Jhumpha Lahiri’s novel “The interpreter of Maladies” comprises a collection of nine stories encompassing the emotions, cultural experiences, oriental’s perspective and Indian-European experiences of the different characters settled in either England or America. Each story leads the reader to a mesmerizing tale of emotions and the reader feels himself/herself as a part of the story’s ambience. Be it the heart aching tale of Bibi Haldar and Boori Ma, or the deteriorating marriage of Shobha and Shukumar, each story creates an aura of belonging and a reader can relate himself with the characters.
Lahiri has used the Indian culture, values and norms and religion as chief themes in each story and the relations and life of the characters revolving around these Indian norms. However, in each story, one observes the deterioration of the cultural values and changes in the relations between the characters due to the changes in the values and the Indian norms.
There are several instances of the loss of cultural and spiritual values and the emotional loss, due to the worsening of relation between the characters in each of Lahiri’s story. One such instance can be cited form the story “A Temporary Matter”. The story revolves around a couple, Shobha and Shukumar, who had lost interest in their marriage aftermath the still birth of their child, six months ago.
The once happily married couple now avoided even the mere sight of each other and stayed aloof. Shobha would work for long hours and would extra work home in order to keep herself occupied. The once diligent homemaker, as Lahiri said, who would “prepare for surprises good or bad” now treated her home like a hotel./ She would leave her shoes and books in the kitchen and eat right from a cereal box if Shukumar hadn’t prepare any proper meal.
On the other hand, Shukumar engrossed himself in reading novels, cooking dinner and resting instead of working on his dissertation. He would often forget to brush his teeth and had moved his work to the nursery; they had decorated for their once impending baby, knowing the Shobha avoided that room. Lahiri has also pointed out that Shukumar and Shobha had adopted a neglectful attitude towards their house and Shukumar consistently utilized the supply of food reserved by Shobha instead of preparing new meals and restoring the food supply.
Hence, each had formed a glass wall and created barriers form each other. Instead of comforting and consoling each other, they both had shunned themselves in their own nutshells. Their marriage was collapsing and the love they once shared had now faded away. They were two different people under one roof, bonded together through a paper of marital contract. They had divided their house into two portions, upper for shukumar and lower for Shobah and ate separately in their portions.
Moreover, when due to the power outages they were brought closer to each other and shared the secrets that they hadn’t shared before, it was also a game of deception and thus, their relation faced the final blow as, Shobha revealed that she had leased an apartment and was separating from Shukumar and in return, Shukumar revealed the gender of their dead baby, which he had once sworn to keep a secret.
Similarly, in the story “When Mr. Pirzada came to Dine” the passing of the cultural values can be observed from the fact that though, Mr. Pirzada and Lilia’s family used to dine together and shared the same interest in political matters, had same taste for the meal and spoke a similar language yet, had different nationalities. Thus, Mr. Pirzada used to dine with Lilia’s family and was away from his family, in America, when the war broke out between Pakistan and Bangladesh and he lost all the contact with his family. Lilia grew a sudden interest in the politics of Mr. Pirzada’s homeland, Bangladesh. Lahiri also explains the collapsing of Pakistan as a unit comprising East wing and West wing into Bangladesh and latter Pakistan.
Mr. Pirzada had seven daughters and since he was unable to meet them, he transferred his fatherly affection towards Lilia and used to bring confections for her on a daily basis. However, soon this practice was stopped as; due to war he became more concerned for his family. Lilia felt close to Mr. Pirzada and concerned for his family. This change of habit caused her to adopt a spiritual practice of praying for the well being of his family after putting each sweet in her mouth every night. However, soon she quitted this practice as; her family received a letter from Mr. Pirzada, explaining that he had happily reunited with his family.
Furthermore, the story “Interpreter of Maladies” doesn’t only represent the collapse of monuments but also the cultural values and emotions attached to one’s native land. Likewise the Das couple, Mr. Kapasi, the tour guide had lost interest in his marriage. He had failed to accomplish his dream of becoming the international diplomat on the basis of being a linguist and now the only foreign language he could speak was English, which even he feared that his children had a better hold of the language.
Mr. Das
Das had a failing relationship among themselves and Mrs. Das portrayed the perfect example of “ugly Americans”. This shows the transfer of western values on her. She was selfish and had lost interest in her once important children and her marriage. She shattered Mr. Kapasi’s dream of companionship with her, out of their lonesome marriages as, she regarded him as a father figure, while he aimed for a romantic companionship. In return, he didn’t help her in interpreting her problem and resolved that it was the guilt, which she suffered from. Moreover, the fact that Bobby was a product of Mrs. Das’s adultery also represented the reason behind their failing marriage and her lost of concentration in her family.
In “Real Durwan”, Boori Ma’s constant conflict in her seductive and appealing stories of her lost riches and estate represents the disintegration of her past. Nobody was certain whether she told the truth or plainly told tales, yet her sighs demonstrated a great loss in terms of her heritage and her precedent.
Besides, an aura of materialism, globalization and sense of competition can also be observed in the nature of the inhabitants of the neighborhood, as when Mr. Dalal installed the sink in the building and his financial state improved, other members of the building also started working on the improvisation of building on their parts.
In the rat race of contest, each forgot the role and importance of Boori Ma’s role as a durwan of the building. She would roam around the streets and one fine day when the sink was stolen from the building, she was hold responsible for the loss and called a “thief”. This shows the loss of her respect and her previously ignored contradicting stories were now held as an evidence that she had the habit to manipulate and could have been the thief. Ironically, new the neighborhood felt the need to hire a “real durwan”, overlooking Boor Ma’s services as a durwan.
In the story “Sexy”, it is evident that Miranda became inspired with the Indian food and culture. She was interested in seeing Madhuri Dixit’s movie since Dev’s wife resembled her. This represents her concern for the Indian culture as, previously she was untouched by Laximi’s stories of her cousin’s cheating husband.
However, her affair with Dev finally came to an end, when Rohin called her sexy and explained his interpretation of the word as “loving someone you don’t know”. This collapsed her image of her illicit affair with Dev as; she realized that Dev’s interpretation of the word sexy would have been same. Soon she stopped seeing him and their relationship was terminated.
Jhumpha Lahiri has frequently symbolized the importance of the Indian culture and the correspondence of Indian women to the values and norms. Throughout the novel, female characters likewise Mala, Laxmi and Mrs. Sen. have portrayed the Indian culture. On the contrary, Shobha and twinkle have demonstrated strong and liberal woman and a loss of cultural values can be seen as, Shobha and Twinkle didn’t dress up in saris, applied vermillion, red dye or haven’t worn bangles.
Food has also played an important role in each of these stories as, Mrs. Sen. and Mala followed their Indian recipes and even Lilia’s family ate rice and fish. However, Mrs. Sen. was unable to adapt the foreign culture and couldn’t settle on the processed, tinned fish and always demanded fresh sea fish, which her husband couldn’t provide her all the time and she had to compromise.
Moreover, The narrator in the Third and final continent also had to lose his cultural values by eating banana and cereal instead of a well cooked home food and later when his wife joined him, he was unable to adjust to the aroma of Indian food. Twinkle in this blessed house, also, preferred easy-American food over the Indian food as she considered grinding and peeling g ginger and garlic, a waste of time. Here it is evident that it is the collapse of the cultural values. Besides, she even used vinegar in food which Indian mostly prohibits in their cooking.
In Mrs. Sen. Lahiri has described the loss of Indian heritage, as Mrs. Sen. far away from her native land, misses the use of the cutting blade with her relatives and also she couldn’t scream according to her will as the neighbors would consider it a disturbance instead of coming for help or sharing grief or happiness. Added to this, later after her accident with Elliot, he was left to stay alone at his each instead of visiting Mrs. Sen.’s and this shows the loss of once important visit at her place and now he was considered capable of taking care of his own self by his mother.
Even in the story the blessed house, we can observe the loss of spiritual values as Twinkle becomes impressed by the Christians objects around her new house and Sanjeev used to get frustrated and reminded her often the “We aren’t Christians”. Twinkle was so mesmerized by the objects around her house that she considered her house to be blessed and was unable to understand her husband’s frustration. Even Sanjeev seemed confused that whether or not he actually loved Twinkle and his marriage seemed to be on the verge of deterioration. He had lost his reason for loving her and even wondered if he actually meant when he told her that he loved her.
Nevertheless, in the story the third and the final continent, it is surprising that the narrator couldn’t relate to his cultural norms and not touched by any of his wife’s moves, until Mrs. Croft calls her a perfect lady. He seemed to be regretting his decision of even asking Mala to dress up for a walk as he frowns when she comes out dressed up as “if dressed up for a party”.
Furthermore, Lahiri has diligently mentioned the emphasis and importance the youth gives to their parents and their experiences. With the passage of time, we have become so materialistic that feelings and emotions don’t matter to us much. As, Mala’s son wasn’t surprised when they told him about the age of Mrs. Croft when she dies, but he was taken aback but the amount of rent that his father had paid her. Moreover, now Mala didn’t cried for her family but for the distance she had from her son.
Hence, this book, interpreter of maladies has numerous instances of the collapse, deterioration, or passing of once-important cultural, emotional or spiritual values in all of the stories and they are beautifully chalked out by the writer, Jhumpha Lahiri.
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