A Temporary Matter Analysis

“ ‘Your wife’s wow,’ added Prabal...For a moment Sanjeev stared at him blankly, then blushed; once at a dinner party Prabal had pronounced that Sophia Loren was wow, as was Audrey Hepburn.” (153)

The fragility of marriage is an issue that is almost constant throughout Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri demonstrates that marriages are held together by a verbal promise that obscures the fact that a person falls in love, not with another person, but with the way that person makes him/her feel about him/herself. In “A Temporary Matter,” Shoba and Shukumar’s relationship is destroyed because of their loss of the ability to make each other feel the way they once did. In “Sexy,” Miranda falls for Dev because he makes her feel important and

Lahiri writes, “As the cab sped down Beacon Street, he imagined a day when he and Shoba might need to buy a station wagon of their own, to cart their children back and forth from music lessons and dentist appointments,” (3) showing to what extent Shukumar identifies as a father. The station wagon in this passage represents a new role for Shukumar as well as a completely new lifestyle. Lahiri goes on to emphasize that “once, these images of parenthood had troubled Shukumar, adding to his anxiety that he was still a student at thirty-five” (3) because Shukumar identifies so much with becoming a father that he worries that his current situation isn’t adequate. Shukumar and Shoba have almost no qualities of lovers, so once they lose their identity as parents, they have essentially nothing holding them together. Lahiri writes, “He thought of how long it had been since she looked into his eyes and smiled, or whispered his name on those rare occasions they still reached for each other’s bodies before sleeping,” (5) illustrating the dullness of their relationship since the death of their baby. Another contributing factor to the decay of Shoba and Shukumar’s relationship is the different levels of closure that the each gets with their baby. Lahiri adds, “She would look around the walls of the room, which they had decorated together

Shukumar escapes by passivity, and Shoba escapes by becoming more active and eventually leaving the marriage. Lahiri begins to show this by writing, “In the beginning he had believed that it would pass, that he and Shoba would get through it all somehow...But it wasn’t a consolation…pouring out the extra bit Shoba left for him, along with an empty mug, on the countertop.” (5) This passage proves Shukumar’s passive response to the rift between him and Shoba because of his assuming that their marriage will improve, but lack of action to fix anything on his own. The empty mug Shoba left for Shukumar is a symbol for the emptiness of their marriage and a sign that Shoba needs Shukumar to do something to fill it. Lahiri also shows Shoba’s more active reaction to her baby’s death by writing, “She’d come from the gym. Her cranberry lipstick was visible only on the outer reaches of her mouth, and her eyeliner had left charcoal patches beneath her lower lashes,” (1) demonstrating that opposite to Shukumar who spends his days inside their home and in the nursery, Shoba spends large parts of her days at the gym. This passage also shows the facade Shoba puts up by messily putting on makeup after her workout, to mask the true sadness she feels. This facade adds to the collapse of Shoba and Shukumar’s relationship because neither Shukumar