A DIASPORIC ANALYSIS ON JHUMPALAHIRI’S
INTERPRETERS OF MALADIES
Priyanka .P
Literature is a part of human life experiences as it includes one’s happiness, sorrows, and surroundings. The world has changed from decades to decades and from centuries to centuries. Hence literature has changed and attained many variations, geners and categories. Diasporic writing is also one among the literature which had a great influence in the readers minds. This writing inspired many writers and converted most with great economy to the subject matter of one fable or another.
‘Diaspora’ is a ancient Greek word meaning ‘to scatter about’. The Bible refers to the Diaspora of Jews exiled from Israel by the Babylonians. The word is also now used more generally to
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Lahiri talks about family relationship in both the stories. Lahiri’s stories have family background and it reveals the real true definitions for relationships and moral values of life. In “A Temporary Matter”, Shukumar and Shoba, a young couple plays the major roles and “Interpreters of Maladies” is about Mr and Mrs. Das family and Mr. Kapasi, the interpreter. The stories show some space, vacuum in between husband and wife due to some misunderstandings and pain which they had in their relationships. The family relationship in the stories reveals that there is a pain which was not cured or expressed for period of time. The ‘pain’ makes the couple to put a mask to their real characters or the love they had between them. The couple Shukumar and Shoba lives in a silence or space between them though they lives together. The silence is because their child had born still and a misunderstanding prevails between them. The incident created a silence in their life as they didn’t know whom to blame for the loss. The incident made them separate as Shoba stayed out busy and Shukumar stayed in home preparing for his studies. They lived a formal life staying together without talking or having any conversations doing their own works without solving the mess created in …show more content…
They dresses, words and lives like a foreigner but couldn’t leave their cultural identity as the native of India. As in India, whether the problem is big or small, there will be a person to solve it or they themselves find solutions without breaking their relationship. The people in India will not break their relationship easily like the foreigners. They’ll live together till the end and believes that the relationship was made by God not by man. When there is a revelation, truth, lack of love and care are recovered. The love and care towards children from childhood till the end are done only by the parents of India, though they dislike or angry on them still they’ll do their responsibility as a parent. The identity struggle can also be shown when they have a problem, as a citizen of foreign country they could have broken their relationship when they were not happy with each other. But still, they stay together and live together as a diaspora of Indian culture and solve the misunderstanding, problems and pain. Lahiri’s diasporic writing “Interpreters of Maladies”, brings out the struggle for identity, and commitment of life in the multicultural milieu of Bengal and Boston and the
...is an American by virtue but Indian due to her parent’s upbringing. That is the reason why she is referred to being an Indian-American author which she has embraced. Due to the fact Bengali marries within their caste, Lahiri married a Latin American Journalist Alberto Vourvoulias and have two sons, Octivian and Noor. After getting married, Lahiri does not feel the need to be shy about speaking in Bengali or any other language. Currently residing in Rome with her family to feel how immigrants adapt to change and to go experience what her characters and parents do in her short stories. Through writing, Lahiri has discovered the fact she belongs to both the worlds and the generations of Indian-American immigrants will change and bring intense joy. "It has been liberating and brought me some peace to just confront that truth, if not to be able to solve it or answer it.”
Miranda thinks she is in love with Dev but in reality she is not because she doesn 't know him as a person at all. She soon realize this after the child tell her the meaning of Sexy. It because of her innocent and lack of knowledge of good relationship with people. She finally lets go of the romance when she knew that it would not change at all because he is a marry man. The main character seem to not be in love with Mala even though they have meet several of times before, It just like how Miranda does not know Dev in any way and is in love with him. They are arranged to be married to each other and force to live with each other. He even mention how he was not touch by her words when a letter was sent to him. The main character did not even kissed or hugged his wife. He just knew that she was the perfect wife do to the explanation given to him by his older brother.” The only thing I ws not used to was Mala.” (Lahiri 's 190). I think he was afraid to get to know someone he didn 't know about. It may be because he grew up in a different way than his wife. It was something he could not get used to. Shoba fell out of love with his wife even though he tried to get back with her. He did not know that he was not in love with her anymore. He assume that they would be together after the second day of the game they played. It was like he was getting things
Jhumpa Lahiri composed the two short stories: “Interpreter of Maladies” and “Sexy” that conveyed the recurring theme of feeling like an outsider. During the first story, “Interpreter of Maladies,” there was a character named Mr. Kapasi, a “self-educated man,” who was a “devoted scholar of foreign languages,” who dreamed of becoming an interpreter for diplomats and dignitaries, where he could aid in “resolving conflicts between people and nations, settling disputes of which he alone could understand both sides” (Interpreter of Maladies). This dream became a fantasy after his parents settled his arranged marriage that turned for the worse. Mr. Kapasi’s wife “had little regard for his career as an interpreter,”and she despised the thought of him
Lahiri, a second-generation immigrant, endures the difficulty of living in the middle of her hyphenated label “Indian-American”, whereas she will never fully feel Indian nor fully American, her identity is the combination of her attributes, everything in between.
When Sripathi and his family receive the news of Maya’s and her husband’s fatal road accident, they experience a dramatic up heaval. For Sripathi, this event functioned as the distressed that inaugurated his cultural and personal process of transformation and was played out on different levels. First, his daughter’s death required him to travel to Canada to arrange for his granddaughter’s reverse journey to India, a move that marked her as doubly diasporic sensibility. Sripathi called his “foreign trip” to Vancouver turned out to be an experience of deep psychic and cultural dislocation, for it completely “unmoors him from the earth after fifty-seven years of being tied to it” (140). Sripathi’s own emerging diasporic sensibility condition. Not only must he faced his own fear of a world that is no longer knowable to him, but, more importantly, he must face his granddaughter. Nandana has been literally silenced by the pain of her parent’s death, and her relocation from Canada to Tamil Nadu initially irritated her psychological condition. To Sripathi, however, Nandana’s presence actsed as a constant reminder of his regret of not having “known his daughter’s inner life” (147) as well as her life in Canada. He now recognizeed that in the past he denied his daughter his love in order to support his
“Interpreter of Maladies” and “Sexy”, short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, relate thematically to each other because both the main characters, Mr. Kapasi and Miranda, suffer from loneliness. In both cases a mysterious stranger enthralls them and their loneliness blinds them from the fact that both of the people that they are so bewitched by are married.
The main character is Mrs. Das whom is flirtatious, careless, and needy. She and her husband take their family to see the country India for the first time. The tour guide Mr.Kapsi whom is curious, understanding, and quite aware. He sees something unusual at the beginning of the trip, but does not say anything. As the children continue their site seeing, the husband takes picture with his camera as if he lost in his own world. Meanwhile the wife gets to know the driver instead of site seeing. Mr.Kapsi is aware that the family is not like most Indians which lead him to be attracted to Mrs.Das. It states, “The family looked Indian but dressed as foreigners did, the children in stiff, brightly colored clothing and caps with translucent visors (29). This quote shows the difference in cultural clash as well the difficulty of communication. Mr.Kapsi tells Mrs. Das that he is an interpreter for a doctor which makes her believe she can discuss her personal business without him telling anyone. It states, “He decided to begin with the most obvious question, to get to the heart of the matter, and so he asked, “Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?”(39) Made the wife realized what she was truly feeling about her mistakes. After the conversation Mr.Kapsi did not look at the Mrs.Das the same way. The unusual
Bandi seems to have mastered relating with the audience in this story, which helps put an emphasis on the appeals of pathos. Bandi uses relatable conversations and events in this story to help readers connect better with the family at hand. One example is when Bandi describes the train station and how hectic it was.
As Indians living in white culture, many problems and conflicts arise. Most Indians tend to suffer microaggressions, racism and most of all, danger to their culture. Their culture gets torn from them, and slowly, as if it was dream, many Indians become absorbed into white society, all the while trying to retain their Indian lifestyle. In Indian Father’s Plea by Robert Lake and Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, the idea that a dominant culture can pose many threats to a minority culture is shown by Wind-Wolf and Alexie.
The author of the story was born in 1967 in London, and soon after she moved to Rhode Island in the United States. Although Lahiri was born in England and raised in the United States and her parent’s still carried an Indian cultural background and held their believes, as her father and mother were a librarian and teacher. Author’s Indian heritage is a strong basis of her stories, stories where she questions the identity and the plot of the different cultural displaced. Lahiri always interactive with her parents in Bengali every time which shows she respected her parents and culture. As the author was growing up she never felt that she was a full American, as her parents deep ties with India as they often visited the country.
Relationships are as essential to humans like any basic necessity such as food or water. Throughout history, relationships have assisted human beings in persevering together through both physical and emotional challenges in life. However, the stability of these relationships are incessantly vulnerable to deterioration. This unfortunate outcome has been investigated in numerous works of literature. In two of such works, “Interpreter of Maladies” published in 1999 by Jhumpa Lahiri and “Aguantado” published in 1996 by Junot Diaz, the authors reveal through various tones as well as diction the respective themes of each story how selfish desires lead to the demise of relationships.
This research study focuses at negotiating the shifting identities of immigrants and their traumas in postcolonial literature with reference to Lahiri’s fiction. The suffering of every immigrant in achieving a shelter and identity in a foreign land often leads to loss of identity. The qualms, agitation and nervousness of immigrants often increase the issues of identity, and immigrants often feel alienated in the midst of exotic land, they even start to think about achieving new identities. Stuart Hall (1987) a famous cultural theorist discusses the issues of cultural identity and migration as he says “Migration is a one way trip. There is no “home” to go back to”. Change in the place and ambience totally change the circumstances in the lives of immigrants in Lahiri’s fiction, they often try to cling to their own cultural identity and costumes. But the cultural effect is often so strong that it deeply affects the identity of immigrants and they ultimately try to change their identities. Immigrants make an absurd attempt to get mingled in the culture of foreign country. Hall discusses “Cultural identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference” (235).
To begin, the husband and wife’s lack of communication in their relationship is made evident within the first few lines, and Hanif, Jamil, and Mahmood feel
The two novels prove the claim of the research, which is working on the female characters; and that is why these novels are chosen and made a comparison between them. Both of the writers make their protagonists the victims and from another side send to them the one who will help them to overcome their ordeal. Finally, their life has completely changed and reached what they want.
The term “Diaspora” is used to refer either to singular person or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homelands being dispersed throughout other parts of the world, and the ensuing developments in their dispersal and culture. In the beginning, the term was used by the Ancient Greeks to refer to citizens of a grand city who migrated to a conquered land with the purpose of colonization to assimilate the territory into the empire. A large number of Indians migrated to Far East and South East Asia to spread Buddhism during the ancient times. The migration was a history of misery, deprivation and sorrow during the colonial period. In this century the migration was mainly due to the industrialized and