Jhumpa Lahiri The Interpreter Of Maladies

Finding a sense of belonging to a place can influence an individual’s sense of acceptance within the community and culture or opposingly can enhance their sense of isolation and alienation from society.This is reflected through Raimond Gaita’s memoir Romulus My Father and Manfred Jurgensen’s poem Bonegilla 1916 through extensive literary devices.We learn individuals perceptions of place and their ability to adjust to new places governs their ability to belong and feel at home with new cultures.

In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is comprised of eight short stories about different Indian families’ struggles in America, many of them going through the immigrant experience. The conflicts are with friends and family, and also with themselves, as each of them attempt to find their own identity along with fitting in with the rest of society. One of the causes of these struggles that because the families in the stories are mixed in terms of generation. Many of the adults in the stories were first generation immigrants from India, while many of the children were raised in the United States, which is the second generation. This led to blending of culture and at the same time, clashes between the immigrant mentality of living and the American mentality of living. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri demonstrates to the reader the important influence of environment, specifically culture and how it impacts parental teachings, on the personality and development of an individuals’ identity, and how the actions and development of characters can affect one’s family and friends; the impact of environment and culture is shown especially by the characters and stories “Hell-Heaven” and “Hema and Kaushik”.

Every individual, no matter who they are, will all face challenges that result from their backgrounds and cultures. Born in Calcutta, India and later moving to the United States, Amin Ahmad was an individual who discovered this harsh truth first-hand. In his essay, “I Belong Here,” Ahmad reflects on his experience of being treated differently from those around him based off his cultural background. He analyzes the emotional barrier that forms between the journey of immigration and the continuous feeling of inferiority based solely on the desire to belong. The article is written to provide a different point of view; one focused on introducing to the world the challenges and emotions immigrants face after starting the journey towards a new life.

Every individual, no matter who they are, will all face challenges that result from their backgrounds and cultures. Born in Calcutta, India and later moving to the United States, Amin Ahmad was an individual who discovered this harsh truth firsthand. In his essay, “I Belong Here,” Ahmad reflects on his experience of being treated differently from those around him based off his cultural background. He analyses the emotional barrier that forms between the journey of immigration and the continuous feeling of inferiority based solely on the desire to belong. The article is written to provide a different point of view; one focused on introducing to the world the challenges and emotions immigrants face after starting the journey towards a new life.

Sunglasses, not only worn for protection from the sun, are also used for other reasons. Some are unrecognizable in sunshades and can even hide their true selves. Ultimately, sunglasses can even hide one’s shame. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story, Interpreter of Maladies, Mrs. Das, a major character, is portrayed as a distant woman that searches for romance in all the wrong places. Throughout the story, Mrs. Das rarely removes her sunglasses. The symbol of Mrs. Das’s sunglasses represents the detachment from her own family, the potential bond breaking secrets she hides from them, and the inevitable guilt she feels.

Many second generation minorities from immigrant parents are driven subconsciously to conform to new culture and social norms. For foreign born parents and native born children integrating the two cultures they inhabit brings about different obstacles and experiences. In Jhumpa’s “The Namesake” the protagonist Gogol is a native born American with foreign born parents. The difference with birth location plays an important role in assimilating to a new society in a new geography. The difficulty for parents is the fact that they’ve spent a decent amount of time accustomed to a new geography, language, culture and society which makes it difficult to feel comfortable when all of that changes. For Gogol the difficulty only lies with the cultural norms imposed by his parent’s and the culture and social norms that are constantly presented in the new society.

Moving to America, for many, has been a reason for opportunity and prosperity. Through persistence, hard work and struggles, they pursue to find success in achieving the ‘American Dream’. One of the major struggles is maintaining one’s traditional values and their individuality while assimilating and not forgetting who he or she really is. The narrator, Jayanti, in “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs”, by Chitra Divakaruni, illustrates a good example of how a person loses their individuality and self-identity to do whatever it takes to assimilate and fit into the society.

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

Chen Jenli made the selfless decision to move to New York for a few years to scope out a better life for both herself and her family. Good intentions do not always have good results. In her mind, Chen Jenli thought that this decision existed as a grand and noble one but, she fell into the trap of assumption. When she moved back home, she figured everything remained the same and all proved well again in her life. She stood blindsided and did not exercise mindfulness. She embodied acculturation and how it exists as “a process through which cultural patterns (e.g., values, beliefs, behaviors) change as a result of sustained

When adapting to a new culture, many find it hard to assimilate into their new world while still holding on to their past life. Finding yourself in a new place with a new language and unfamiliar faces is challenging for immigrants. Jhumpa Lahiri, an immigrant herself, sheds some light on the Indian culture in her book, Interpreter of Maladies. She conveys many challenges that immigrants face when moving away from their homeland in a myriad of short stories. These short stories introduce similar themes of immigration and adaptation through different experiences. Two of Lahiri’s short stories, “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sens”, do a great job in showing similar challenges of cultural differences in two different ways. They introduce characters

The internal conflict for Mrs. Sen is that she is so uncomfortable with her life in America and she can’t change it. The only two things that make Mrs. Sen happy in America are both related to India: the arrival of a letter from her family, and fish from the seaside.(l.281-p.9). Mrs. Sen doesn’t want to give up the customs in India, for example, keeping vermilion and wearing sari, these evidences show her strong nostalgia. Mrs. Sen has no choice but to live in a place far from home. As a result, she cherishes those things that remind her hometown—cut fish properly for more meals, keep the head, and play the cassette over and over again.

One way Lahiri shows difficulties that immigrants and refugees experience, is with the theme of displacement. To illustrate the idea of displacement, Lahiri uses Mrs. Sens to show the what immigrants have trouble adjusting to in a new environment. Mrs. Sens is a middle-aged, Indian woman, who is having difficulty adjusting to the differences between India and America. Lahiri emphasizes the awkward attitude that Mrs. Sens has towards driving. When asked about her driver’s licence, Mrs. Sens points out “Yes, I am learning, but I am a slow student. At home, you know we have a driver” (113). To put it differently, Mrs. Sens finds it odd and difficult that she has to learn driving because back in India, she had a chauffeur. Furthermore, when she says she is a slow

Through her tasteful selection of contemporary Indian influenced prose pieces, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the unique journey of Indian families established in America. Focusing on the intergenerational aspect of traditional households, Lahiri conveys the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies a person who is branded as a foreigner. In America, there exists a common misconception that immigrants who arrive in this country fully assimilate or seek to assimilate as time progresses. The category I chose was "The Dot of true Happiness." The dot which signifies the bindi, a traditional red mark worn by Indian people, is the source of true happiness among these immigrants.

The present study is based on the idea of displacement as the major theme of the selected short stories of Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of maladies”. The book contains nine short stories and each one of them deals with the question of identity, alienation, and plight of those who are physically and psychologically displaced. But I would like to limit my studies to the three short stories from the collection viz. “When Mr. Pirzada came to dine”, Interpreter of Maladies”, and “Mrs. Sen’s”. The migration has become one of the most important issues of the contemporary world. Jhumpa Lahiri is also a diasporic writer like Salman Rushdie, V.S Naipaul and Bharati Mukherjee. The characters in the prescribed stories are citizens of more than one country