48 

Chapter II
Biographical Sketches and a
Summary of the Works of Jhumpa
Lahiri and Manju Kapur
 

 
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CHAPTER II

Biographical Sketches and a Summary of the Works by Jhumpa Lahiri

and Manju Kapur

2.1 Jhumpa Lahiri: Her Life and Works

Jhumpa Lahiri was born on July 11, 1967. She is an Indian American author.

Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Bengali Indian immigrants. Her family

moved to the United States when she was three; Lahiri considers herself an American,

stating, “I wasn’t born here, but I might as well have been.”(Flynn)

Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father worked as a

librarian at the University of Rhode Island; he is the basis for the protagonist in The

Third and The Final Continent, the closing story from Interpreter of Maladies.

Lahiri’s mother wanted her children to grow up knowing their Bengali

heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Kolkata.

When she began kindergarten in Kingston, Rhode Island, Lahiri’s teacher

decided to call her by her pet name, Jhumpa, because it was easier to pronounce than

her “good name”. Lahiri recalled, “I always felt so embarrassed by my name…. you

feel like you are causing someone pain just by being who you are.”(Benjamin)

Lahiri’s ambivalence over her identity was the inspiration for the ambivalence

of Gogol; the protagonist of her novel, The Namesake, over his unusual name. Lahiri

graduated from South Kingston High School and received her B.A. in English

Literature from Barnard College in 1989.

Lahiri then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in

English, M.F.A. in Creative Writing, M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in

Renaissance Studies. She took a fellowship at Province town’s Fine Arts Work
 50 
 

Centre. Lahiri has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island

School of Design. In 2001, Lahiri married Alberto Vourvoulias- Bush, a journalist

who was then Deputy Editor of TIME Latin America.

Lahiri’s early short stories faced rejection from publisher’s for years. Her

debut short story collection; Interpreter of Maladies, was finally released in 1999. The

stories address sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants, with

themes such as marital difficulties, miscarriages and the disconnection between first

and second generation United States immigrants.

2.1.1 Interpreter of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri’s, Interpreter of Maladies, a collection of nine stories, has

bagged Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2000. Lahiri writes about the Indians who have

settled either in the USA or England and does not comment on something that she is

not well-versed in. The Indians who have settled abroad feel themselves exiled, as

they are in their consciousness unable to cut off completely their umbilical cords that

still bind them in their emotional crisis.

Interpreter of Maladies is called “Stories from Bengal, Boston and Beyond.”

The first story of the book, A Temporary Matter, relates to the life of Sukumar and

Shobha in Boston. The temporary matter is that their electricity would be cut off for

an hour for five days and the story is confined to those five days when there will be no

electricity for an hour.

During these five days, Sukumar and Shobha come closer after the day’s busy

schedule; in the darkness they play games like telling each one a story from his or her

own life. Sukumar welcomed this power cut, for; an hour’s power cut could bring

them closer despite differences in their relationship. In the darkness they could speak

out their minds to each other. But in the morning of the fifth night, the electric
 51 
 

company announced that, there would be no power cut on that evening as the line had

been repaired ahead of its scheduled time. It disappointed Sukumar.

But he kept the room dark from 8 p.m., and waited for the game. After their

dinner Shobha switched on the light and said, “I’ve been looking for an apartment and

I’ve found one.” (Lahiri, 21) They had enough. Now she needed some time alone. It

shocked Sukumar. He thought of telling her the secret he had kept from her, the secret

that Shobha had given birth to a dead male child, which he had kept from her, as it

might have shocked her then. He had promised himself that day that he would never

tell Shobha “because he still loved her then” (Lahiri, 22). He told her then the secret,

“our baby was a boy….His skin was more red than brown. He had black hair on his

head. He weighed almost five pounds. His fingers were curled shut just like yours in

the night” (Lahiri, 22). Shobha non-pulsed, turned the light off. She came back to the

table and sat down and after a moment Sukumar joined her. The story ends with the

words: “they wept together for the things they now knew” (Lahiri, 22), demonstrates

their acceptance of each other, as “the couple is able to bridge their chasm of silence”

(Nityanandam, 35).

The story reflects the alienation and loneliness that the emigrants face in a

foreign land. Both of them were living as “two individuals trapped within themselves,

refusing to communicate” (Nityanandam, 34). The marriage bond which is still

considered sacred in India is gradually slithering down under the pressure of new

needs under a different background. Nevertheless, one needs another’s touch in an

emotional crisis. That is why failing to find any foothold of security, they weep.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine is the story of Mr. Pirzada, a professor from

Bangladesh, doing research in America. He was a regular visitor to an Indian family

in Boston. He was worried about the safety of his family in Bangladesh during 1971
 52 
 

war. He had left his wife and seven daughters without anybody to look after them in

case of an eventuality. They were left to defend themselves. Naturally Mr. Pirzada

was worried and restless. Everyday Lilia, the young daughter of the family, heard her

father and Mr. Pirzada talking, discussing progress of the world that they watched on

the T.V.

Lilia was too young to understand the tension of the grown-ups, especially of

Mr. Pirzada. Even she noticed her mother joining them. Lilia was left alone to observe

“most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a

single person, sharing a single man, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear”

(Lahiri, 41).

The story ends with Mr. Pirzada returning to Bangladesh, living in a free

country with his wife and seven daughters. But Lilia missed him a lot;

Though I had not seen him for months, it was only then that I felt Mr.

Pirzada’s absence. It was only then, raising my water glass in his name

that I knew what it meant to miss someone who was so many miles and

hours away, just as he had missed his wife (Lahiri, 42).

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine is not only a story about a man living away

from his family in a foreign country but it is also about a child’s understanding of

what it means to miss someone dear. Like most of Lahiri’s stories it is based on real

life experience and the autobiographical element dominates it. Talking about When

Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, in an exclusive interview with Elizabeth Fransworth of

Pulitzer Fiction Jhumpa Lahiri says,

This story is based on a gentleman from Bangladesh who used to come

to my parents’ house in 1971….I heard from my parents what his

predicament was. And when I learned about his situation, which was
 53 
 

that he was in the United States during the Pakistani Civil War and his

family was back in Dacca…, I was so overwhelmed by this

information that I wrote this story …

The title of the story has romantic undertones although there is nothing

romantic in the story. But it is difficult to understand the mind of Lilia who had very

little connection with Mr. Pirzada and Lilia was like one of his daughters. Lilia,

although born and bought up in Boston, is unable to get rid of the sentiments, which

Forster would call absolutely Indian.

The title story Interpreter of Maladies is the story of an emigrant Indian

family, coming to India, especially to Orissa as tourists. Mrs. and Mr. Das with their

three children, Tina, Mina and Bobby, come to Puri, Konark and Khandagiri

Udaygiri. Every year they visit their parents, but the interpreter in this story is the

tourist guide cum car driver, Mr. Kapasi, and the story is more concerned with him,

than with the tourists. Mr. Kapasi is an educated man who knows a little bit of French

and other foreign languages. From his very young days, he used to act as an

interpreter to the foreign tourists and this time he was with an emigrant Indian Family

from Boston.

Mrs. Das came closer to Mr. Kapasi and she appreciated his work as an

interpreter, which his own wife looked down upon. This brought Mr. Kapasi closer to

Mrs. Das and he compared her with his wife. At Konark, they moved together and

engaged themselves in seeing erotic scriptures, while Mr. Das was busy with the

children in taking snaps. At Khandagiri, Mr. Das and the children went to the top of

the mountain, but Mrs. Das remained in the car, as she felt tired. She came to the front

seat and sat beside Mr. Kapasi. She told him the secret that Bobby was not Raj’s son.

She told him, her relationship with her husband before and after marriage which very
 54 
 

often left her lonely. The third child, Bobby, was not from an Englishman or an

American, but from an Indian, a Punjabi friend of Raj who came to stay with them for

a week. She told him all this because she wanted an answer, a remedy for her. She

said, “I was hoping you would help me feel better, say right thing. Suggest some kind

of remedy” (Lahiri, 65). Mr. Kapasi didn’t have any remedy with him for her. The

only remedy that came to his mind was that, she should be honest, and tell the secret

to Mr. Das. That also he didn’t suggest. He only asked her, “is it really pain you feel,

Mrs. Das or is it guilt?” (Lahiri, 66) She only looked at him but did not say anything.

She opened the car door and went to meet her family.

She wanted a readymade answer, a cure for her malady. But the malady is

deep rooted and Mr. Kapasi, the interpreter, is no doctor to cure her of the malady.

Many emigrant Indians suffer from different types of maladies and as Indians they are

unable to get rid of their Indian consciousness, that, they should be honest and true to

their married life. The concept of chastity haunts them.

The other story situated in India is The Real Durwan. It is the sorry tale of

Boori Ma, a refugee in Calcutta after Partition. In her past she was an affluent woman,

who had now fallen to misfortune and self appoints herself as the durwan or the

gatekeeper of an apartment building. It is the story that appeals to the pathetic in us.

Her incessant ramblings about her rich past and her comparisons between the past and

the present life get on the nerves of the apartment residents. In a bid to give the

building a face lift, they throw Boori Ma out along with her boxes and baskets. The

irony is that even the ‘kind’ people like Mrs. Dalal get lost in the quagmire of vanity

and selfishness. The people forget her honesty and truthfulness. Her only fault was

her garrulousness and she always boasted of her rich past. The story is set in Bengal,

and it reminds us of a poem written by Tagore Puratan Bhrutuyu (The Old Servant),
 55 
 

although Boori Ma was not an idiot. The eternal disparity existing between the

‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ is sharply emphasized in this story.

Sexy is the story based on an extra-marital relationship, that Laxmi finds

nauseating and absurd; Miranda gets herself involved with Dev in London. Emigrant

Indians living abroad raise their eyebrows at this but cannot escape from it. The story

reaches its climax, when the son of Laxmi’s cousin, who remains for some time with

Miranda, asks her to wear the silver cock-tail dress that Miranda had ones put on

while going with Dev to a restaurant. She had to put on the dress as Rohin was

adamant. When she came out in that dress he told her: “you are sexy” (Lahiri, 107).

She was taken aback. Dev had used the same word. She asked Rohin what he

meant by the word sexy. Rohin reluctantly said, “It means loving someone you don’t

know” (Lahiri, 107). Rohin further said, “That’s what my father did…. He sat next to

someone he didn’t know, someone sexy, and now he loves her instead of my mother”

(Lahiri, 108). She also perceives the parallel between her desperate situation and the

pathetic condition of a deserted wife. Both long for impossible relationship based on

love. Miranda ‘cried harder unable to stop’ (Lahiri, 109). From then on Miranda fends

off Dev’s visits. After all as Jhumpa Lahiri has said to Arun Aguiar in an interview,

“Relationships do not preclude issues of morality.”

This experience with the boy brought an end to her affair with Dev who was

married. Perhaps Miranda came to realize that despite her smartness and beauty, she

would not be the real cup of tea for Dev. Love does not mean to be sexy. It rather

means being in each other’s thoughts. Indians living abroad try to be smarter than the

natives although they forget that in basic emotion there is hardly any difference

between the east and the west. Sometimes emigrants especially Indians behave like
 56 
 

upstarts. Although Lahiri is rarely explicit in her opinion or comments, nevertheless,

there is always an undertone of irony in her stories.

Mrs. Sen’s is the story of another immigrant in America whose husband is a

professor of Mathematics in a university. The family is keenly observed by an

American boy of eleven years named Eliot who is looked after by Mrs. Sen while his

mother goes to work. Mrs. Sen’s job is that of a baby-sitter who has nothing to do at

home except buying fish and cooking. Although the boy likes Mrs. Sen, he knows his

mother is very critical of Mrs. Sen. She wants Mrs. Sen to go to her house but Mrs.

Sen does not know driving. She is learning how to drive. Eliot observes Mrs. Sen

working at home. He is surprised to see the long big blade, with which, Mrs. Sen cuts

the vegetables and fish, and she does not use the knife which his mother always uses.

She tells Eliot about the Indian marriages where women from the neighboring houses

gather to cut vegetables the whole night amidst noise and merry-making. The

American child is gradually exposed to the life of an Indian woman in her kitchen.

Eliot feels the warmth in her voice and in her gait that he finds lacking in his mother.

What he finds in Mrs. Sen, he does not find in his mother. Every evening after six he

is carried away by his mother in the car. He is appalled by the coldness of his mother

to the warm hospitality of Mrs. Sen. The story comes to a climax when Mrs. Sen

dashes her car against a telephone pole. Eliot’s mother hears this; she stops Eliot for

coming to Mrs. Sen anymore. But the poignant part of the story is the intimacy that

develops between Eliot and Mrs. Sen.

Mrs. Sen has no friend in America and her husband has no time for her. She

tells Eliot how she feels lonely, how her golden dreams of living in a foreign land

with her husband vanishes like rain in summer. Eliot’s mother; an American lady has

no time at her disposal to realize the delicate emotions that develop between an

American child and an Indian woman who takes time to adapt herself to a foreign
 57 
 

country. Mrs Sen is a story that defines what ‘emotional exile’ is. As in the other

stories the immigrant experience is at the core of this stirring story too. Indeed it is

heartening to see Mrs. Sen communicating with Eliot on equal footing despite the age

difference. She expresses her joy and loneliness and shares her Indian memories with

him with great verve. The boy listens to her, as do the readers, as she describes the

variety and the uniqueness of her life in Calcutta, India. Her religion, food and the

living pattern come alive in her words. Even after Eliot has stopped coming to Mrs.

Sen’s place because as his mother tells him he is now ‘a big boy’, he seems to be

missing their togetherness and as a result goes through a kind of void as he watches

‘the gray waves receding from the shore…’ (Lahiri, 135) once again we see this

common human factor well voiced by the writer. It is the ‘emotional dependence’ that

binds Eliot and Mrs. Sen whose only other family member leaves them on their self.

The Blessed House is the story of Sanjeev and Twinkle; their new house at

Connecticut where Sanjeev worked; Twinkle completing her master’s thesis at

Stanford, a study of an Irish poet. Sanjeev selected Twinkle and did not agree to

marry anybody selected by his parents in Calcutta. Both were emigrants, although

Sanjeev had his parents in India and Twinkle in California. Twinkle’s Indian

connection was her name that sounded unusual to the ears of Douglas and Nora who

came to the new house on the house warming day. The new house was a blessed one,

as Twinkle found a statue of Christ and Mother Mary. The switch plates in the

bedroom were decorated with scenes from The Bible. Twinkle as a student of

literature wanted to treasure those, but Sanjeev hated and disapproved of Twinkle’s

idea. This made him, almost; hate Twinkle, as Sanjeev, an executive in a firm, has no

time to be bothered by such sentiments. To Twinkle, the house was a blessed house,

to Sanjeev, it was a cursed one. Sanjeev felt that the interest for antics in his wife was
 58 
 

a temporary matter, just a device to come to the limelight as an Indian woman among

the Americans.

The Blessed House is a delightful story, which puts across the point that it is

not religious identity that satisfies man but the sense of affinity and involuntary

affection that exist between people, even among strangers. Once again Lahiri touches

a chord in all thinking human beings that religion doesn’t have to interfere with day-

to-day life of people going about their business. But then the bone of contention is not

about the religious divide but it is the finer feelings that make up human relationships.

So to his surprise Sanjeev realizes that despite the ‘dignity, solemnity and beauty’ of

the silver bust of Christ, he hated it all the more ‘because Twinkle loved it’. After he

discovered his ‘malady’ of possessive love, Sanjeev “pressed the massive silver face

to his ribs, careful not to let the feather hat slip, and followed her” (Lahiri, 157). In

this one gesture we may be assured that Sanjeev would, from now onwards cope with

his own passions better than before. It is truly a “Blessed House.”

The Treatment of Bibi Haldar is a poignant story that tells us the plight of Bibi

Haldar who suffers from a baffling disease which made her family members,

exasperated, and ultimately she is left alone to suffer. The story is of Bengal. Bibi

Haldar was staying with her relation in a flat in Calcutta. She is given a storage room

on the roof, “a space in which one could sit but not comfortably stand, featuring an

adjoining latrine, curtained entrance, one window without a grill, and shelves made

from the panels of the old doors” (Lahiri, 159). She recorded inventory for the

cosmetics shop that her cousin Haldar owned and managed at the mouth of the

courtyard. For her work she was given food, shelter and “sufficient metres of cotton at

every October holiday to replenish her wardrobe and act as an inexpensive tailor”

(Lahiri, 159). Her only obsession in life was to get a husband. Every day she expected

a man to come and offer his hand to her. It never materialized. She loved to hear from
 59 
 

other women the details of their marriage. She would sigh after seeing their marriage

albums. After devouring the details from other women, she would say, “when it

happens to me, you will all be present” (Lahiri, 160). After futile waiting, she would

say, “My face will never be painted with sandalwood paste, who will rub me with

turmeric? My name will never be printed with scarlet ink on a card” (Lahiri, 160-

161).

But Mr. and Mrs. Haldar never cared to give a thought to this, although Mr.

Haldar gave an advertisement after being pestered by the inmates of the flat. Mrs.

Haldar, who was in family way, feared Bibi as an evil omen and wanted to get rid of

her shadow lest it brought harm to her child. She gave birth to a female child. She

froze with fear, when her daughter suffered for five days. At last Mr. Haldar winded

up his cosmetics shop and left the place with his wife and the daughter. Bibi was left

alone with Rs.300 that Mr. Haldar left with her. But the story takes a new turn when

the inmates find, after Mr. and Mrs. Haldar’s departure, that Bibi Haldar was

pregnant. The search for the real culprit ended in futility. She delivered a male child

and took care of the child. The story ended with these words, “she was to the best of

her knowledge cured” (Lahiri, 172).

The Treatment of Bibi Haldar as told by Lahiri in an interview with Arun

Aguiar, is “about a misfit, a young woman living in a rundown building in Calcutta,

and she is in the care of her cousin and his wife ….She is an epileptic. It is also about

the town’s involvement ….over her marriage and in the idea of finding a husband.”

In this story Lahiri has chiseled out a character so delicately that the final

revelation hardly jolts the reader. Rather it fills him with a greater understanding of

the workings of human psyche. Deprivation of fulfillment of certain desires makes

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misfits of some people. The birth of a son cures Bibi Haldar of a mysterious disease in

spite of being deprived of marriage.

The Third and the Final Continent is the last story in the collection that moves

from London to Boston and gives to the readers a different taste. Although the same

emigrant themes- the initial hurdles to settle, to adjust and after sometimes trying to

be more native than the natives- the story tells us about the strange encounter of a

Bengali commerce graduate who moves from Calcutta to London and then to Boston

with an old lady of 100, Mrs. Croft, in whose house he lodges as a tenant. The old

American lady was proud of her own country when America landed on the moon. To

her the achievement was “splendid” and she wanted the Bengali gentleman to say the

word clearly. She was alone and her daughter Helen made weekend visits to her with

provisions for the week.

The old lady was very particular about the rent which was to be paid on

Friday. She let out her rooms only to bachelors from Harvard or Tech. She belonged

to old America who reacted to the long chats by her daughter and the narrator. She did

not approve of a woman talking to a bachelor for a long time. It must have sounded

unbelievable to Indian ears, who come to America with all ideas of an advanced

society where, they think, permissiveness is the rule. But Mrs. Croft belongs to the

values of old America.

The narrator left her home and moved to a new apartment when Mala, his wife

came to him from India. Even after he leaves Mrs. Croft’s rooms after his marriage,

he thinks about her. He takes his new wife to meet Mrs. Croft. But her impressions

are unfathomable on her introduction to his young wife. We are told on one occasion

that if she sees a scantily dressed woman on the street, Mrs Croft would get her

‘arrested’. She would naturally appreciate this young Indian lady who doesn’t exhibit
 61 
 

herself. She spontaneously calls her a ‘perfect lady’. The fact of her judgment comes

as a surprise and at once ends the strangeness that existed between the newly married

couple. It also comes home to us that basically humanity is bound by certain common

standards of behavior and modes of perception. A critic rightly observed that Jhumpa

Lahiri’s story is about a “richly detailed portrayal of a young marriage…an Indian

emigrant’s oddly fulfilling relationship with his landlady..” ( Shankar, 1999)

When he reads of Mrs. Croft’s obituary, he says, “ I was stricken…Mrs.

Croft’s was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I admired;

she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return” (Lahiri, 196).

The old lady is dead; the narrator’s son goes to college and the child born in

America to Indian origin looks askance at the sentimentality of his father. He is born

in America to establish an identity of his own; to live as a naturalized citizen of

America- an emigrant, although the umbilical cord is still rooted in India and it is

difficult to sever it altogether. The story ends with the ruminations of the father:

whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three

continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the

astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have

remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my

achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his

fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the last. Still 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 (Lahiri, 197-198).

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Jhumpa Lahiri is undoubtedly the first emigrant writer who is concerned with

the maladies of the emigrants and tries to be their interpreter. She probes deep into the

maladies, but prescribes no cure. She is an artist and the artist’s another name is an

interpreter.

The stories reveal the skill Jhumpa Lahiri has achieved in her maiden venture.

There is no chronological or sequential development of stories. She has evolved her

own style by changing the mode of narration from past to present and again reversing

it without being nostalgic. Her style is almost cinematic and with the help of montage

one gets a glimpse into the meaning of the story. One reading is not enough to

understand any of her stories.

All the nine stories in Interpreter of Maladies, is set in America and India.

They are united by the motifs of exclusion, loneliness and the search for fulfillment.

They do not restrict themselves only to the experiences of migrant and displaced

individuals. Themes that interest Lahiri- love, fidelity, tradition and alienation- crop

up in the lives of Indians and non-Indians alike. The common theme is an inability to

communicate. But this happens for many reasons-the dynamics of a relationship,

cultural differences, immigration and adjustment- and sometimes these disjointed

interactions change during the course of the story. Lahiri chronicles the attempts of

the married couples, adulterous lovers and immigrants to cross borders, and as

E.M.Forster wrote, “only connect.” The condition of exile and loneliness which in

The Third and Final Continent is expressed through an individual who ruminates on

the distances he has travelled both literally and metaphorically is probably the

“beyond” that connects Bengal and Boston.

In story after story, Lahiri successfully achieves the same effect: of people

hoping and searching for that elusive bit of magic in the lives they seem to lead
 63 
 

almost despite themselves. What makes all the stories work is the fact that,

irrespective of whether the protagonist fails or succeeds in this quest, their

experiences are never portrayed simplistically.

While some of the characters are directly drawn from real life, e.g. Bibi Haldar

and Mrs. Sen, Lahiri emphatically states that most of her characters are “semi-real-

most are composites- though the situations are invented.” Though most of Lahiri’s

Indian characters are Bengalis, yet their situations are universal.

2.1.2 The Namesake

In 2003, Lahiri published The Namesake, her first novel. The story spans over

thirty years in the life of the Ganguli family. The novel, like her Pulitzer Prize Winner

collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies (1999) explores the theme of

“immigrant experience and the clash of cultures in the U.S.,” reports S Rajagopalan.

S Prasannarajan in his review calls this novel “an enlarged variation of the

same existential trauma of the culturally displaced that animates her debut Interpreter

of Maladies.”

Being “an Indian by ancestry, British by birth, American by

immigration”(Nayak, 206) and like her parents having the experience of the

perplexing bicultural universe” of Calcutta in India and the United States , “Lahiri

mines the immigrant experience in a way superior to Bharati Mukherjee and

others”observes Aditya Sinha.

The novel is a narrative about the assimilation of an Indian Bengali family

from Calcutta, the Ganguli’s, into America, the cultural dilemmas experienced by

them and their America born children in different ways; the spatial, cultural and

emotional dislocations suffered by them in their efforts to settle “home” in the new
 64 
 

land. This is a novel “as affecting in its Chekhovian exploration of fathers and sons,

parents and children, as it is resonant in its exploration of what is acquired and lost by

the immigrants and their children in pursuit of the American dreams,” writes the New

York Times.

Like many professional Indians “who” went to the United States, as part of the

brain drain” (Kaur) Ashoke Ganguli too leaves his homeland and comes to America

in pursuit of higher studies to do research in the field of fiber optics with a prospect of

settling down “with security and respect.” (Lahiri, 105)

After two years stay in the USA, he comes back to India, marries a nineteen

year old Bengali girl named Ashima, who has no idea or dream of going to a place

called Boston so far off from her parents, but agrees for the marriage since “he would

be there.” After the legal formalities, she flies alone to be with her husband, with a

heavy heart and lots of instructions from her family members and relatives who come

to see her off at the airport “not to eat beef or wear skirts or cut off her hair and forget

the family the moment she landed in Boston.”(Lahiri, 37)

Ashima often feels upset and homesick and sulks alone in their three room

apartment which is too hot in summer and too cold in winter, far removed from the

descriptions of houses in the English novels she has read. She feels spatially and

emotionally dislocated from the comfortable “home” of her father full of so many

loving ones and yearns to go back. Home is “a mythic place of desire” in an

immigrant’s imagination says Avtar Brar. (192)

As a MIT engineer, Ashoke immigrated to Boston with his wife who is from

traditional Bengali family, she tries to adjust in the new situation, but always felt

homesick. She, as home lady, spends whole day at home alone. She didn’t find the

U.S. culture suitable to her nature. This cultural difference forces her to go into a
 65 
 

sense of nostalgia. Her first child, Gogol, took birth in America. But we find that in

the entire novel, Gogol moves between Americanism and Indianness. At first Ashima

is very lonely but as the baby grows, so, too, does their circle of Bengali

acquaintances. When Gogol is six months old they have his ‘annaprasan’ ceremony.

Gogol is little over a year old when they get the news of the death of Ashima’s father

and they leave for India. By 1971 the Gangulis move to the Boston suburbs. When

Gogol turns five Ashima is pregnant again. Gogol is admitted to the town’s public

school under the name of Nikhil. But the principal, Mrs. Lapidus, explains that due to

their son’s preference he will be known as Gogol in school.

When Gogol’s sister is born the Gangulis are ready with the name,

Sonali/Sonia.

For Gogol and Sonia Durga pujo does not stand in comparison with Christmas in

America. Ashima is eager to transmit her root culture among her children; they

observe all religious festivals and rituals in U.S. At such occasion Bengali’s in U.S.

came together. But she finds that it is not enough .Generation problems is very crucial

with second generation, Gogol and Sonia. Their mind status is vividly painted in this

novel. Born and educated in America, they have sense of pride about their Indianness,

but their surroundings are just opposite to their roots. It is Bengali food that Ashima

and Ashoke favors but their children insist for American dinner at least for weekend.

One day on a field trip to a graveyard Gogol realizes that how uncommon his

name is and how names die over time. On Gogol’s fourteenth birthday Ashoke

presents Gogol with The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. He tells Gogol that his

favorite author spent most of his adult life outside his homeland like him but he

cannot bring himself to tell Gogol about his train accident.

 66 
 

When Gogol is in high school, Mr. Lawson, their teacher, tells them about the

life of Nikolai Gogol. Once in a party he meets a girl called Kim. Instead of the

unromantic Gogol he introduces himself as Nikhil. Before his freshman year at Yale,

Gogol changes his name to Nikhil officially. During his sophomore year Gogol gets

involved with a girl called Ruth. After Ruth’s return from Oxford they find it difficult

to adjust with each other and the relationship ends. One day when Gogol is late

coming from Yale because of a train accident, his father tells him the truth of him

being named so. It has a profound effect on Gogol.

Gogol graduates in architecture and starts living in New York. There, Gogol

gets into a relationship with Maxine Ratliff. On his way with her to the Ratliff’s lake

house in New Hampshire he drops by at Pemberton Road to meet his parents because

his father will be

leaving for Ohio on a nine months’ research grant. Ashima is alone at home

surrounded by the security system installed by Ashoke. Ashoke comes home every

three weekends. One day Ashima receives a call from Ashoke that he is in the hospital

for an ordinary checkup. Later the hospital informs her that her husband has expired.

Sonia flies back from San Francisco to be with Ashima. Gogol goes alone to

Cleveland to cremate his father. Ashima has no desire to escape to Calcutta now and

be far from the place where her husband made his life, the country in which he died.

Gogol remembers how once his father told him, “Remember that you and I made this

journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go” (Lahiri,

187).

After a year the family plans to travel to Calcutta to scatter Ashoke’s ashes in

the Ganges. Maxine cannot understand being excluded from their plans and says that

she feels jealous of Gogol’s mother and sister. The relationship breaks. As time passes

by, one day Ashima asks Gogol to meet someone called Moushumi Mazoomdar
 67 
 

whom he had known as a girl. They meet and get involved romantically. Earlier,

Moushumi after years of being convinced that she would never have a lover had

moved to Paris with no specific plans and began to fall effortlessly into affairs. It is

there that she fell in love with Graham who happily accompanied her to visit her

relatives in Calcutta. On returning when she realizes that he was just pretending to

enjoy himself in Calcutta, they argue and their wedding is canceled. It is in this

condition that she meets Gogol and within a year they marry.

After the first anniversary of their marriage Moushumi starts having an affair

with Dimitri, which eventually leads to the breakup of her marriage. Ashima prepares

to leave for India intending to live six months of her life in India and six months in the

states. Sonia is going to marry her boyfriend, Ben. On Christmas Eve Ashima throws

a party for her friends in America. As the party begins Gogol goes upstairs to get his

father’s Nikon camera but instead he retrieves the unread book that his father had

presented him on his fourteenth birthday. He turns to the first story, The Overcoat,

and as the party goes on downstairs, he starts to read.

The story ends with Ashima selling the family home so she can live in India

with her siblings for half of the year. Sonia is preparing to marry to an American man

named Ben. Gogol is once again alone. But he feels comforted by one thing: before

his father died, he finally told his son why he had chosen that name for him. By the

end of the novel, Gogol has come to accept his name and picks up a collection of the

Russian author’s stories that his father had given him as a birthday present many years

ago.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an

international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts

of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here
 68 
 

again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the

turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion. Lahiri brings great empathy to

Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties,

comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not

only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our

parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define

ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as “a writer of uncommon

elegance and poise.” The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of

identity. There’s no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully

confident storytelling. Gogol’s story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it’s simply that

ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life.

2.1.3 Unaccustomed Earth

Lahiri’s new story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, has no problem upholding

her reputation. In the stories some of which she began to write while working on The

Namesake, we encounter first generation Indian Americans- often married to non-

Indians and starting families of their own- who’ve come off age in two cultures,

America and the more insular if still vast world of their Indian parents and friends,

whose expectations and experiences are in stark contrast to their own. Lahiri delves

into the souls of indelible characters struggling with displacement, guilt and fear as

they try to find a balance between the solace and suffocation of tradition and the terror

and excitement of the future into which they are being thrust. The novel is dedicated

to Octavio and Noor and the title is borrowed from a line in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s

The Custom-House (“My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their

fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.”)

and evokes the themes within the pages-pages that further establish her as an

important American writer. The phrase “unaccustomed earth” is applied to strange

 69 
 

places, to unknown locations, which create tension and conflict in the stories to an

extent.

In Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of eight long short stories, Lahiri

continues to explore the theme of cultural dissonance experienced by immigrants

caught between the culture of their Indian birthplace and the unfamiliar ways of their

adopted home, but this time with a focus on the lives of second-generation immigrants

who must navigate both the traditional values of their immigrant parents and the

mainstream American values of their peers. In this collection the short stories are

superbly crafted- longer and are emotionally more complex than any she has yet

written- that takes us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter

the lives of sisters, brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and

lovers. Of the eight short stories, the final three are linked and really comprise a short

novel. All the stories return to her favorite subject with characteristic lucidity and

empathy. But there are vital shifts too: the preoccupation with the condition of exile

and the nuanced meanings of home and identity has given way to an emphasis on

familial bonds, bonds between parents and children, between husband and wife,

between siblings.

Lahiri brings back - full throttle - issues on domestic ideology with a

bittersweet flavor, something that strongly resembles the old and at the same time

intertwines with the new. The first short story of this compilation is also called

Unaccustomed Earth.

It is the story of Ruma, whose now retired father travels the world enjoying

the benefits of freedom and old age. Ruma seems to follow her father’s each step by

keeping “the printout of his flight information behind a magnet on the door of the

refrigerator” (Lahiri, 3).

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On the days he is scheduled to fly she watches the news on television in a

casual yet careful search for information regarding plane crashes anywhere in the

world. She would keep always up to date with news of the world.

Ruma is the daughter of immigrants from India. She is thirty eight years old

and is a lawyer. She is also an Indian-American married to a white American. They

have a son – Akash – and another on the way. She lives in a new house she and her

husband – Adam – have just bought in the Eastside of Seattle, Washington. They

formerly lived in New York, in Brooklyn, and moved as a consequence of Adam’s

job.

Over the telephone, her father suggests making a visit. Note Lahiri’s choices

of environment. “Ruma was making dinner in her new kitchen” (Lahiri, 4).The author

makes it clear whose task it is to prepare the meals. After Ruma’s mother died, she

was the one who assumed the duty of talking to her father every night asking him how

his day had been. This hints us as to a sense of the perpetuating of female roles

through the generations.

Lahiri portrays Adam, Ruma’s husband, as constantly away, many times for a

whole week, mostly on business trips. It was rare when he spent two consecutive

weeks at home and tagging along with him did not seem to be an option. He,

nevertheless, encouraged his wife to hire a babysitter, even a “live-in” if it should be

necessary. Since Ruma knew no one in Seattle the prospect of leaving a stranger with

her small son seemed to be more daunting than taking care of him herself.

In her consciousness lied another issue - she was not working, and, for her,

that meant nothing would justify paying someone for doing something, she therefore

had the freedom to do. “It was the house that was her work now” (Lahiri, 6) – her

chores included leafing through piles of catalogues that came in through the mail,
 71 
 

marking them with post-its and ordering sheets with dragons on them for Akash. Here

we can see some not so new or alternative household dispositions. On the other hand,

the author reminds us that when Ruma worked, there were fifty-hour weeks and a six-

figure paycheck.

Alas, Ruma does not seem to miss her husband so much as her mother, for she

feels that her mother’s presence would have been the helpful one, doing as she knew

best: taking over the kitchen, singing songs to Akash, teaching him Bengali nursery

rhymes and throwing loads of laundry into the machine. Moreover, whenever she

would compare herself with her mother there always seemed to be an ever-present

feeling of inferiority involved. She could not imagine herself taking care of her father

the way her mother did or serving the meals the same way she had. She was

struggling with the idea of offering her father a place to stay, to live with them, in her

house. Her father had, nevertheless, other ideas going on in his mind. During his

travels he had met a Mrs. Bagchi, an Indian widow who lived in Long Island alone,

who held a doctoral degree in statistics and taught, since the seventies, in Stony Brook

University. That is the only description of another woman in the story.

Ruma’s conflicts extend to simple yet important everyday events. Lahiri

reveals to us that – “there were mornings Ruma wished she could simply get dressed

and walk out the door, like Adam” (Lahiri, 10). She could not understand how her

mother had coped with all of this. While growing up, Ruma saw her mother moving

to a foreign place - the United States – for the sake of marriage, caring exclusively for

children and the household. In Ruma’s opinion, all of this had served as a warning, as

a path not to take, yet this was the life she was living now.

Remains of sentimental notions sometimes flood the narrative. Ruma held a

framed photograph on her bedside table of her and Adam on her wedding day, slicing
 72 
 

the white layered cake. Though his absences contributed to her isolation, she was

beginning to wonder that it was, in fact, sometimes preferable to having him home

constantly asking her about her state of mind or her mood. Even with Akash to care

for she was beginning to prefer solitude.

Finally, the same father who, in the end, will not live with his daughter in

order to pursue his very own renewed romantic interest gives the readers the

innovative and groundbreaking performance that follows, and with it, we see a fresh

and new face of domesticity.

One day Ruma’s father writes a postcard to her, expressing his desire to see

her new-bought house, and she invites him gladly-“you’re always welcome here,

Baba” (Lahiri, 4). There is a touch of formality between them, but this kind of

formality was totally absent in her relations with her mother.

Ruma’s father seems to be pretty handy around housework, something

unthinkable for nineteenth century audiences, and hopefully not for twenty-first’s for

that matter:

After finishing the dishes he dried them and then scrubbed and dried

the inside of the sink, removing the food particles from the drainer. He

put the leftovers away in the refrigerator, tied up the trash bag and put

it into the large barrel he’d noticed in the driveway, made sure the

doors were locked. He sat for a while at the kitchen table, fiddling with

a saucepan whose handle –he’d noticed while washing it – was

wobbly. He searched in the drawers for a screwdriver and, not finding

one, accomplished the task with the tip of a steak knife (Lahiri, 27).

With this narrative, Lahiri masterfully changes the face of Woman’s fiction –

yet still preserves the characteristics that make it a domestic story. What makes the
 73 
 

story most compelling is the limited communication between the father and the

daughter, both afraid in some way to acknowledge that they have moved away from

their culture of origin and have embraced aspects of new culture. Akash the grandson,

who is the third generation of immigrants, and completely immersed in the new

culture, develops a strong fascination with his grandfather’s habit that are foreign to

him, including a foreign language. This interesting twist to the story is mixed with a

look at the universal bond between a child and a grandparent.

The second story Hell-Heaven is a story that explores complex human

emotions such as loneliness, love, jealousy and also describes how people change

drastically over time. The title is drawn from this paragraph from the story: “He used

to be so different. I don’t understand how a person can change so suddenly. It’s just

hell-heaven, the difference, she would say, always using the English words for her

self-concocted, backward metaphor” (Lahiri, 68-69).

Pranab Chakraborty, a graduate student at MIT, Boston is contemplating

returning to Calcutta due to homesickness. On the streets of Boston he sees Usha, a

little girl and her traditional Bengali mother Aparna. He follows them and ends up

befriending them. Aparna, herself homesick and lonely, can empathize with Pranab

and she is happy to feed him. Pranab Kaku (uncle) now becomes a regular visitor at

Usha’s house. He calls Aparna as “Boudi” (boudi means elder brother’s wife). Over

time Aparna looks forward eagerly to Pranab’s visits and develops a unique kind of

love towards him. Adding to the situation is Usha’s father, Shyamal da’s aloof and

detached attitude towards her mom. The relationship between Kaku and Usha’s

mother, Aparna is broken when Deborah, an American girl, comes into the picture.

Later Kaku and Deborah get married and are blessed with twin girls. Usha’s mother is

highly critical of Deborah for snatching Kaku away from her: “In a few weeks, the

fun will be over and she’ll leave him” (Lahiri, 68). She thinks that Deborah is neither
 74 
 

beautiful nor will make “an excellent mother” (Lahiri, 70). Despite opposition from

his parents in India, Kaku marries Deborah in a church and floats a party. Visits from

Kaku almost stops and the blame is put squarely on Deborah: “She was the enemy, he

was her prey, and their example was invoked as a warning and as vindication, that

mixed marriages were a doomed enterprise” (Lahiri, 75).

After twenty-three years Deborah and Pranab finally divorce. Deborah rings

up Usha’s mother to inform about all it. The reasons “it was he who had strayed,

falling in love with a married Bengali woman, destroying two families in the process”

(Lahiri, 81). As Usha’s mother has, however, forgotten all about her past – Kaku’s

desertion of herself after his marriage and her deep shock over it leading to her

attempts at suicide, and is now happy with her husband and does not blame Deborah

for snatching away Kaku from her.

The story also recounts the unique mother-daughter relationship that develops

between Aparna and Usha, after much struggles and squabbles where the mother

placates her daughter by relating her own experiences about a foolish decision that

she would have made. “My mother told Deborah none of this. It was to me that she

confessed….” (Lahiri, 83).

In Aparna’s story, Lahiri creates a sense of how friendship gradually deepens,

at least for one of the participants:

Within a few weeks, Pranab Kaku had brought his reel-to-reel over to

our apartment, and he played for my mother medley after medley of

songs from the Hindi films of their youth. They were cheerful songs of

courtship, which … transported my mother back to the world she’d left

behind in order to marry my father … It is clear to me now that my

mother was in love . He wooed her as no other man had, with the
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innocent affection of a brother-in-law … the one totally unanticipated

pleasure in her life (Lahiri, 67).

The narrator recounts the story of her parents’ chilly marriage and her

mother’s passionate, unrequited love for a fellow Bengali and family friend, who gave

her mother “the only pure happiness she ever felt.”

In the third story A Choice of Accommodations, a husband’s attempt to turn

an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark,

revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. It is all about the love of a married

couple – Amit and Megan – having two daughters named Maya and Monika. The

only canker in their harmonious relationship is Pam, the headmaster’s daughter,

whose wedding is going to take place shortly. In fact, Amit as a boy had attended the

headmaster’s school, and had become intimate with his entire family, including Pam.

He had even loved Pam.

Amit travels with his American wife Megan to the mountain town where he

once went to school, to attend the wedding of an old friend, and onetime crush. This

story has a dreamlike quality that contrasts with Lahiri’s usually straightforward

narratives. Initially we don’t sense much wrong between Amit and Megan beyond the

ennui that can settle in after several years of marriage, but soon little details

accumulate: they are disappointed by the hotel they have booked for their two-day

stay; a tear in Megan’s dress seems like a bad omen; the setting recalls the loneliness

of Amit’s youth and his failure to pursue the things he was really interested in; at the

wedding, he forgets the name of an old classmate and upsets someone with a casual

remark about how most marriages “disappear” after some time; he goes back to the

hotel room to make a call and falls asleep, leaving his wife alone. Here, as in Lahiri’s
 76 
 

most subtle work, nothing is spelt out but we sense how interior lives can impinge on

mundane daily routines and threaten relationships.

Amit realizes that the “most profound thing” in his life, the birth of his

daughters, has already happened, that the rest of his life will be only “a continuation

of the things” he already knows. Increasingly he will come to regard solitude — a run

in the park, a ride by himself on the subway — as “what one relished most, the only

thing that, even in fleeting, diminished doses, kept one sane” (Lahiri, 115).

In Only Goodness Sudha, who is working on her second master’s degree at the

London School of Economics, wonders at the bizarre “lack of emotion” in her

parents’ marriage, which was “neither happy nor unhappy” and seemingly devoid of

both bitterness and ardor, but she finds her own marriage to an Englishman

foundering upon her failure to tell him a family secret.

Sudha, a Bengali-American grad student, receives an unexpected letter from

her estranged alcoholic brother, Rahul, a Cornell dropout. Sudha’s elated by the note,

but the reunification with her brother throws her relationship with her English

husband, as well as her infant son’s safety, into peril. This story towers over others in

the collection, not only because of Lahiri’s skilful, succinct prose, but also because

the author liberates her writing from simplistic cultural baggage and allows her

characters to breathe as individuals.

Sudha, is trying to save her younger brother, Rahul, from alcoholism, but all

her efforts in this direction end in a fiasco. Initially, she shares pegs of wine with him,

but when he goes to the extremes, at the cost of his study and career, she becomes

alarmed, like her parents. By all means, she is a careerist who comes to occupy the

post of a project manager for an organization in London that promotes “micro loans in

poor countries” (Lahiri, 151). Her London-based husband, Roger Featherstone, a

 77 
 

Ph.D. in art history and an editor of an art magazine, is a matter-of-fact man, who gets

irritated with Rahul when the latter neglects his small son Neel during his absence.

Sudha takes it seriously, as Neel might have been drowned in the bath-tub full of

water up to his chest. She clearly tells her brother to leave her house and go back to

America, as his carelessness in a drunken state “could have killed him (Lahiri, 172).

The story is interesting, but what intrigues is its title which applies to the small boy

Neel depending fully on his mother for his feeding and care – “… he was young

enough so that Sudha was still only goodness to him, nothing else” (Lahiri, 173). The

entire story deals with Rahul and his wayward behavior under his drunkenness, and

suddenly it takes a turn towards the small boy.

The next story, Nobody’s Business, brings to the fore a love tangle between

Sang (shortened for Sangeeta) and Farouk, who is equally, or even more, involved

with another woman called Deirdre Frain. Sang is a pretty and smart Bengali girl of

thirty, and is now working part time at a bookstore on the square. She is a much

sought after girl for Bengali bachelors, but she refuses all of them, one by one, for the

love of Farouk, an Egyptian of Cairo now living in America. Sang’s housemates, Paul

and Heather, who are preparing for their respective examinations, do not ask Sang

about her phone-calls or suitors. Sang’s relations with Farouk have been very close

but full of tension. Despite their frequent calls and visits, they fall out at times. She

even accuses him of not meeting her friends, of not inviting her to his cousin’s house

for Thanksgiving, of not spending the night together, and of not driving her home.

Then follows the heated exchange between them:

“I pay for the cabs,” Farouk said quietly. “What difference does it make?”

“I hate it, Farouk. It’s abnormal.”

……. “I’ve warned you, Sang,” Farouk said. He sounded desperate.

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“I will not spend my life with a woman, who makes scenes” (Lahiri, 189).

This tense, hurried conversation reveals a lot about their behavior and

relationship. “Coming events cast their shadows beforehand” – this famous saying is

exactly applicable to these two lovers. Their desperate love leads to accusations and

heated exchanges of words, and eventually to separation. In the game of love, Sang

loses, while Deirdre succeeds. Sang goes away to London to live with her elder sister,

who is married, having a baby son.

Nobody’s Business feels a little out of place in this book. Sang is again of an

Indian origin, living the American life, fitting in perfectly, defying all her inner Indian

ghosts. Love can never be arranged for her. This character somehow differs from the

others we meet in the book. By the end of the story, we are no longer with Sang, but

with Paul, more or less, the narrator of the story.

The last three stories in the book form a sort of continued novella over the

lives of the two main characters, a girl and a slightly older boy, both raised in

America to their respective Bengali parents. It weaves together different phases of

two people, Hema and Kaushik. They lead separate lives, yet they are connected

somehow in their journey. Their parents, once thick friends, now no longer relate to

each other. Although they were both Bengali immigrant families, each viewed India

as home in a different way. Hema’s family returned to the familiarity of India,

whereas Kaushik’s parents escaped from the very same. Even after years, Hema and

Kaushik feel totally at ease with each other. When they meet accidentally at a friend’s

place, their parents are no longer the reason why they bind together. But then what is

it, other than their past, that implies comfort between the two.

Lahiri changes her writing style for the first story, much of which is written in

a first person address. The story revolves around two people who, despite being
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childhood acquaintances and their families being old friends, lead drastically different

lives. Two decades after Kaushi’s family stays with Hema’s as houseguests, they meet

again by chance, just days before they are to enter into completely different phases of

their lives, and they discover a strong connection with one another. The entire story of

Hema and Kaushik is divided into three parts.

2.1.3.1 Once in a Lifetime

This section deals mostly with their childhood and is written in a first person

address from Hema to Kaushik. It tells the story of two families who were close to

each other because of shared culture and the common experience of adapting to a new

culture, but who are beginning to drift apart due to reasons which become evident as

the story progresses.

2.1.3.2 Year's End

This part is from Kaushik’s point of view and tells about his life after his

mother’s death as he deals with unwanted change and navigates complicated

relationships with his recently remarried father, stepmother, and two young

stepsisters—a situation that will ultimately influence Kaushik to lead the life of a

wanderer.

2.1.3.3 Going Ashore

The last part is related by an omniscient narrator as Hema and Kaushik meet

by chance in Italy, after two long decades. Hema, now a college professor, is

tormented about her previous affair with a married man and plans to settle down by

marrying someone she barely knows. Kaushik, a world traveling, successful

photojournalist, is preparing to accept a desk job in Hong Kong. In spite of all that,

they find their deep connection irresistible and must reckon it with the lives they have
 80 
 

chosen to lead. Going Ashore strikes the perfect balance of shocking events retold in a

quiet, poetic tone that’s amazingly moving.

Lahiri writes each character as if she has known them for a long time. The

reader feels the same, perhaps because each experience or emotion is something we

all endure but forget or deny. Emotions are nothing if not expressed by words and

fortunately there are writers like Jhumpa Lahiri who touch corners of our heart,

acknowledge these feelings through their work. Human nature may not flourish in the

same worn out soil, but then does anything at all, soothe the pain and dilemma which

confirms the fact that it is not just change but also compromise that is inevitable.

Each story seems to feature parents who bring their children back to Calcutta

each summer to visit relatives; each story features children who struggle to conform

to their parents’ traditional expectations as well as the cultural demands of an

American adolescence. Loss marks the families Lahiri describes; they cope with this

loss in alternately quiet and dramatic ways.

Each story in Unaccustomed Earth is exquisitely written; Lahiri’s placid prose

is a pleasure to read. In some ways the very quietness of this writing can serve to lull

the reader, however, and given the recurrence of certain themes and plot points, the

book feels like it’s covering well worn territory by the last few stories.

Unaccustomed Earth creates a beautifully literate journey that clearly

illustrates the power of Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing, her sense of community, her ability

to create an imagined world as real, as joyous, as painful as Life. Every word fits.

Nothing is wasted. Each story creates a unique, self-contained world. Yet, there is

always the metaphor of disconnection, disengagement with life in America. And,

despite the clear Bengali frame of reference on which each story is hung, these are
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universal themes: the loss of a parent or spouse, the sense of not fitting in, being ill at

ease in a strange society.

2.2 Manju Kapur: Her Life and Works

Manju Kapur was born in Amritsar in 1948. She graduated from the Miranda

House University College for women and went on to take an MA at Dalhousie

University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and an M. Phil. at Delhi University.

Her first novel the acclaimed Difficult Daughters won the Commonwealth

Prize for first novels (Eurasia Section) and was a number one best seller in India.

Manju Kapur lives in New Delhi, where she is a teacher of English literature at her

alma mater, Miranda House College.

Born in the city of Amritsar, a city all too familiar with sectarian conflicts,

Manju Kapur has lived through turbulent times in India. Although her third novel,

Home, a multi-generational family saga, is rather more domestic, the sectarian

conflicts that dog the sub-continent provide the backdrop to both of Manju Kapur’s

other novels. In Difficult Daughters, her first novel, another woman trying to find a

place for herself in a world where her life is dictated by familial duty becomes

embroiled in a forbidden affair while the seismic upheavals of the Partition surround

her. In A Married Woman, the struggle to gain control of the disputed Ayodhya

Temple site – the struggle which still persists today, years after the 1992 destruction

of the Babri Mosque- parallels Astha’s emotional turmoil.

All her novels explore the difficulties of reconciling the devotion to family

expected of middle- class Indian women with their aspirations and desire for a life

outside. As she has said in an interview with Kiran Nagarkar:

I am interested in the lives of women, whether in the political arena or

in the domestic spaces. One of the main preoccupations in all my

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books is how women manage to negotiate both the inner and outer

spaces in their lives- what sacrifices do they have to make in order to

keep the home fires burning- and at what cost to their personal lives do

they find some kind of fulfillment outside the home (Nagarkar, 2006).

2.2.1 Difficult Daughters

Difficult Daughters Manju Kapur’s distinguished first novel is not concerned

exclusively with the double edged moment of liberation. But it does use national

change as a catalyst that forms the life of its heroine, Virmati. Historical tragedy

shapes it climactic moments. Kapur proves that Indian women writers, who continue

to question the frontiers of national fiction, are startlingly different in their visions and

strategies from each other and from their male contemporaries. Kapur does not strain

from effect; the split chronological perspective of her novel soon dispels its aura of

literary traditionalism. Her construction of a charged historical moment is made more

compelling by retrospection.

The first person narrative of Ida, a daughter trying to reclaim her mother’s

secret life, frames the main story. Virmati, the child of a conservative Hindu family,

comes of age in the turbulent and optimistic 1940s, a time of transformation for

educated Indians. Seeing education as a tool for mental emancipation, she fights for it.

Her nature, rebellious but not radical, is deftly contrasted with her mother Kasturi’s

belligerent, abusive conservatism. Virmati is exposed to a world more challenging

than her mother’s, and she encounters freedom-fighters of all religions and

persuasions. She also falls in love with harsh consequences. The object of her

affections, the liberal professor Harish, is married. He seduces her without a thought
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of their future. But, to her family’s fury, Virmati runs away with Harish, to live as his

second wife. Her plight is at the heart of the novel. Sympathy is for the ousted first

spouse; here we experience the emotional tribulations of the second. Virmati’s

torments are played out on the stage of Punjab which is about to be simultaneously,

freed and divided, the intellectual climate of the times, and the physical details of

Amritsar and Lahore are vividly re-created.

Difficult Daughters pays tribute to the enduring bond between mother and

daughter. It is based partly on the life of Kapur’s mother Virmati, which is also the

name of the novel’s main character. The novel’s dedication, “to my mother and her

mother and my father,” emphasizes this deep and abiding woman-to-woman

attachment that is also the book’s central thematic concern.

Difficult Daughters is narrated by Ida, who is determined to resurrect her

mother’s life and give her parents’ “scandalous” marriage the respect it deserves. Ida,

who is divorced, childless and isolated, revisits all the places and objects she

associates with her mother, especially Lahore- where her mother and father celebrated

their courtship. The novel is a scathing critic of the fetters traditional Hindu society

places on women and men: not allowing either to marry out of love. The couple’s

desire for freedom in love and marriage is a microcosmic analogy of the Indian

nation’s fight for freedom and the devastating events that result from this liberation;

freedom comes, but with a price. So Virmati’s marriage which is based on mutual

love and respect does not have the clichéd happy ending that we would expect. Kapur

scathingly criticizes the hierarchal structure of the Indian home ,where the husband is

exempt from the problems of its daily functioning , and the female protagonist is

doubly dispossessed: by the oppression of patriarchy, on one hand , and that of

colonialism, on the other hand.

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Kapur’s prose is bare and devoid of stylistic flourish. Virmati’s daughter is

named Ida, two letters short of India, the nation that was born around the same time

she was. This is perhaps the only “pun” that Kapur allows herself. The novel opens

with stark and controlled language that immediately invokes the structuring thematic

of the novel, the often- difficult relationships between mothers and daughters: “the

one thing I had wanted was not to be like my mother. Now she was gone, and I shared

at the fire that rose from shriveled body, dry-eyed, laden, half-dead myself, while my

relatives clustered around the pyre and wept.” (Kapur, 1) There is no word-play here;

the language matter-of-factly conveys the death and cremation of her mother. Her

prose quickly engages us with the central theme of the novel, the finely wrought and

fractured relationship between mother and daughter. The novel although ostensibly

deals about Virmati’s rebellions, nevertheless, also charts Ida’s chafing against the

gendered norms of expected behavior. Ida is as much of a “difficult daughter” as

Virmati, quite consciously rebelling against the same sort of expectations that sought

to constrain her mother.

Difficult Daughters is a deeply autobiographical book; yet Kapur has said that

though the main characters are real, the situations and encounters she has imagined

are fictional. In every fiction there is some residue of truth, and in every truth there is

some grain of fiction. Difficult Daughters is Kapur’s commendable effort to peel

away, even if only partially, the silencing layers of historical time.

Uma Parmeshwaran , appropriately describes Kapur’s novel as “a

painstakingly written work that spans the genre of both fiction and history” (392).

2.2.2 A Married Woman

In 2002, Manju Kapur published her second novel, A Married Woman, which

has demonstrated that her literary presence has arrived to stay. A Married Woman

reveals Kapur’s maturity as a writer, and also her coherent narrative project. In this
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second novel, Astha, the main character leads a conventional life as a married woman,

mother and daughter-in-law. The novel charts the suppressed rebellion that takes

place in Astha’s mind as she tries to fulfill her pre-ordained roles as wife, mother,

daughter-in-law – all the while keeping in mind that she’s been another ‘difficult

daughter’ to begin with- against the backdrop of the slow burn of events leading up to

the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Manju Kapur’s A Married Woman deals with two sensitive themes- love between

women and love of one’s own religion: complex, seductive and potentially destructive

emotions. The novel traces the life of Astha, from her childhood to her forties through

various hopes and despairs, complements and rejections, and recognitions and

frustrations. She imbibes middle class values and seems to enjoy her mental bliss for a

long time but slowly feels that there is something certainly lacking in her life. She

suffers from a sense of incompleteness, repression and anguish which is further

aggravated by her involvement into the outer world of rebellion and protest. But the

alternative she seeks temporarily is also hollow from within and fails ultimately

compelling her heaving a sigh of relief.

Since her adolescence, Astha had felt artistic impulses that daily schedules

tend to hinder. At the beginning she feels happy in her marriage with Hemant, but

gradually she is invaded by dissatisfaction and voidness. Astha is brought up in a

traditional homely environment in a typical middle class family. Her orthodox mother

wanted to instill in her tradition, religious piety practiced through proper rituals. Her

father is a bureaucrat. He is very much concerned with her education and wants to

inculcate in her good habits, tastes and manners. Romantic feelings of love flutter in

her heart right from teen age and she develops her liking for Bunty. They exchange

letters, but this soon comes to an end, when Astha’s mother complains against it to

Bunty’s parents. During the final year of her graduation, she begins to meet Rohan in
 86 
 

his car, at the dark corners of the streets. Boiled up by passion they often transgress

the bounds of modest limits. But Rohan’s departure to Oxford for higher studies is a

bolt from the blue sky.

Astha’s mother is wonder struck to read of her feelings, imaginations and

mention of the rendezvous in her personal diary which she incidentally comes across.

But Astha hides it by saying, she is writing a story & it is all work of imagination.

Astha’s father is keen to get his daughter married off before his retirement.

But Astha is not an easy child to be tied to anyone so easily. Like a rebellious young

woman she refuses every suitor. In the final year they get a proposal from the son of a

bureaucrat. Hemant seems to match her dream of an ideal man in the beginning of

their married life, but gradually as the novel develops, Astha gets involved with

Pipeelika, a socially militant activist, in a romantic love affair in an attempt to find an

accomplice partner- a partner, who in Pipee, turns out to be another woman. However

in the end this relationship between two women shows the complexities that any

relationship implies situated at the limits between personal independence and the wish

to share one’s life with somebody else. Pipee and Astha form an instant friendship, a

bond with shattering consequences for Astha’s marriage.

The beginning of the end of Astha’s marriage, founded upon her sacrificing

her own identity while trying to satisfy the traditional duties of a Hindu wife,

coincides with the events leading up to the Babri Masjid demolition. Anita Nair points

out: The key to the plot is the Babri Masjid episode. If one is looking for a metaphor,

here it is. A nation falling apart, because of differences that cannot be bridged. A

family falling apart, because of differences that cannot be bridged.” (84)

But Manju Kapur’s use of history is less than effective. She is far better when

exploring the psyche of Astha and tracing her evolving subjectivity, as Nilanjana S

Roy observes in her review. If Astha’s lesbian affair with Peepilika was a prelude to
 87 
 

her achieving an autonomous identity, it is far from successful. Her affair with Pipee,

is narrated in a first person diary format to set it apart from the omniscient third

person narration used in the rest of the book. This narrative style is used, perhaps to

provide a glimpse into Astha’s innermost feelings, but these are revealed to be mere

confusions. Pipee is as controlling as Hemant, with Kapur merely exchanging a lover

of one gender for another. Nilanjana S Roy observes, “ Pipee’s gender is almost

irrelevant, except as a convenient plot device: her role in the relationship is masculine,

classically butch. Change the “she said” to “he said” and surprise, it’s a conventional

man-woman relationship.” (80)

But soon Astha is disillusioned in her relationship with Pipee. She is trapped

in a terrible dilemma whether she should stay in the sheltered existence provided by

family and tradition or she should run for her freedom and unthinkable love.

The novel is unable to oppose the authority of a version of female experience

that nullifies female autonomy, in spite of rejecting the notion of a completely self-

negating Hindu wife. In the final analysis, perhaps the clue to Astha’s autonomy lies

in the meaning of her name, hope. Astha’s return to her marital home and her children

may be founded on her hope and a vision of future empowerment and autonomy.

2.2.3 Home

Kapur’s third novel Home is set in the busy Karol Bagh area of Delhi. It is a

simple story of a middle class joint family, running their cloth business.

The patriarch of the family is Banwari Lal, a cloth businessman, who has two

sons & one daughter. The family belongs to a class whose skills have been honed over

generations to ensure prosperity in the market place. Home begins with the

contrasting predicaments of two sisters, Sona and Rupa, both childless, one the

daughter in-law in the joint family of the Banwari lal business house, the other
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married to a penniless government servant. Each has what the other does not: Sona

enjoys all the material comforts and the support structure of the extended business

family, Rupa the independence of the woman in a nuclear family, free to take up an

entrepreneurial venture into homemade pickles without being taunted about her

childless state. Nisha is the granddaughter of Banwari Lal. The particular

configurations of stars, at the time of her birth have made her a ‘mangli’. A mangli is

considered inauspicious and very difficult to marry off. The seeds of discrimination

are sowed into her innocent mind right from the beginning, by not allowing her to go

out in the sun and taking care of her fair complexion, which is also a pre-requisite of a

prospective bride.

Nisha grows up to be a rebel. The latter part of the novel focuses on her failed

college romance with a boy of the wrong caste; the growth of a skin condition that

manifests her suppressed mental agony and renders her body ugly, vitiating her

marriage prospects; the desperate loneliness that triggers her venture into

entrepreneurship; and her eventual capitulation to the pressures of marriage and

motherhood. In the course of these psychological transitions, the novel charts other

developments in the life of the Banwari Lal family- the gradual and inevitable

expansion of the clan, as sons marry and produce children and grand children- the

transformation of the cloth shop into a sparkling clothing store specializing in bridal

attire; and the strain put on the joint family structure by the changing socio-economic

trends.

The undercurrents of tension between the women of the house as they vie for

power, spill over into other areas of the family life, leading to ruptures and

fragmentation. Their mechanizations, subtly but inevitably affect the operations of

home and business, and eventually with the arrival of the younger generation of
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daughters-in-law, cracks appear in the façade of harmony. In Kapur’s universe,

innocence does not seem a possibility.

Home is actually a narrative wrought with care. Metaphors seem to arise

naturally from their context. The handling of time & that of space is expertly

manipulated, some parts gliding easily over several months and years in a single

paragraph or sentence, others lingering over the minutiae of scenes stretched out to

agonizing lengths. Kapur’s sharp eye for details brings familiar situations of life. In

places, the narrative achieves a visual, cinematic effect, as in the scene where the

entire family assembles at the airport to see off a pair of newly-weds on their honey-

moon. The past tense narrative sometimes switches unexpectedly to the present.

Manju Kapur’s narrative glides effortlessly between descriptions of mundane

social rituals and accounts of furtive sexual encounters all presented matter-of-factly

without taking resource to coyness or florid prose. The suave, detached tone is both

the novel’s strength and its greatest weakness.

The plot is woven from many strands, drawing together the lives of all who

come to be associated with the Lal family. But half way through the novel Nisha

becomes the focus of the hitherto decentred narrative and this shift creates a

disturbing imbalance in the novel’s design. Gender issues are central to Kapur’s

worldview; in the lives of the female figures, we encounter questions about marriage,

motherhood, women’s education, women’s work in and out of the home, the body,

sexuality and different forms of violence against women, ranging from emotional

blackmail to dowry deaths and sexual abuse.

For readers unacquainted with the intricacies of family dynamism in India, this

novel is in many ways an eye-opener. The novelist is quite successful in bringing out

the fact that in so many joint families the female is victimized behind the veneer of

relations.
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Manju Kapur is an elegant writer with a simple, uncomplicated narrative style.

Her characters are unpretentious, deeply involved in situations, neatly etched and

carved out by both individual destinies, and their creator, raw and real to the extent

that they could transport many readers into their own family histories, though not

necessarily comfortable.

All the female protagonists of Kapur are caught up between tradition and

modernity in their middle class status. In their social milieu they appear educated,

modern, intelligent, sophisticated bold and assertive. Their mal adjustment in the

rapidly changing modern world makes them crave for more space for themselves.

Hence they try to transcend the social norms. But mere efforts, without objective,

strong will-power and planned action, are not enough.

Virmati’s flight from one mode of life and plunging into another of pre-marital

sex, abortion and marriage with a married man is certainly tragic. Similarly Astha’s

effort to seek fulfillment through lesbian relations and Nisha’s dreams of romantic

love and marriage and consequent frustrations are also tragic flights. All her

protagonists ultimately return to the traditional mode of life, perhaps with the

realization that, “Home is where we have to gather grace” (Kapur, 6).

2.2.4 The Immigrants

Her next work The Immigrants is the story not of one but of two immigrants

from India, Nina and Ananda. But it is the vulnerable Nina with whom the author

clearly sympathizes and with whom, I guess, she feels a sense of feminist sisterhood.

Ananda has his own vulnerabilities and one has to feel sorry for him without ever

liking him.

After the death of his parents, Ananda had gone to Halifax, Nova Scotia to

work as a dentist. He had no intention of going back to live in India and wanted
 91 
 

nothing more than to become a proper Canadian. We see the adjustments he had to

make to life in Canada. He did quite well; but the one thing he did not seem to

manage was to establish a relationship with a Canadian girl. Back in India, his sister

was trying to find him a wife. A matchmaker put her in touch with Nina’s mother.

Nina is an academic in Delhi, whose “spiritual home is Europe”. She is

beautiful but unmarried, living in straitened circumstances with her widowed mother

who is desperately anxious for Nina to find a husband. Nina has so far resisted all her

mother’s attempts, but at thirty she is herself beginning to feel desperate also.

Ananda flies to Delhi to see Nina; and though each of them is irritated by the

pressures exerted by his sister and by her mother, Ananda has no doubts, and Nina,

whose feelings are much more complex, eventually accepts him. The events around

the wedding are beautifully described: already, though still in India, Nina is taken out

of the world to which she was accustomed.

In Canada she has much more trouble adjusting than Ananda had had; and

Ananda, with his own deep-seated insecurities, is insensitive, “never understood a

word she was saying”, and is unhelpful. It would give too much away to go into

details; but Nina’s lonely, isolated, jobless, sexually frustrated and childless life is

filled with great sadness.

We learn, graphically, about the problem which most troubles Ananda and

about his attempts to overcome it - but that scarcely help Nina, who eventually seeks

help for herself - and that does not please Ananda. But they both feel ‘liberated’ to do

things they would not have done before - and find that there is a heavy price to pay.

An engrossing, but a sad book which suggests that in India the extended

family provides such a strong communal life that an unhappy arranged marriage

would not lead to the isolation that Nina experiences in Canada. If that is what the
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author wants to convey, I think that would be a generalization both about India and

about Canada. But it is certainly true of the particular situation in this novel.

This is a nuanced, realistic portrayal of two people from the same country who

try to make a marriage work in a new land, each with their own baggage and

expectations trying to pull together.

It is an excellent read, with none of the stereotypes that become so tedious

after a while. Both the major characters are fluent in English and don’t have to ‘rise

up’ from ghettoized immigrant communities, a common theme in immigrant

literature. This is the story of the skilled migrant. The relationship with the foreign

uncle is presented very realistically.

2.2.5 Custody

Failed marriages and their consequences is the theme of Manju Kapur’s latest

book Custody. As the title, Custody, suggests the story is about the bitter battle

between divorced parents, Shagun and Raman, for the custody of their two children. It

is another absorbing story in Kapur’s series of popular novels on modern urban Indian

middle class life and its travails.

The book relates the story of the breakup of two marriages, second marriages

and the willingness of adults to manipulate and use their children’s emotions to obtain

custody. It shows the slow, tortuous progress of custody cases in Indian courts and the

misery of parents. It reveals the ugliness that surrounds the battle over kids - the

exaggerations, the lies and distortions that are involved in Indian court cases.

Emerald-eyed Shagun has an affair with her husband Raman’s boss, high-

flying executive Ashok Khanna, and wants a divorce. Dull, plodding Raman refuses

and the two children, Arjun and Roohi, deeply loved by both parents, become the
 93 
 

pawns in their battle. Eventually Shagun gives up custody of the children to obtain a

divorce and is allowed access to the children by the court.

The second failed marriage is of Ishita and Suryakant, scion of a traditional

merchant family; Ishita is divorced when the family discovers that she is infertile.

Ishita returns home to her parents in Swarg Niwas, the apartment block where

Raman’s parents also live.

Shagun moves into a new life in America and the children shuttle between the

two parents. Both parents remarry, Shagun marries Ashok while Raman and Ishita’s

parents arrange for them to meet and eventually get married.

It is the children who show the effects of the failed marriage. Arjun does

poorly in his studies and stops going to school. Roohi shows the classic signs of

insecurity like thumb sucking, bedwetting and clings to her stepmother, Ishita.

Manju Kapur’s forte is the authenticity of her setting and the way she captures

characters, as also the small details and affectations of upper middle class life in south

and east Delhi. The story is located during the late 1990s, when the economy is

opening up and foreign goods are entering local shops.

The story is related with irony and a bit of satire; there are scenes of high

corporate life, snapshots of the high life in America and of the retired parents living in

east Delhi’s apartment blocks. Kapur has vividly brought to life another aspect of

modern urban life.

Both Jhumpa Lahiri and Manju Kapur are acclaimed contemporary women

writers whose success of works is their simple and life-like characters who usually

hail from middle class families. This is one of the techniques the authors employ

to make the readers deeply involved and subsequently the novels become quite

absorbing and interesting. Manju Kapur is a storyteller in the old-fashioned sense, in

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that her novels are strongly narrative and descriptive, but also in the sense that the

stories are compelling and told with conviction. She has already achieved a high

degree of both critical and popular success, in India and abroad, as an admired

exponent of Indian Writing in English, whereas Jhumpa Lahiri quietly exploded onto

the literary scene, and as it appears, her short career has shown no signs of slowing

down. Readers seem to be mesmerized by Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing, and their curiosity

brings her audience together. As a popular young writer of Indian background, Lahiri

is a sort of representative figure for non-immigrant Americans who do not fully

understand what it means to straddle the line between two cultures. It is difficult to

compare her work to many other Indian or Indian-American authors.

 
 

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Flynn,Gillian. “Passage to India: First–time author Jhumpa Lahiri nabs a Pulitzer,”

Entertainment Weekly, 2004-4-8.Print.

Kakutani,Michiko. The New York Times.

Kapur, Manju. Difficult Daughters. New Delhi: Penguin India, 1998; London: Faber

and Faber, 1998.Print.

 95 
 

---. Home. New Delhi: Random House India, 2006; London: Faber and Faber,

2006.Print.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Interpreter of Maladies. New York: Houghton Mifflin,

1999.Print.

---. The Namesake. Houghton Mifflin Books, 2004.Print.

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