The Pulitzer Prize winning
volume of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies (First published
in India by Harper Collins, 1999) by Jhumpa Lahiri, despite the clear insignia
of Indianness is universally relevant. The loneliness, a deep sense of remorse
and emotional isolation that some of her fictional characters go through, are
common enough the world over. The individuals of different countries and
cultures who for various reasons are forced to live away from their own country
go through trying phases. Whether she suggested a cure or not, Miss Lahiri’s
endeavour to interpret the maladies of the mind that people suffer from and the
unique manner in which she makes them realize their own flaws, certainly merit
the Prize and the prestige she won with her maiden volume of short fiction.
With a remarkable insight she delves deep into the psychological depths of her
characters and reveals their inner world by a fascinating yet deceptively
simple style. We come across more reality than fancy in her fiction. It is
hardly an exaggeration to say that her interpretation of the maladies itself
acts like a potent medicine. Yet they are interesting and often make humorous
studys of life.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s modern
approach is evident in her themes as well as narrative style. The first story A
Temporary Matter shows that for the young married couple Shukumar and
Shoba, marriage appears to have fallen apart. It reached a stage where it
became a temporary matter. Trouble started when Shoba delivered a stillborn
baby, and blew over casting a long shadow on a normally happy marriage. When
they finally lost touch with one another despite sharing a single roof, the
temporary cut in power supply seems to have salvaged their failing
relationship. Lahiri excels as a storyteller when she combines her Indian
reminiscences and the larger problem of marital discord and the apparently
catastrophic end of the couple’s marriage in a single frame. When the reader
anticipates a happy reunion after the closeness that Shukumar and Shoba shared
by exchanging untold experiences, it feels like a douse of freezing cold water,
when Shoba announces her decision to move into a new apartment. Shoba’s problem
is her inability to deal with her anger and frustration of losing the baby for
whose arrival she plans elaborately. In her state of disappointment and self
pity, she did not care if her marriage fell apart. She hardly realizes that she
is punishing herself unduly. It is only when Shukumar confesses his knowledge
of the baby’s sex that she finally relents the hold she kept on her emotions
and sees the truth that the loss of the baby has affected Shukumar as deeply as
her. Each one has to bear his or her share of pain in life. But he was able to
bear with it perhaps because he did what the doctor said:
“ holding the baby might help you with the process
of grieving.” (22) He held his son before he was
cremated.
Letting out the pent up
feelings certainly acts like a catalyst in some ways. The marital discord is
thus skillfully shown to be a temporary matter just as the interruption in
electric power supply has been.
Some of her stories like The
Third and the Final Continent contain moving pictures of life. They mirror
the milieu in which her characters move. The Calcutta boy, who made it as a
jobholder in a library at MIT Boston, reminds us of many Indians who by trial
and tribulation settle abroad for a better life.
The bond between the landlady Mrs. Croft and the Bengali youth is
beyond explanation. It is something to be felt and understood. The old lady is
well aware of people and can read them as one would a book, despite being
hundred and three. Miss Lahiri’s story brings out differences in behaviour,
life style and expression as observed in different continents i.e. India,
Britain and the U.S.A. The ancient lady, who lived beyond a century, never
spoke more than a few words at a time, most of which she repeats daily to the
young tenant like,
“ There is an American flag on
the moon boy.”
But he knows her loneliness and develops fondness for her and her
nature of acceptance of the inevitable. It grows after being told by her only
daughter that she made a living for herself and for her daughter by teaching
the piano for forty years which resulted in ‘swollen knuckles’. He is also
reminded of his own mother who refused to participate in life after the death
of her husband. Even after he leaves Mrs. Croft’s rooms after his marriage, he
thinks about her. He takes his new wife to meet Mrs. Croft. But her impressions
are unfathomable on her introduction to his young wife. We are told on one
occasion that if she sees a scantily dressed woman on the street, Mrs Croft would
get her ‘arrested’. She would naturally appreciate this young Indian lady who
doesn’t exhibit herself. She spontaneously calls her a ‘perfect lady’. The fact
of her judgement comes as a surprise and at once ends the strangeness that
existed between the newly married couple (a kind of malady in the arranged
marriages of India?). It also comes home to us that basically humanity is bound
by certain common standards of behaviour and modes of perception. A critic
rightly observed that Jhumpa Lahiri’s story is about a
“ richly detailed portrayal of a young marriage…an Indian
emigrant’s oddly fulfilling relationship with his landlady..”
(R.K. Shankar on the Redif Net)
When he reads of Mrs. Croft’s
obituary, he says,
“ I was stricken…Mrs. Croft’s was the first death I mourned
in America, for hers was the first life I admired; she had
left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to
return.”(196)
What is more important is the
fact that however deep and wide ranging the experience of meeting different
people and living in different places may be, Miss Lahiri in her own inimitable
style convinces us through her characters that there is always something new,
something unexpected in life. How true the narrator is when he says,
“ …there are times I am
bewildered by each mile I have travelled,
each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in
which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are
times
when it is beyond my imagination.” (198)
Well, life is like that! It
indeed is a strange amalgam.
Blessed House is a
delightful story, which puts across the point that it is not religious identity
that satisfies man but the sense of affinity and involuntary affection that
exist between people, even among strangers. The previous tenants left a
treasure trough behind apparently wishing the best for their successors. Each
finding of the treasure that she stumbles upon fills Sanjeev’s wife Twinkle,
with great joy and excitement. It started with an effigy of Christ and continued
with a wooden cross with a key chain, a painting of the three wise men, a 3-D
post card of St. Francis, a tile trivet of sermon-delivering Jesus, a miniature
Nativity scene and a number of others. She is hardly affected by the fact that
all of them are Christian symbols and is happy enough to arrange them on the
mantelshelf. Sanjeev on the other hand, is full of antipathy for these
Christian symbols. His mind is bogged down by inhibition and injured
self-sense. Once again Lahiri touches a chord in all thinking human beings that
religion doesn’t have to interfere with day-to-day life of people going about
their business. But then the bone of contention is not about the religious
divide but it is the finer feelings that
make up human relationships. So to his surprise Sanjeev realizes that despite
the ‘dignity, solemnity and beauty’ of the silver bust of Christ, he hated it
all the more ‘ because Twinkle loved it’. After he discovered his ‘malady’ of
possessive love Sanjeev
“ pressed the massive silver
face to his ribs, careful not to let
the feather hat slip, and followed her.”(157)
In this one gesture we may be
assured that Sanjeev would from now onwards would cope with his own passions
better than before. It is truly a ‘Blessed House”
The title
story The Interpreter of Maladies is the kind of story that doesn’t
raise ‘irresponsible curiosity’ in the reader despite the shocking confession
made by Mrs. Das to Mr. Kapasi, the tourist guide cum a professional
interpreter of maladies. When she tells Mr. Kapasi that she feels relieved of
the pain that she was subjected to for seven long years by disclosing the
secret that shrouded the birth of her second son, he says: “ Is it really pain
you feel Mrs. Das or is it guilt?” the character of Mrs. Das illustrates how
tough it is to face facts, more so if they happen to be bitter. It is
understandable therefore that Mr. Kapasi’s question makes her furious and she
walks away in a huff. But its effect is more far-reaching than expected. She is
no longer the brooding and disinterested woman we first met. Obviously she is
relieved of her burden of guilt for the first time in seven years. She is
whipped into action and gets her son ‘Bobby’ out of the clutches of monkeys.
Mr. Kapasi is happy to see and remember the picture of the family, as they help
the child get over the shock, the trauma he just suffered. He is more than
willing to forgo the pictures that Mrs. Das promised to send and doesn’t bother
when the random piece of paper on which she writes his address is swept away by
the wind.
When Mr. Pirzada came to
dine is not only a story about a man living away from his family in a
foreign country but it is also about a child’s understanding of what it means
to miss someone dear. Like most of her stories it is based on real life
experience and the autobiographical element dominates it. Talking about When
Mr.Pirzada comes to dine, in an exclusive interview with Elizabeth
Fransworth of Pulitzer Fiction Jhumpa Lahiri says,
“ This story is based on a gentleman from Bangladesh
who used to come to my parents’ house in 1971….I heard
from my parents what his predicament was. And when I
learned about his situation, which was that he was in the
was back in Dacca…, I was so overwhelmed by this
information that I wrote this story …”
Mr. Pirzada belongs to Dacca
in East Pakistan, was given financial grant to study foliage in America for a
book he planned to write. He became a regular dinner guest at Lilia’s house
after her parents invited him over the phone having been fed up with the
monotonous American style of living. Lilia learns that Mr. Pirzada has seven
daughters and a big house back in Dacca. She is also very keenly aware of the
fact that Mr. Pirzada missed his children and home. Soon he becomes a close
friend of the family despite the fact that he is a Muslim. Lilia was aware of
the history of Partition when Hindus and Muslims set fire to each other’s
houses. Therefore it fills her with surprise that Mr. Pirzada and her parents
“spoke the same language, laughed at the same jokes and
looked more or less the same.”(25)
When Lilia thanks him for the
variety of confectionary Mr. Pirzada gives her, he scorns at her implying that
such niceties have no place between friends. He makes quite an impression on
Lilia with his ‘rotund elegance’, ‘faint theatricality’ and ‘superb ease’.
Another interesting thing about him, that Lilia notices is his silver watch set
to local time in Dacca.
Soon the
war broke out between India and Pakistan on account of East Pakistan’s demand
for sovereignty. Lilia senses the tension it created in her parents as well as
Mr. Pirzada due to the insecurity that his family is faced with. The only way
by which Lilia felt like consoling him was
“eating a piece of candy for
the sake of his family and praying
for their safety.”(34)
Eventually Mr.Pirzada leaves
for Dacca and much to the joy of Lilia and her parents he was reunited with his
family. The all important postscript of the story appears to be the fact that
Lilia is made keenly aware of what it means to miss someone you love which
precludes regional and religious disparities. She clearly remembers the three
of them operating
“ as if they were a single
person, sharing a single meal,
a singly body, a single silence and a single fear.”(41)
“ It was only then raising my
water glass in his name,
that I knew what it means to miss someone who was
so many miles and hours away, just as he had missed
his wife and daughters for so many months.’(42)
Mrs Sen is a story that
defines what ‘emotional exile’ is. As in the other stories the immigrant
experience is at the core of this stirring story too. In addition we also
witness this wonderful companionship between two entirely different persons.
Mrs. Sen was forced to learn car driving for the sake of a job, the job of
looking after a small boy Eliot who has a working mother. Mrs. Sen has to fetch
him from his house to hers and back. It is heartening to see Mrs. Sen
communicating with Eliot on equal footing despite the age difference. She
expresses her joy and loneliness and shares her Indian memories with him with
great verve. The boy listens to her, as do the readers, as she describes the
variety and the uniqueness of her life in Calcutta, India. Her religion, food
and the living pattern come alive in her words. Even after Eliot has stopped
coming to Mrs. Sen’s place because as his mother tells him he is now ‘a big
boy’, he seems to be missing their togetherness and as a result goes through a
kind of void as he watches ‘the gray waves receding from the shore…’ once again
we see this common human factor well voiced by the writer. It is the ‘emotional
dependence’ that binds Eliot and Mrs. Sen whose only other family member leaves
them on their own.
The sexual relationship
between Dev and Miranda and the hopelessness of extra-marital affair make up
the story Sexy. The relationship between the English girl Miranda and
the Indian Dev dies a quiet death for more than one reason. It happens not only
because Miranda realizes that she cannot expect more than physical fulfillment
from Dev but also because of the definition that Rohin, her Indian friend’s
cousin’s child gives to the term ‘sexy’. To him it means ‘ loving someone you
don’t know’. Miranda realizes that is precisely what she did. He tells her
further that
“ that’s what my father
did….He sat next to someone he
doesn’t know, someone sexy, and now he loves her
instead of my mother.”(108)
She also perceives the parallel between her desperate situation and the pathetic condition of a deserted wife. Both long for impossible relationship based on love. Miranda
‘cried harder unable
stop.’(109)
From then on Miranda fends off
Dev’s visits. After all as Jhumpa Lahiri herself has said “ relationships do
not preclude issues of morality.”
The two stories set entirely in India are equally interpretative of human maladies of the mind.
The treatment of Bibi
Haldar as told by Lahiri in an
interview, is
“ about a misfit, a young woman living in a rundown building
in Calcutta, and she is in the care of her cousin and his wife
….She is an epileptic.”
It is also about “the town’s
involvement ….over her marriage and in the idea of finding a husband.” In this
story Lahiri has chiseled out a character so delicately that the final
revelation hardly jolts the reader. Rather it fills him with a greater
understanding of the workings of human psyche. Deprivation of fulfillment of
certain desires makes misfits of some people. The birth of a son cures Bibi
Haldar of a mysterious disease in spite of being deprived of marriage.
The other story situated in
India is The Real Durwan. It is the sorry tale of Buri ma, a refugee in
Calcutta after Partition. In her past an affluent woman has now fallen to
misfortune and self appoints herself as the Durwan or the gatekeeper of an
apartment building. It is story that appeals to the pathetic in us. Her
incessant ramblings about her rich past and her comparisons between the past
and the present life get on the nerves of the apartment residents. In a bid to
give the building a face lift they throw Boor ma out along with her boxes and
baskets. The irony is that even the ‘kind’ people like Mrs. Dalal get lost in
the quagmire of vanity and selfishness. The eternal disparity existing between
the
‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ is sharply emphasized in this
story.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s set of
vignettes makes memorable reading. The collection as in the opinion of Addison,
gives the readers ‘profitable pleasure’. They combine learning experience with
delight. ‘The yearnings of exile’ and the ‘emotional confusion’ are the two
significant strands of these stories of power and impact. Her language,
consisting of short sentences and spare exchanges, demands a deep understanding
and a deeper sense of affinity with others of our planet.
According to Joseph Warren
Beach the object of fiction is to make us
“ feel and appreciate and what counts is not the number
of facts but the degree to which we have been made to
live with them.”
The Interpreter of Maladies
more than meets the above requirement. It exposes facts and at the same time
makes us deeply involved and reflective.
References
1.
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
2. Interview on the Redif Net with R. Shankar
3. Twentieth century Novel by Joseph Warren Beach
Sender’s brief bio-data
Dr. (mrs) Jaya Lakshmi Rao V.
Reader in English, Mrs. A.V.N. College, Visakhapatnam.
Contact address:
47 North Extension, Seethammadhara, Visakhapatnam,
530013, India.
e-mail address: jayavrao@yahoo.com