Living in-between: tensions in the struggle for recognition in the short story Interpreter Of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The work of the American writer of Indian origin Jhumpa Lahiri is closely connected with her own life experience. Therefore, the heroes of her works are acutely aware of the drama of the dichotomy between their national identity and the new circumstances of life that arose in exile. The inner essence, which was formed in childhood and family circles, is confronted with an environment designed for a different worldview and traditions. As a result, there is the problem of divided existence, alienation, and isolation.
The first generation of emigrants is experiencing the drama of bifurcation with special force. Therefore, in terms of the brightness of the literary work plot, it is the most attractive. Jumpa shows that the most common behavior in this situation is to try to ‘simulate’ the usual environment. This can be achieved through limited communication only with people of one’s own country, careful preservation of traditions, and cultivation of customs. Thus, there is a self-closure of man on his identity. One tries not to let in anything that contradicts them, or to minimize contact with the world of ‘others’.
However, the author’s attention is also extended to the representatives of the following emigrant generations. Despite their parents’ isolationism, they feel much freer in American society and do not experience the drama of bifurcation with such intensity. Solidarity with the community is gradually receding into the background and they are discovering the wide world of American society, with its diversity and opportunities. It contradicts or minimizes contact with the world of ‘others’.
‘The Interpreter Of Maladies ‘ is a collection of nine stories in which the author tried to experiment with the plots of adaptation, which she did not dare in her own life. It is a kind of attempt at the level of consciousness to work out adaptation scenarios in order to feel more integrated and protected in the new society. To do this, Lahiri uses techniques of realistic style, in which the Indians themselves do not always appear in a positive light. It describes the experience of a person who is exhausted by the struggle between emotional attachment and rational needs.
The heroes of Lahiri are dynamic and ardent, full of the desire for a full life, which, however, faces the insurmountable circumstances of an environment designed for a different course and way of life. And if for the first generation of emigrants, the answer to such a situation was – to isolate themselves, then their children have to make a difficult choice. They can either give up their identity or try to live in two realities at once.
The first story of the collection is ‘Temporary Matter’. It tells the story of an Indian couple who are going through a period of alienation. Shukumar and Shoba have been living as strangers for some time without any warmth or empathy in the relationship. However, due to a power outage, they are forced to spend four nights in the dark, not behaving normally. At this time, they spontaneously begin to communicate again. Sharing memories of the past, the couple seems to be on the path to understanding. However, in reality, the more they communicate, the more obvious the internal disagreement between them becomes. Emotional exhaustion and rivalry arise again. Before the eyes of the reader is a picture of two exhausted and tired people, whose life tragedy was that they spent too much time together. The drama of the relationship is heightened by the memory of their stillborn child.
At this time, the plot seems to illuminate a ray of hope for reconciliation. The couple’s memories and the thoughts they share are becoming more sincere. It seems that this sincerity, which they lacked, will be the solid ground on which their relationship will be reborn more mature, deep, and perfect. The traumatic experience will turn into just a playful memory of a common passion that could not express itself due to a lack of openness. Shukumar and Shoba share secrets that allow them to discover their personalities from the other side. They understand the deeper motives for behavior, fears, and anxieties behind mutual accusations and insults. In the end, the fourth night became a night of passionate love, which seemed to mean the final reconciliation of the couple, the rebirth of a new level of their relationship.
However, here comes a new unexpected turn of the plot. The high level of trust they have gained over these four nights allows them to honestly admit that they cannot be together. Sincerity, sometimes allows you to get rid of illusions without losing a positive attitude. Shukumar and Shoba lived too long in an atmosphere of mutual deception. Despite the alienation, they continued to think about their spouses, to look for the cause not in themselves but in others. Everyone expected the other to change and their relationship might not be so cold. However, now, thanks to a sincere dialogue, they have learned much better about themselves.
The couple realized that from the beginning, their relationship had no chance. Were it not for these four nights, they could have lived for decades, wasting time and energy, immersing themselves more and more in a gloomy world of decline. In the end, the former couple cries over too late an insight, in which, however, there is hope for a better future – already in life separately from each other.
The story ‘When Mr. Pirazda Came to Dinner’ is about a professor from the Bengali city of Dhaka, who came to America with a grant to study botany. The scenes of the everyday life of the Indian family, to which Pirazda comes for lunch, hide the deep drama of the division of society in former British India. Confrontations between “Hindu Hindus” and “Muslim Hindus” (Pakistanis) have led to bloody clashes, casualties, and a legacy of hatred. However, here in America, these contradictions do not seem so acute. Both “Muslim Hindus” and “Hindu Hindus” are united by one problem – a clash with a completely unusual society.
The symbol of this is a ten-year-old girl Lilia, who for a long time can not understand why Mr. Piraz who looks no different from them is a ‘Pakistani’. Despite reports of a growing Indo-Pakistani conflict, they continue to communicate amicably, because, in addition to differences in religion, they have the same language, customs, worldviews, and habits. For the first time in her experience, Lilia faces the problem of Muslim-Hindu relations in the library of her community. An inquisitive girl tries to learn more about Pakistanis and their differences but receives a cold response from a librarian and realizes that in the adult world, Pakistanis are enemies, and being interested in them can mean betraying their identity.
The emotional culmination of the story is the episode when the Indo-Pakistani war breaks out and Mr. Pirazda loses contact with his daughters who remain in Dhaka. Suspecting that they might have died, the professor projects his parental feelings on Lilia. He shows her various signs of attention, gives her candy, and takes her for walks. Touched by her attention, Lilia tries to help the professor and finds a childish way to do so. On Halloween, she prays for his daughter, eats candy, and does not brush her teeth at night for making prayer work.
Eventually, the war ends. The eastern Muslim part of Pakistan gains independence, and Professor Dhaka’s homesite becomes its capital. Mr. Pirazda learns that his family is alive and is returning home. Lilia’s prayer seems to be heard, but she feels annoyed.
The following story, The Interpreter Of Maladies, describes the collision of an already sufficiently Americanized pair of Hindus with the homeland of their ancestors. It is expressed in the communication of the local tourist guide Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das, who came to India with her husband.
Mr. Kapasi, seeing in this family ‘ours’, is nevertheless very surprised by the manners of Mrs. Das, especially the alienated and cold, as it seems to him, attitude to children. In addition, some features of appearance look unusual for him, such as long painted nails. Kapasi realizes that living in another country has greatly distorted the character of his compatriots. They do not share food with children, and reject their requests for help. However, although Ms. Das’s family came to see the interesting places of their historical homeland, it is clear that they are not really interested in them.
Despite this, Ms. Das’s personality attracts Kapasi, and he has a desire to establish a closer relationship with her. Their acquaintance leads to a trusting conversation as a result of which they get to know each other much better. Kapasi admits to having a tense relationship with a wife who accuses him of working as a translator at a hospital that failed to save their son. Ms. Das supports Kapasi, assuring him that helping people is a noble occupation and the work he does is very important. Instead, Ms. Das reveals her secret. As it turned out, her son Bobby was born from a relationship with another man, although no one knows yet. She confesses to Kapasi because she wants to hear from him an assessment of the situation without condemnation, as he does when he simply translates a foreign language – the doctor to the patient and vice versa.
For Kapasi, however, this discovery is intrinsically impressive. It differs sharply from the realities to which he was accustomed from an early age in India. Instead of helping, Kapasi is disappointed in Das, who, realizing this, is also indignant at the guide. Thus, there is a civilizational gap that has already occurred between Hindu emigrants and those who continued to live in their homeland. The long-term relationship that Kapasi imagined ended very quickly.
The plot of the story takes another unexpected turn. Kapasi is proving that despite all the differences, there is something universal that unites them all. As the family leaves the hotel, food is spilled from one of the bags. This attracts the attention of the monkeys that follow. Eventually, a large number of monkeys chasing food, surround Bob and begins to attack him. The guy is in serious danger. At this time, Kapasi rushes to the rescue and chases away the monkeys. Bob runs to his parents, who warmly embrace him. Kapasi sees the victory of family values so close to him, lost, it seemed, by Americanized Hindus. The author leaves the reader with a meaningful question – whether the behavior of Ms. Dasi’s family was a spontaneous return to the authentic values of her people, who somewhere deep in their souls, still lived in them. Or is it just evidence that in American society, empathy for their children also exists, only in a different, more hidden form? Or simply the manifestation of warmth was a reaction to the happy ending of a dangerous episode.
The story ‘True Durvan’ is dedicated to the figure of a stairwell sweeper to a 64-year-old woman named Buri-Ma. For their services, they received permission from the residents of the house to sleep near the gate. In addition, they sometimes gave her some food and were generally lenient. While sweeping the stairs, Buri-Ma always told stories from her life aloud. According to them, she once had her own estate, wealth, and servants, and told about her daughter’s luxurious and exceptional wedding. Residents of the house, however, noted the many contradictions contained in the stories of Buri-Mi, however, this did not change their positive attitude.
Everything changed when one of the families – Mr. Dalal, who lived in this house, began to improve their lives. The increase at work gave Dalal financial opportunities to buy new, more expensive, and beautiful furniture, to install a stairwell in the house. Following in the footsteps of the Dalal family, everyone else in the house is in a fever of improvement. They are also trying their best to bring something new to their home. Buri-Ma picks up the general mood and buys candy because the atmosphere of their house has changed so much for the better. Dalala is about to arrive with her family, who promised to bring her a gift of sheep’s clothing.
At the peak of these positive sentiments, there is a fatal event for the fate of Buri-Mi. One day, it turned out that the stairwell was stolen. Residents accused her of being an accomplice in the theft and led the thieves by telling them about the changes in their house. Although Buri-Ma proves her innocence in every possible way, the inhabitants of the house refuse to believe her – because they have heard so many of her contradictory stories when she swept the stairs every day. The fever of enrichment and improvement has changed the character of the inhabitants. Material values very quickly replaced human ones. No one thought that Buri-Mi’s strange stories about his rich past could be a simple compensation for the consciousness of extreme poverty and loneliness. Buri-Ma, loudly telling about her daughter’s lavish wedding and similar stories, just wanted those with whom she communicates daily to appreciate her a little more, to see her not only as a cleaner sleeping under the gate.
In the end, the inhabitants decide to banish Buri-Mu and find a real cleaner – Bengali ‘Durban’. The further fate of the woman is shrouded in ghostly mystery.
The main character in the story ‘Sexy’ is a young white girl Miranda, who has an affair with a Hindu named Dev. Although he is married, this does not deter Miranda. Both visit the Mapparium – a large glass globe that can be seen from the inside by entering the appropriate bridge through a small slot. Surrounded by the world, Dev calls Mirada sexy, and she has since tried to match this image by buying appropriate clothing.
However, later, Miranda is confronted with the story of a Hindu woman who left her husband for the sake of a younger one. The turning point is the episode when her seven-year-old son asks Miranda to put on the sexy clothes she bought for the meeting with the Dev. At this point, she understands the suffering of the boy’s abandoned mother and decides to break off the relationship with a married man, despite the charm and mystery of his personality.
“Mrs. Sen’s story differs from others in a significant number of culinary and household details. The longing for the lost Motherland is sensual here. Mrs. Sen is of Indian descent and feels connected to her homeland by cooking seafood that reminds her of home. The plot is based on conversations that Mrs. Sen has with an 11-year-old boy Eliot. Her stories fill the imagination with pictures of Indian life, all of which are acutely sensual and testify to the deep love and attachment of the Sen to their ethnic roots. In them, she feels the fullness of being, full of vitality. For her, it is clear and exciting. Listening to her stories, in which various household details are so idealized, you realize that only life in exile made her so fond of fish dishes and cooking traditions. Living in India itself, Sen would obviously take this as a simple routine. One day Sen takes a risk. Mostly, her husband took her to the seafood market, now she decides to go after them herself, aware that she does not know all the rules and does not know how to ride well. Eventually, Sen decides to go and gets into a car accident. Although Eliot can no longer visit San, he still has the warmth of her memories, her life energy, which she drew from the memory of her homeland.
The following, ‘This Blessed House’, tells the short and simple story of a Hindu couple settling in a house where a Christian family once lived. Sanjeev and Twinkle come across various objects of Christian symbolism and are faced with the question of how to treat them. Sanjeev believes that they should be got rid of because they are not Christians themselves. Twinkle looks at these objects from an aesthetic point of view and suggests leaving them in view of their beauty.
In fact, the plot is a kind of metaphor. The house can symbolize the whole of America, with its historical Christian tradition. The couple solves the dilemma of their behavior in a situation not quite familiar to emigrants. If most emigrants have to adapt to the prevailing circumstances of the new environment, then here they themselves become masters. They have the opportunity to decide for themselves how their identity can realize itself in these conditions. Should we choose the way of complete neutralization of the symbols of another culture, or can find a way to coexist with them? The question remains open.
‘The Treatment of Bibi Haldar’, is about a sick woman who is being helped by her brother and his wife. Numerous attempts to help Bibi eventually lead to the realization that her seizures are due to the absence of her husband and family. However, in traditional Indian life, a 30-year-old woman cannot rely on a man without family behavior skills. Conflicts lead to a rupture between Haldar and her brother. In the end, she is left alone with a small supply of money in a desperate situation. However, women from the Indian community note that Haldar is pregnant. They help her give birth to a boy and get back on her feet. Although the child’s father remains unknown, and Haldar herself claims that she does not know the circumstances under which she became pregnant, her life is gradually improving, she is reviving the business of her brother, who left long ago and eventually becomes healthy.
In the final story ‘The Last and the Third Continent’ the author demonstrates the adaptive capabilities of the Hindu, on whose behalf the speech is conducted. He moved to the United States and worked in an asylum where he cared for an elderly woman over a hundred years old. Despite all the differences, they have one important thing in common – for both, modern America is incomprehensible and alien. Everyone has their reasons, but in the company of this woman, the hero does not feel so lonely. Eventually, the bride comes to him, whom he marries, and moves to another place. There he learns about the death of an old woman he was caring for. He understands that this was the first person on the new continent to which he was affined, and his wife, according to Indian customs, was unknown to him. However, the ability to adapt and empathize, which he learned here, helped in the new family life. Remembering the care of the old woman, the Hindu gradually understands his wife better and after a while falls in love with her. It remains a mystery if their relationship developed in such a way in India.
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