Politics of Human Relations Jhumpa Lahiri’s

POLITICS OF HUMAN RELATIONS – DETACHMENT IN ATTACHMENT IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S tc "POLITICS OF HUMAN RELATIONS – DETACHMENT IN ATTACHMENT IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S "
INTERPRETER OF MALADIEStc "INTERPRETER OF MALADIES"

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 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, 9^th, 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 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 ground 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.