Beyond Bengal and Boston

PREMA SRINIVASAN

When Jhumpa Lahiri won the prestigious Pulitzer prize for Fiction 2000, there was naturally a ripple of excitement with an undercurrent of pride among Indian readers, both at home and overseas. Despite controversies, when it comes to bagging prizes, Rushdie has done India proud and writers like Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy have given Indian writing a startling visibility. Now this writer, Lahiri who was born in London of Bengali parents, and grew up in the U.S., has won the coveted Pulitzer Prize with her story telling.

To begin with, the title "Interpreter of Maladies" intrigues the curious reader - both the page turner and the serious reader want to know about this writer who is really an interpreter of maladies with her stories of Bengal, Boston and beyond. They are all about Indians living away from their homeland, like the author herself. The writer is talking about people whom she meets, exiles, living in isolation, trying to keep alive their past traditional roots, in a bunch of short stories written with an exceptional understanding of the human psyche. The first one "A temporary matter" is likely to appeal to most readers as the two young people exchange confessions in an attempt to bridge the yawning distance that threatens to overwhelm them. The loss of their firstborn child haunts Shobha and Shukumar and their sense of loss suddenly becomes bearable once Shukumar confesses that he had held their dead son against his chest and knew what he was like. "He had black hair on his head. His fingers were curled shut, just like yours," he tells his wife who has never seen the child. With this confession the grief of the parents becomes a reality, a grief, which they can share and become close once more and not a secret individual burden which would continue to create a void in their lives. The narrative tone is deliberately low-key but the writer's eye for subtle nuances even while baldly stating a fact, is vastly satisfying.

The second story "When Mr. Pirzada came to dine" is narrated from a child's point of view. The exiled Indian is usually anxious to hobnob with compatriots but in this case although Mr. Pirzada spoke the same language as the child's parents, he belonged to East Pakistan. Lilia, the child narrator, is an expert in American history but is completely ignorant about the division of Bengal between Hindus and Muslims. Lilia and Mr. Pirzada become fast friends and the child quite understandably prays for the safety of her friend's seven daughters in the newly developed war situation in India. As suddenly as he comes, Pirzada disappears from Lilia's life to find about the fate of his family. Lilia learns a little about human relationships and an idea of what it would have meant for Pirzada to have been away from his family for so long.

The title story is a bit disappointing although the author tells the tale with eloquence and ease, the final disclosure is predictable. The story moves and finishes in an almost pedestrian manner. Boston or Bengal, the maladies are similar and the interpreter is charged with the onerous burden of conveying the right problem in the right words. In "A real Durwan" Boori Ma lives in the past, in order to forget her intolerable present but in the sweeping change of lifestyles she too is swept away. Miranda's predicament and Mrs. Sen's phobia are real as readers can identify these fears and situations as universal maladies and can interpret them in their own languages, relate them to their own worlds. "This Blessed house" is delightfully mysterious. As Twinkle and Sanjeev go on discovering Christian paraphernalia in their new house, they are in turn baffled and intrigued. While Sanjeev considers the situation eerie, Twinkle finds a strange fascination for the newly found Christian relics and calls the entire exercise, a treasure hunt. Somewhere the relationship between the two changes, when Twinkle gets infected with the religious mania of the erstwhile occupants of the house "The treatment of Bibi Haldar" is interpreted with finesse and as we come to the last story "The third and final continent" one is amazed at the extent and range of maladies that need to be interpreted. In the last page the narrator of this tale confesses "there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination". We as readers share something of this bewilderment in our daily journey of life doing our ordinary chores. Like the narrator's life, ours too, is humdrum, we move away from our familiar world to study, seek fortune, marry, raise children and before curtain falls, ruminate on certain events which are etched in our memories, certain moments which gave meaning to our lives. Jhumpa Lahiri is writing about these moments and events in the lives of ordinary folk, men and women, alienated in a strange new world, looking back at the world from which they once made their journey, she talks about universal maladies in detail, with a touch of humour and sometimes with irony which is never misplaced.

If one gets through a list of criteria for award winners, time and again, one finds "readability" as the predominant characteristic "Interpreter of Maladies" is eminently readable and not surprisingly has found a place in the reading lists of young people who find the direct, understated technique of Lahiri appealing.

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