POLITICS OF HUMAN RELATIONS – DETACHMENT IN ATTACHMENT IN
JHUMPA LAHIRI’S
INTERPRETER OF MALADIES
P. Rajendra Karmarkar
Marked by
acquisitiveness, vanity, antagonism, love for power, restlessness for the new,
and unbounded freedom, American life is inclined to be mechanical, superficial
and insensible (to love) giving legitimacy to duplicity, deceit and
prevarication, dealing a heavy blow to ethical values. Albert Camus’s statement ‘man is seen more
as continually, falling, than fallen’ clearly reveals the decadence inhuman
values of the contemporary World. In an age of extreme permissiveness, the
moral foundations of literature seem to be shaken.
There’s been
a stirring and rethinking in the minds of the conventional families championed
by no other than president George W. Bush about the collapse of older family
values-eroding virginity, immediacy of abortions and the spurt of sexually
transmitted diseases and Aids. Critics
describe Bush’s call for their revival in American Society and the rest of the
World at large as an imperial cultural attack.
Modern America has conferred upon the World not only technological
development, popular music, made easy food, a will to strike back at terror but
also fast values and free morals.
Identified by double standards, Christian ethics and arrogance of caste
Hindus, Hawkish diction of an aggressor, Bush and his party’s call for
abstinence from sex before marriage and return of those lost values, is not
likely to evoke much response and sympathy.
It remains a war cry in the wilderness.
“The United States has given the World McDonald’s and Levi’s, pop
culture and genetically modified foods.
It exports democracy and free markets and has marshaled a worldwide
drive against terror. But America’s
work is apparently not done. President
George W. Bush wants to enlist the World’s support for another cause: the
globalization of American family values”.
{Stryker McGuire: ‘New Moral Order’? ‘Newsweek’, Dec, 9th,
2002 P.39}.
The make up
woman is for thousand faces. Marriage
is a matter of partnership. An unread
woman is more artless and guiltless. “A
woman who thinks is not good for a man” {Shoba De: Socialite Evenings,
Penguin, P.85}. Nothing but penchant or
fondness toward the spouse, a wayward game with a lover.
Indian
immigrants living under the garb of American culture and life too have become
Americanized. The first and indistinct
love which flickers at the time of marriage flies away like water drying in a
tank in hot Indian summer. And it
remains as a broken mire heaving a sigh in a searing weather.
Interpreter
of Maladies (1999)
by Jhumpa Lahiri, is an anthology of short stories woven with a thread of a
novel depicting the social realism of the American life of the Asian immigrants especially the Indians and
the American social theatrics that have crept into the life of the Asians
settled in the U.S. making them feel empty in their hearts.
Marriage becomes
a haven for committing infidelity with impunity. And it confers social recognition and security on the couple who
seek in it an asylum to come back after running a successful liaison.
‘Interpreter
of Maladies’ evinces decline in marital relations effected by mechanical and
computer-literate mad rush which tickles Americans’ avarice for wealth and
their libidos to please themselves with a variety of people, echoing the social
realism of American life.
Mr. Das, with
his wife and children, comes to India as usual for every two years to see their
retired parents living in Assansol. Mr. And Mrs. Das, born and raised in
America, are in their late twenties.
They are staying in New Brunswick of New Jersey where Mr. Das teaches
science at Middle School. Accompanied
by their children, Raj, the son, and Tina, the daughter, they visit Konark for
sightseeing. The driver of their hired
car is Mr. Kapasi, ‘the interpreter of maladies’ who tells them that his other
work is to interpret the diseases of the Gujarathi people at a clinic to a
doctor who has no knowledge of Gujarathi.
For Mr. Kapasi, none of the women he carried earlier in his car is as
fascinating as Mrs. Das whose shaven and bare legs and protruding breasts from
her close fitting blouse. Kapasi watches passionately and cherishes the idea of
an affair. She too finds in him a
‘lover’ and reveals to him a traumatic truth.
She tells him that her son was born to a Sikh friend of Mr. Das, who
stayed in their house for a brief period and she has no love for her husband
and her two children. And she wants to
be liberated by throwing away all these millstones.
Like
Americans, whose hearts have withered from their perfunctory and mercenary
life, and who visits Hindu missionaries working in India who promise peace and
equilibrium, Mr. and Mrs. Das come to India to have a brief stay with their
parents.
Although Dr.
Johnson declared that politics is the last refuge of a scoundrel, today,
politics occupies the first and foremost place in public life and a politician
who reads the society, makes laws, usurping the statesman. So is Mr. Kapasi who has become an
interpreter of maladies after several disappointments in finding a suitable
job. Mr. Kapasi not only interprets the diseases described by the Gujarathi patients,
but also expounds them. “The job was a
sign of his failings. In his youth he’d
been a devoted scholar of foreign languages, the owner of an impressive
collection of dictionaries… He was a
self-educated man”.
{Interpreter of Maladies.P.52}.
Nobody can be
matched with anybody. Being an
interpreter of maladies, Mr. Kapasi diagnoses correctly that Mr. and Mrs. Das
have no love lost and are a mismatch just as he and his wife have become
victims of indifference, wrangle with elongated silences after several years of
their marriage. Mr. Kapasi observes
that upon his revelation that his job is to interpret the diseases of the
Gujarati patients into the local language of the doctor, Mrs. Das feels excited
and utters ‘so romantic’ to the surprise of her husband who had perhaps never
been acclaimed by her as such. Her word
‘romantic’ beginning to ring in Mr. Kapasi’s mind, sends emotional waves in his
spine and spurs him to move closer to her.
“He wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Das were a bad match, just as he and his
wife, were….. 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.”
Mrs. Das
finds Mr. Kapasi, the best friend and lover in whom she can confide to her
hidden past. He, who is fatherly and
amorous, is a relish that offers skimpy pleasures. But, her disclosure that her son, Bobby is born to a Punjabi
friend and her husband is kept in obscurity about the matter, makes Mr. Kapasi
feel thwarted in his advancing movement.
Mr. Kapasi like every Indian, wishes a woman he desires, ought to be
chaste and loyal even if she is married.
His warm heart further sinks when she treats him as a fatherly figure.
Mrs. Das
clearly indicates that she has no love either toward her husband or her
children. It’s pity that her poor
husband may think that she loves him.
Love is a burden and marriage an obstacle to carry on with new
relations. Being restive for eight years, she prays Mr. Kapasi to show the
remedy for her release from her imprisonment.
Mrs. Das, who must have been swayed by the Indian traditions and
customs, feels empty to find cure to her disquietitude.
Mrs. Das says
“Don’t you see? For eight years I
haven’t been able to express this to anybody, not to friends, certainly not to
Raj. He doesn’t even suspect it. He thinks I’m still in love with him. Well, don’t you have anything to say?…“I was
hoping you could help me feel better, say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy”. {Ibid.,P.65}
Realizing,
that Mrs. Das suffers from a strange disease, Mr. Kapasi wants to suggest to
her that she must be honest and confess the truth to her husband. Mr. Kapasi deliberates “…She did not
resemble the patients in the doctor’s office, those who came glassy – eyed and
desperate, unable to sleep or breathe or with case, unable, above all, to give
words to their pains…. Perhaps he ought to tell her to confess the truth to Mr.
Das. He would explain that honesty was
the best policy” {Ibid., P.66}
Mr. Kapasi
does not rise above an interpreter of maladies. He offers no remedy to Mrs. Das’s incorrigible disorder. Upon his enquiry about whether she undergoes
heartache or self-reproach of her past affair, she looks disapprovingly. Kapasi questions “Is it really pain you
feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt”? “She turned to him and glared. “She opened her mouth to say something, but
as she glared at Mr. Kapasi some certain knowledge seemed to pass before her
eyes, and she stopped” (Ibid.,P.66).
Mr. Kapasi
does not rise above an interpreter of maladies. He offers no remedy to Mrs.Das’s incorrigible disorder. Upon his enquiry about whether she undergoes
heartache or self-reproach of her past affair, she looks disapprovingly. Kapasi questions “Is it really pain you feel, Mrs.Das, or is it
guilt”? “She turned to him and glared. “She opened her mouth to say something, but
as she glared at Mr.Kapasi some certain knowledge seemed to pass before her
eyes, and she stopped” {Ibid.,P.66}.
Mr. Kapasi
thinks of giving remedy with an Indian life background to a woman born and
educated in an American environment.
Ergo, there is no likelihood for her to have a sense of guilt or regret
about her infidelity. What is
‘terrible’ is the weight of human relationship with her children and husband.
Jhumpa
Lahiri’s ‘The Third and Final Continent’ is about the destiny of marital
institution. It is ‘based on Lahiri’s father, a University librarian’. Lahiri Says. “He is not a very effusive person, but he said, ‘my whole life is
in that story’. {Gillian Flynn:
‘Passage To India’, “Entertainment Weekly”, 28-04-2000, issue 537, P.99}. The ‘Third’ symbolizes the third world
especially ‘Hindu’ country steeped in traditional and intellectual values
dominated by the determinism and indivisible spiritual relation of the souls
identified with the Universal One and ‘final continent’, the universe of faith
and fidelity, obedience and observance and commitment (to the children and
husband or wife) and sacrifice (of his or her pleasures for the sake of peace
and progress).
The untitled
narrator embodies Indian husband and his wife Mala, an Indian Woman brought up
in Indian environment. ‘Mala’ means
‘garland’. Whoever has this wreath will
have his attraction enhanced. Jhumpa
Lahiri indicates that the older values in the U.S. are as much moral, and
ethical as Indian traditional life being governed by the fears of sin and
sanction. Mrs. Croft calls the
attention of her sixty eight year old daughter, Helen when she is talking to
the narrator who is in the thirties.
Mrs. Croft considering their talk immoral, objects to it. “What is it,
Mother?”
“….It is
improper for a lady and gentleman who are not married to one another to hold a
private conversation without a chaperon?”
“For your information, Mother, it’s 1969. What would you do if you actually left the house one day and saw
a girl in a miniskirt”? Mrs. Croft
sniffed. “I’d have her arrested”.
{Interpreter of Maladies, P.186}.
Mala, landing
in U.S. brings home many things. Unlike
modern women like Mrs. Das and Mrs. Twinkle, who remain unloving inspite of
being offered plenty of largesse, devotion, Mala pleases her husband with
unreserved love. For all her gait, her
meekness even before the strangers, her anxiety to attend to her husband and
guests and her presence in saree, Mala makes an ideal wife. When her husband takes her to Mrs. Croft’s
house, Mrs. Croft, who is a hangover of America’s older values, describes her
as “she is a perfect lady.” {Ibid., P.195}.
He has got an Indian tradition trained wife, that is nearly a prize, may
not be possible for an American. “I
know that my achievement is quite ordinary {Ibid., P.198}.
The story reveals the
unpalatable truth for the American that wedlock between the Hindu couple stays
longer and stronger transforming itself into a unifying link creating spiritual
bond constantly and guiding them to live together to the end of their career in
the face of their chequered life.