapasi could not provide for his family in this role, Lahiri highlights the ways in which financial status shapes and separates people’s experience of the world. The gulf that exists between Mr. Kapasi and the family he chaperones further suggests the gulf that exists between the scarcity prevalent in India and the affluence of America. In presenting the reader with characters who share cultural roots but who are nonetheless deeply foreign to one another, Lahiri questions the degree to which heritage shapes identity. The Das family do not appear to feel innately connected to Mr. Kapasi nor to India, and instead seem distinctly a part of the world in which they were raised—that is, America. Ultimately, the story associates this assimilation with a sense of loss, as the family enjoys the comforts of an American life yet are distinctly cut off from their history. The image at the end of the tale, of Mr. Kapasi watching the paper with his address written on it flutter from Mrs. Das’s purse, suggests that the rift between their cultures may be too large to ever cross. 2. Attempt an analysis of distortion of facts as represented in the story ‘Interpreter of Maladies’. On the surface, Jumpha Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” is a simple story about a family on vacation in India. As the lonely tour guide Mr. Kapasi drives Mr. Das and Mrs. Das and their three children to visit a temple, however, Lahiri’s tale becomes one of poignant estrangement. By telling the story largely from the perspective of Mr. Kapasi, a stranger to the Das family, Lahiri is able to highlight the ways in which, in the absence of genuine knowledge, people project their own beliefs and desires onto others. Beyond suggesting the inability to ever truly know another person, the story also closely links knowledge with a sense of loss: the closer characters become —the more they know each other—the more alone they feel. “Interpreter of Maladies” is told in the third person, sticking very closely to the point of view of Mr. Kapasi. The reader gets no insight into any member of the Das family’s interior thoughts, and as such has only Mr. Kapasi’s observations to color their perspective. Mr. Kapasi watches the Dases closely, noting behaviors and qualities that seem odd to him—such as the fact that Mr. Das refers to his wife by her first name, Mina, when speaking to his daughter Tina. Mr. Kapasi uses these observations to interpret the family members’ relationships to one another—for example, by assuming they are more like siblings than parents and children. These observations, however, are largely a projection of Mr. Kapasi’s own beliefs and desires. Because Mr. Kapasi has been born and raised in India and the Das family is from the United States, the latter comes across as strange and foreign. Mr. Kapasi’s most obvious projection, of course, is in his fantasizing about a romantic connection with Mrs. Das. He grasps onto trivial moments to support this fantasy, such as the fact that Mrs. Das uses the word “romantic” to describe his occupation as a sign of her interest in him. He even directly conflates his own experience of marriage with hers, wondering “if Mr. And Mrs. Das were a bad match, just as he and his wife were.” He begins to imagine their future together, constructing an image of Mrs. Das to align with his fantasy. While Mr. Kapasi is correct in his assumption that Mrs. Das is unhappy in her marriage, however, by the end of the story it becomes clear that the rest of his fantasy is not reciprocated. In fact, Mrs. Das sees Mr. Kapasi more as a parent than a potential lover. Not only is Mrs. Das interested in his professional, rather than romantic, assistance, but the revelation of her past affair quickly causes Mr. Kapasi’s crush to evaporate. The woman he imagined never existed, and, ironically, the closer Mr. Kapasi comes to knowing Mrs. Das, the more estranged from her he feels. Through Mr. Kapasi, then, Lahiri suggests the difficulty of truly knowing another person. What’s more, projecting desires on to another seems only a recipe for alienation and disappointment. The simultaneous difficulty and danger of knowledge is further reflected within the Das family itself. Mrs. Das reveals that she has known her husband since childhood, and that in the early days of their relationship they “couldn’t stand the thought of being separated.” Yet with time—and the familiarity such time entails—they drifted irreparably apart. Now, Mr. Das is not aware that his wife has cheated on him, nor that their son Bobby is not actually his biological child. Such awareness would, in all likelihood, lead to a shattering of the Das family, again underscoring the appealing yet precarious nature of fantasy and delusion in place of genuine knowledge. The connection between knowledge and pain or loss is made most explicit by Mr. Kapasi’s second job as an “interpreter of maladies,” from which the story gets its title. It is his job to understand—to know—what is wrong with ill patients and relay this information to a doctor. But, the story suggests, people don’t always want to know what is wrong with them. Just as people project their own beliefs and desires onto others, they are prone to constructing fantasies of themselves. This is why Mr. Kapasi is “disturbed” upon learning that Mrs. Das thinks of him as a parent, for instance; he views himself as seeming younger than he actually appears. This is also why Mr. Kapasi’s interpretation of Mrs. Das’s pain leads to her anger; deprived of the fantasy that something beyond her own actions is causing her discomfort, she is forced to confront the reality of her guilt over her affair. Not only can people never truly know one another, the story ultimately suggests, but they may never even know—or want to know—themselves. The absence of knowledge allows for the projection of one’s own fantasy and desires onto another, for an escape from the mundanity and pain of familiarity. Knowledge, on the other hand, robs people of the imaginative joy of possibility—both for those around them, and for themselves.