Isolation

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Isolation, Bewildered Relationships and Lack of Communication among the

Immigrants in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

Shraddha

Research Scholar,

Department of EnglishMEL University of Allahabad, Allahabad

The short story collection of Lahiri Interpreter of Maladies highlights some facets of cultural

displacement. Written exquisitely that even upon rereading, there is hardly any obscure expression that

blurs the collection. Her stories sketched out of the lives of various Bengali – American suffering through

a variety of stages of loveless desolate life that speaks volumes of their cultural uprooting and

displacement. However a deeper study reveals the intricate use of pattern and motif to bind the stories

together, including the recurring themes of the barriers to and opportunities for human communication;

community including marital, extra marital, and parent child relationships; and the dichotomy of care andneglect.

This paper deals with the issues of diaspora and most importantly the inability to communicate in

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories, Interpreter

of Maladies tries to map the identity politics of a bunch of Indian immigrants in the US and tells

us how their culture clash with the settler country, the US. American multiculturalism is

responsible for this.

Lahiri is a dazzling story teller with a refreshingly distinctive voice. She took the literary world

by storm when she won Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000.

In this paper, I have tried to analyze how Jhumpa Lahiri‘s diasporic characters struggle hard to

occupy the transnational spaces they find in the land of their choice and also their identity crisis.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s response, on being asked whether the loss and longing depicted in her stories

was her own or of her parents, can at once be seen as a clarifying gesture and a closure. While it

is difficult to say whether the overwhelming sense of loss in Interpreter of Maladies can be

attributed exclusively to the child of immigrant parents, or to the child of the immigrant parents

themselves, it makes sense to look at the alienation and displacement, lack of communication

among their own people, that the first generation immigrants may have experienced in the US.

Almost all the stories in the collection deal with diaspora and continually narrativize the loss and

re-invention of home.

Writers of the Indian diaspora often deal with narrative of people moving out of their homes-

primarily to the US or to the Great West, where all dreams are believed to come true-to further

their own prospects, gain financially and professionally, and of course, be tagged and envied as

NRIs by their less enterprising or even less fortunate countrymen back home. But while shifting

to a foreign land people do not ask themselves if they will be able to adjust to the life and

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN: 0976-8165

Vol. 6, Issue. V October 2015116

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community there. In many cases financial security is achieved but the sense of alienation

becomes very deep. They come into contact with a culture which is very different from the one

they have left behind. The community feeling is absent and the immigrants try to get in touch

with people from their part of the world either through the university directory or by striking up

“conversation in the tube” or at the grocers and from some sort of community. In doing that they

may not always take their religious or regional affiliations into consideration very seriously.

Interpreter of Maladies deals with the question of identity that immigrant Indians face abroad.

The diasporic characters face a sense of alienation, of exile. The absence of the sense of

belonging, the lingering awareness of clutching at a world that does not belong to them “leaves

them isolated and willing to create “home, “a community in their own way. The protagonists are

not averse to the idea of acculturation accompanied by a sense of loss and heart breaks but they

also want to “adapt and adopt”. In fact, we can see how alienated and lonely in a strange new

world, looking back at the world from which her characters once made their journey, she talks

about universal maladies in detail, with a touch of humor and sometimes with irony which is

misplaced. It is suggested here that home is not only a residential space but also a psychic

construct that fashions the identity and affiliation of the self. Diasporic characters are no

exception. The coalescing of home and narration in Interpreter of Maladies may not have the

impact that we associate with Bhabha’s Nation and Narration, but the complex strand already

invoked by the combination of these two images cannot be ignored.

The nine short stories in the anthology deal with characters that are, or feel, displaced from

home. If we try to classify them, we find that the characters are first generation and second

generation Indian settlers in the US (“Mrs.Sen’s,” “The Third and Final Continent,” “When

Mr.Pirzada came to Dine “Indians in the Native country” “Interpreter of Maladies,” “A Real

Durwan”) and finally an “American (“Sexy”). In almost all the stories there is a longing for the

native land, the life led in India before their migration to the US. Even the second generation

settlers are not free from their connection they have finally with the country of the birth of their

parents. Politically and nationally they are Americans but the “added baggage “of their parents

memories of their country is something that they have to contend with. The first generation

settlers fear the children may forget the tradition and culture of their parents and become

completely Americanized. Thus they have to keep alive the traditions of their forefathers in the

little India’s that they create in their apartments. The occasional visit to India also keeps them in

touch with their ‘roots ‘and the magic that is India keeps them bound to her.

Here, when we mention India we are not dealing with the Indian community in general; it is

about a particular community, “the Bengali community “The Harper Collins edition of the text

bears the title Interpreter of Maladies: Stories of Bengal, Boston and Beyond . Thus the food

habits, mannerisms, traditions mentioned in the stories are basically of her people of Bengal. A

common thread running through Lahiri’s collection of stories is the experience of being

“foreign”. “Her characters long for meaningful connection, but what they get is rarely what they



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except. Those trying to adapt to an unfamiliar world do not always succeed. Some are homesick,

many are misunderstood.

The popularity and critical success of Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies in both the United States

and in India could in part due to the delicate balancing of representations she provides through

the cycle as a whole. For example, the cheating husbands of “Sexy “are balanced by the

depiction of the unfaithful Mrs. Das of “Interpreter of Maladies.”The relative ease with which

Lilia of “When Mr. Pirzada came to Dine “participates in an American childhood is contrasted

with the separation and stigmatization that the Dixit children experience in the story “Sexy.”Mrs.

Sen severe homesickness and separation from US culture is contrasted with the adaptability of

Liliaá mother and Mala in “The Third and the Final Continent.”The balancing of the generally

negative depiction of an Indian community in “Real Durwan”with generally positive portrayal in

“The Treatment of Bibi Haldar”is yet another example not only of the resulting balanced

representations that the genre affords Lahiri but is itself one of many ways through which Lahiri

constructs a conversation among her pieces.

The first and last stories in the cycle most clearly evoke a balancing dialogue through a careful

mirroring of their basic plots of the first story, “A Temporary Matter.”While the first story of the

cycle relates the tale of the death of a son and the possible destruction of marriage, the

concluding story provides a tale of survival and resilience of both the parent’s marriage, and their

son. The plot of the final story emphasizes the “ordinary “heroism of the narrator and his wife

through the trials of migrating across continents and coming to care for a stranger by contrasting

the pair to the narrator’s fragile mother and their life in the Unites States to the short stay of

astronauts on the moon. They are also connected to the elderly Mrs. Croft and her near

miraculous ability to survive: she seems to have traveled as far in time as the main characters

have in space. By placing Shobha and Shukumar’s story in her reader’s mind first, Lahiri is able

o inform readers of the final story of the ways Mala and her husband could have failed as a

couple and parents, thus emphasizing their experiences as achievements rather than mere norms.

The placement of these two stories at the beginning and end of the collection also helps to signal

readers of the cyclical nature of the collection.

Susan Mann notes that titles are key generic signals and that “collections that are not cycles have

traditionally been named after a single story to which the phrase and the other stories is

appended…Generally placed first or last in the volume, the title story represents what the authors

feels is the best work or in some cases, the best-known work” (14) Other critics have described

the title of Lahiri’s cycle as descriptive of her talents and her subject matter in all the stories,

rather than just naming of the third story in the collection.

The nine stories in the anthology deal with the characters that a feel displaced from home. If we

try to classify them, we find that the characters are first generation and second generation Indian

settlers in the US. (“Mrs Sen’s”), “The Third and the final Continent”, “When Mr Pirzada came

to Dine “Indians in the Native country (Interpreter of Maladies “A Real Durwan”and finally an



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American (“Sexy”). In almost all the stories there is a longing for the native land, the life led in

India before their migration to the US. Even the second generation settlers are not free from the

connection they have with the country of the birth of their parents. Politically and nationally they

are Americans but the added baggage of their parent’s memories of their country is something

they have to contend with. The first generation settlers fear that the children may forget the

traditions and culture of their parents and become completely Americanized. Thus they have to

keep alive the traditions of their forefathers in the “little Indias”that they create in their

apartments. The occasional visits to India also keep them in touch with their roots and the magic

that India keeps them bound to her.

Here when we mention India we are not dealing with the Indian community in general; it is

about particular community, “the Bengali community.”

Lahiri’s first story in her collection is “A Temporary Mater.”Though the temporary matter in the

story is an usual power-cut for an hour in Boston, it symbolically stand for the married life as

well. For an American couple the first marriage fails in a year or two. The second marriage

invariably lasts longer. The Indian immigrant couple in the story, Shukumar and Shobha, has

long been Americanized. Still at times they behave like typical Indians. The story takes place in

Boston. When Shobha’s child was born dead, her husband was away for the paper presentation

and it became a traumatic moment for her. When she was taken home after the delivery, she

started avoiding her husband. Though they lived in a three bedroom house, there was no warmth

in their relationship. However, “there was nothing to indicate that she would not be able to have

children in the future.”( Interpreter of Maladies 04)

Shukumar thought that this chillness in his wife’s behavior would pass soon. She was just thirty

three, and was strong in her feet gain. But nothing positive was happening for long. Of late, both

had become experts at avoiding each other. The power cut coincided with their lunch time, from

eight to nine in the evening; it meant that they had to eat in the dark. Shobha however suggested

eating in candle light. A year ago, when there was a birthday party arranged by Shobha, there

were some hundred and thirty people in the party and Shobha and Shukumar enjoyed themselves

at party but now their relationship has changed. All affection became a matter of past.

Somewhere the reason behind the misunderstanding is the alien atmosphere in which they are

living. It is easier to express oneself and maintain relationship in healthy and friendly

atmosphere. But being in foreign land things were getting tougher for Shobha and Shukumar.In

India, unlike the West, those who break free from their wedlock are not comfortable socially,

emotionally and psychically. Shukumar had a secret in his mind he always kept it from Shobha

that their baby was a boy.As if in a reverie; he went on telling her, “our baby was a boy. His skin

was redder than brown. He had black hair on his head. He weighed almost five pounds. His

fingers were curled shut, just like yours in the night” ( Interpreter of Maladies 22) This was big

revelation to her. She looked at him now. Both wept together for the thing they now know.



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The still born child is symbolic of still interpersonal relationship of the couple. This kind of

lonely existence is a common feature in the US. However the temporary matter- the power cut-

took away the temporality from their conjugal life and provided them with strong emotional

nourishment. This story of Lahiri brings before us various issues like loneliness, exclusion,

fidelity in marriage and tradition in the lives of the Indian diasporic community in the US. Lahiri

gives us a message that it is very essential for individuals to communicate. It is power of

communication which connects individuals, releases from emotional exile and strengthens

relationships.

Lahiri’s story, “When Mr.Pirzada came to Dine “brings before us the Indo-American life of an

Indian and their scholar friend from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The story is told through a

ten year old girl Lilia. The young girl is born in Boston and so she is not aware of things that

split the Indian subcontinent, like the issues of Partition, the civil war in East Pakistan, the

fleeing refugees and the frequent communal clashes. As immigrants in the US Lilia’s parents

want the best upbringing that they could give her. Her mother’s comment about Liliás birth in

the US and that she need not learn anything apart from everything ‘American’ implies her effort

at acculturation. Even though the parents are not able to let go of their attachment with India the

mother wants Lilia should not know misery, poverty, and other ills associated with the country of

their birth. That was one of the reasons why they left India and came to the US.Mr.Pirzada entry

to the family awakens Lilia’s curiosity to know more about the place he came from which

eventually leads her to try and find out a book on Dacca in the library. In 1971, on the eve of the

Bangladesh war, Mr Pirzada’s identity was in confusion. He was not an Indian nor Pakistani and

not a Bangladeshi too. He belonged to nowhere. All these events confuse a little girl Lilia. It

disturbs her that why Mr. Pirzada, though he speaks the same language, eats the same food,

behaves the same way like her parents, is not an Indian. Gradually, as Mr. Pirzada’s anxietyincreases, Lilia’s anxiety also builds up. When she hears that Dacca has been invaded, torched,

shelled by the Pakistan army teachers are dragged onto the street and shot, and women are

dragged into the barracks and raped she thinks that in all probability Mr. Pirzada’s family

members would have been wiped out.

When Mr. Pirzada completes his project, he flies home quite anxiously. For a couple of months

there was no news from him. However, when normalcy returns to Bangladesh, he sends the

narrator’s family a letter and a post card describing how he has reunited with his people; he also

thanks them for the hospitality. In this story, Lilia’s parents try to not to reveal her about India

and their own culture. It is as if they feel that it is not necessary for Lilia to know anything aboutIndia and their origin but only about America. In this way the confusion among the second

generation immigrants increases regarding their identity. The key questions are related to

identity, home and address, both inner and outer.

In the title story of the collection “Interpreter of Maladies” Mr. Kapasi is seen driving an

American Indian family to the Sun Temple Konark. Lahiri does not place the action in Boston;



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she deal with a first- generation Indian American couple- Mr. and Mrs. Das, from New Jersey to

Konark in Orrisa. The couple is accompanied by their children- Tina, Ronny and Bobby who

have never visited India. The strange behavior of the couple towards each other and also toward

their children confuses Mr. Kapasi. They are more Americanized than American themselves with

their love for “space and Independence.”

Living as Diaspora in the US, they feel India as exotic land of their forefathers fit to be captured

in the films of their camera and read its history in the tourist guide books. Mr. Kapasi’s

alternative job as an interpreter for a doctor who does not speaks his patient’s language alerts

Mrs. Das to shed the indifference she was maintaining towards him and her surroundings. Mrs.

Das informs Mr. Kapasi that she was making the trip out of compulsion. She proclaims his job as

an interpreter of maladies as “romantic.”Her sudden interest in him, an interest she did not

express in either her husband or her children, was mildly intoxicating. When Mr. Kapasi thought

once again about how she had said ‘romantic ‘the feeling of intoxication grew.”(Interpreter of

Maladies 53)

On the way to Konark when the children see some monkeys, they shout ‘monkeys ‘but Mr.

Kapasi says immediately, “We call them Hanuman”( IM 47) These are some instance which

shows clearly cultural diversities between the visiting Indian –Americans and the native Indians.

Another interesting cultural clash is that on seeing Mr. Kapasi sitting on the right side of the car

and steering it, Bobby asks his father, Daddy why is the drive sitting on the wrong side in this

car, too?”(48)Yet another cultural change we notice is that “Mr. and Mrs. Das behaved like an

older brother and sister, and not parents. It seemed that they were in charge of the children only

for the day; it was hard to believe they were regularly responsible for anything other than

themselves” (49)

For Mrs. Das, interpreter is someone who can explain the disease/problems/maladies faced by a

person and suggests a viable solution for it, somewhat like a psychiatrist. She confides in Mr.

Kapasi that one of the couple’s two sons was clandestinely fathered by her husband’s Punjabi

friend during a brief visit. Mr. Kapasi fails to understand why he had been privy to her dirty

secret. He feels offended and humiliated and in a way it cures him of his infatuation for Mrs.

Das. I told you because of your talents,” (65) she informs him after divulging the secret “I’m

tired tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi. I’ve in pain in eight years. I

was hoping you could help me feel better; say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy (65)

The interpreter of maladies, Mr.Kapasi is unable to help Mrs. Das. He interprets her problem as

guilt and not as pain and tells her to confess it to her husband and thus feel burden free.Mrs.

Das’s and Mr. Kapasi’s attitude to the issue of adultery is too different. For people in India it is

not acceptable in any case, it’s against society and religion, its infidelity. On the other hand, for

Americans it was just a slip and that was the only time she slipped. All happened because she

was longing for the attention which she could not get from her husband so she succumbed when

the friend of her husband made advances towards her. It was simply a physical urge and



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gratification. The interpreter of maladies is ultimately unable to help the sufferer. “I knew from

the beginning that this had to be the title of the story, because it best expresses, thematically, the

predicament at the heart of a book- the dilemma, the difficulty, and often the impossibility of

communicating emotional pain and affection to others, as well as expressing it to ourselves “says

Jhumpa Lahiri about this story (conversation at www.hought on mifflinbooks.com/readers)

In the eponymous story, “Mrs Sen’s” a lady of about thirty in age is suffering from nostalgia and

anxiety and to reduce her alienation she takes on Eliot, an eleven year old boy to fill her

afternoon hours when her husband is working. Eliot becomes quickly aware of Mrs. Sen’s

loneliness her bewilderment in a strange new culture. Mrs. Sen suffers from the feeling of

displacement intensely. She tries to build little India in her apartment. Later we find that Eliot to

feels bewildered when he sees the kind of life that the Sen’s live and now Mrs. Sen tries to

recreate India in her own small apartment. She tries very hard to follow the ways and customs of

United States but she cannot escape the fact that, “Everything is there in India” (113) The thing

she misses most is the community feeling that is absent in the US. People in the US love privacy

and silence that is in sharp contrast with the community feeling in India. Mrs. Sen was new to the

foreign land and her sense of alienation becomes complete when she has to spend the day alone

in the apartment without any friend with whom she could chat. In India under such

circumstances she would have been flooded by visits from the neighbors coming over for a

friendly chat. She often felt that she belonged to a land where people don’t look for excuses to

visit near and dear ones. She was taken aback by this love for silence and privacy. Eliot becomes

her companion and he notices her love for two things that is, letters from home and whole fresh

fish from the sea. She yearns for home, which she feels in Calcutta, surrounded by well wishers

and memories. She repeatedly mentions Calcutta that she has left behind heightens her sense of

loneliness.

The narrator of the story is an eleven year old boy who himself is an outsider to the world of

Mrs. Sen, alien to the Indian culture that is followed there. Eliot becomes aware of the existence

of Mrs. Sen and her lonely life. As Mrs. Sen is an outsider in the US, Eliot‘s mother also seems

to be an outsider to the world that has been “deliberately created” in the apartment to resemble a

home in India. Eliot’s mother behaves as an employer whereas Mrs. Sen tries to be friendly with

her. She shares with her food which she prepares. It can, perhaps, be said that the sense of

alienation is heightened in the foreign settlers because of this attitude of the natives who do not

accept non natives and the unfamiliar environment and ways of living.

In conclusion, I can say that Lahiri brings out Indian immigrants experience in the US either

openly or discreetly, troubled relationship of the immigrants with others and their own people.

Their incapability to share their emotions with their own life partners makes them lonely as it

could be easily seen in the story “A Temporary Matter”. Both the characters suffer because they

cannot communicate their grief over the loss of their baby. They move farther from each other

and their relationship weakens in this manner. In “The Interpreter of Maladies” also Mrs. Mina



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Das could not communicate with her husband about her illegitimate relationship with the friend

of Mr. Das. In order to give an outlet to her emotion she confides her guilt to Mr. Kapasi who

thinks that the best way to repent is to tell the truth to her husband. Lack of communication and

understanding finds place in this story too. Mrs. Sen of the eponymous story “Mrs. Sen” too feels

alienated in a foreign land where she feels her displaced from her homeland. Her constant

yearning for Calcutta and her inability to share her grief with her husband finally leads her to

share her thoughts to a small boy Eliot. She keeps Eliot with herself just to while away her time.

Alone she felt haunted by the memories of her home. Had she been able to talk about her anxiety

to Mr. Sen who was mostly occupied with his work she would have been not so lonely.

On the whole, I can say that Lahiri has beautifully portrayed all the characters in these stories.

Sometimes in a very subtle ways she brings out the dilemma and anxiety of the immigrants. Her

stories reflect the psychological disturbance of many characters because of their inability to

adjust in a foreign environment. All her stories together make a complete and coherent cycle.

Works Cited:

Bala, Suman. “Jhumpa Lahiri: The Master Storyteller.”A Critical Response to Interpreter of

Maladies. ED.Suman Bala New Delhi 2002. Print.

Chaturvedi Prashant. The Fictional World of Jhumpa Lahiri. Vikas Publishers: New Delhi, 2002.

Print.

Das, Nigamanada. Jhumpa Lahiri, Critical Perspectives.Pencraft International.2008.Print.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies. New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers India, 1999.Print.

Sarangi, Jaydeep. On the Alien Shore: A Study of Jhumpa Lahiri and Bharti Mukherjee.

GNOSIS Publications.2010. Print.



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