Jhumpa Lahiri’s work on the Interpreter of Maladies is an excellent piece of work that emphasizes the basic issues that are slowly dominating society today. The author herself struggles with some of these issues, such as identity, as she openly admits in her biography that she can neither identify herself as an American nor as an Indian. Lahiri has a large collection of stories that generally highlight the issues surrounding families today. The way the family setting was viewed in the earlier days has changed with time, and these changes are affecting individuals mostly negatively. The whole concept of family has evolved, and the roles of the various family members are entirely different.
Lahiri identifies Mr. and Mrs. Das barely as parents but rather as people who are not able to communicate properly and discuss occurring problems with each other, which ruins their relationship and family itself. In the story of the Das family, it is clear that the couple communicates with each other through arguing. The Dases are constantly quarreling, and it slowly becomes evident that the children adopt this behavior from their parents. As it was mentioned in the story, “it was hard to believe [Mr. and Mrs. Das] were regularly responsible for anything other than themselves” (Lahiri 49). This statement was made by the Dases’ driver, which can be considered a specific technique the author applied to convey the idea. In other words, it was written that Mr. Kapasi did not think that Dases was responsible for anything not to express the driver’s view but to describe the state of affairs between the couple as it actually was. Moreover, the children do not seem to listen or even obey their parents, and as if to make the situation worse, the parents are unbothered by their show of disrespect.
Mr. Kapasi, the family’s tour guide and driver, also seems to have a crisis of his own. Mr. Kapasi’s marriage is arranged, and he relentlessly reveals that he and his wife have been estranged for quite some time. He attests this is due to the death of their son. He slowly begins to gain interest in Mrs. Das, a married woman on vacation with her family. At first, they openly communicate and seem to understand each other. Later their communication is halted by the revelation that Mrs. Das had an affair. The children also appear to be in a world of their own when they fail to hide Mr. Kapasi’s instructions and are attacked by monkeys. Eventually, these small misunderstandings lead to the loss of Mr. Kapasi’s address and the possibility of a sincere friendship that could spark between him and Mrs. Das.
In the other story about two friends, Laxmi and Miranda, a communication issue appears as well. Laxmi criticizes her cousin’s husband and his mistress, and on the other hand, Miranda fails to disclose she is also a mistress. Throughout Laxmi’s story, Miranda is consistently having flashbacks of her affair with Dev, how they met and how he made her feel alive and attractive. Due to a lack of proper communication in her family and the inability to discuss issues with Dev, she became not as important to him as she had hoped. With the help provided by little Rohin, Laxmi’s cousin’s son, Miranda, decides to end the affair, and for the first time in the two stories, there can be seen the positive impact of effective communication.
In both stories, the sanctity of the institution of marriage is rocked to its core. Mrs. Das is openly flirting with a married man in front of her husband, who seems unbothered by the whole situation. Mr. Kapasi, on the other hand, expresses interest in a young married woman despite being married. The concept of marriage is explored, and it can be seen those values and vows that marriage is based on are slowly fading away with time. After the death of their seven-year-old son, Mrs. Kapasi blames her husband, and this puts a strain on their relationship (Brada-Williams). She fails to realize and acknowledge the efforts of her husband during their son’s ailment. She insists on pushing her husband away and claims his presence only reminds her of her dead son.
At the same time, Mr. Kapasi eventually stops trying to make their relationship with his wife better and starts spending a large percentage of his day focusing on his job. Moreover, it explains why he is instantly attracted to Mina. Mr. and Mrs. Das have failed not only as husband and wife but also as parents, as can be highlighted by their children’s erotic behaviors. They lack a sense of parenting, and one may wonder if it is due to their young age or the fact that they lack parenting guidelines from their parents who live away from them. Their eldest son clearly disregards his father’s instruction and chooses to put the achievement of his own goals as the top priority.
Mr. Das chooses to do nothing about the show of disrespect and lazily instructs his younger son to look after his brother, of which he, too, refuses. This shows just how much Das’s parents have no control over their children and show no effort in gaining control. As Brad-Williams (457) puts it: “As in “A Temporary Matter,” small signs of negligence add up to reveal deeper emotional difficulties and detachments.” Thus, this similarity between the children and their parents is also a special technique used by the author to demonstrate that people’s actions have long-term consequences, influencing not only their lives but the lives of those who surround them. Dev, on the other hand, seems to love his wife, but he has an affair with Miranda when she is out of town. When she is back in town, instead of ending the affair, he chooses to lie to his wife just so that he can see Miranda. Laxmi’s cousin’s husband is no role model either, as he wants a divorce from his wife or is willing to abandon little Rohin, who still needs him.
Works Cited
Brada-Williams, Noelle. “Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ as a Short Story Cycle.” Melus (2004): 451-464.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of maladies. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000.