The Earth Is A Collection Of Eight Short Stories By Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Interpreter of Maladies, is a composition of short stories that uniquely blends American and Indian lifestyles, depicting the assimilation of two distinct cultures. Throughout the novel, characters create a connection between the two cultures as a result of their different experiences. Throughout the novel, the theme of a malady in the life of someone as well as an interpreter that choses to take action, becomes apparent. This theme is present and can be observed in each of the stories, including “A Temporary Matter,” “Interpreter of Maladies,” and “Sexy.”

The novel is divided into two sections, referred to as part one and part two. the first section of the novel portrays the everyday life of an Indian family with their daughter Uma as the main character of the section. Throughout part one of the novel, the author tries to take the reader into a journey across the Indian social practices and family relationship. She does this through the way she portrays different members of the Indian family and other individuals who are depicted as different members of the Indian society. In this section, the reader can see the family structure, family members responsibilities, and expectations from other members of the family and the society in general. Apart from showing the reader the family life, she also tries to present situations and topics that show the reader some important issues regarding the Indian educational system and the society attitudes

The book contains the stories of first and second generation Indian immigrants, as well as a few stories involving ideas of otherness among communities in India. The stories revolve around the difficulties of relationships, communication and a loss of identity for those in diaspora. No matter where the story takes place, the characters struggle with the same feelings of exile and the struggle between the two worlds by which they are torn. The stories deal with the always shifting lines between gender, sexuality, and social status within a diaspora. Whether the character be a homeless woman from India or an Indian male student in the United States, all the characters display the effects of displacement in a

Unaccustomed Earth is a second collection of short stories of Lahiri. It is about three generations and their relationship between the three, the father, his daughter, Ruma and her son Akash. The father is a retired and also a recent widower, visits his daughter’s new home in the suburbs of Seattle. The story explores some of the difficult gender roles in America, such as Ruma’s decision to leave her successful legal career to

In her short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri depicts various scenarios of Indian immigrants moving to and living in the United States. A particularly salient theme discussed throughout is the issue of assimilation vs. integration. Though the terms are often considered interchangeable, in this book assimilation argues for adoption of American culture. Conversely, integration advocates for the coexistence of foreign and American customs and allows immigrants to establish a sense of home away from their original countries. The story entitled, “The Third and Final Continent” specifically recounts a young Indian man’s experience trying to establish himself in Cambridge, Massachusetts after living in London. Prior to his immigration, the narrator had his marriage arranged by his family in Calcutta, and much of the story illustrates the narrator’s apprehension for his wife, Mala’s arrival from India. Recognizing that food is a significant aspect of most cultures, Lahiri uses it as a motif to indicate the transformation of the narrator’s cultural status in the United States. Through food, she ultimately asserts the possibility of positive integration, rather than just assimilation, into American society.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ is told from many perspectives: the perspectives of immigrants making their way; of children growing up; and of communities and the people within them. In fact, community as a theme stood out to me the most as a common thread throughout her stories, though it was approached in different ways and from different perspectives. The stories ‘The Treatment of Bibi Haldar’ and ‘When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine’ both approach this theme through different eyes. ‘The Treatment of Bibi Haldar’ tells the story of a girl who depends entirely on her community for support, both physical and emotional, because of her strange illness, and ‘Mr. Pirzada’ explores the life of a young girl who is a part of two communities; her American friends and her parents’ Indian friends.

As individuals grow older, the relationship they have with others can either become stronger or weaker. The story between Hema and Kaushik’s connection in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth” shows an example of two childhood acquaintances, who have known each other since their youth, and how distant they had become throughout the years. The sad reality of losing someone that is close through death or disconnection, creates a life of loneliness that affects the characters throughout these stories. The awkwardness between Hema and Kaushik in their childhood days results in a detachment between each other for the duration of most of their lives. In addition, the relationship with family is affected too;

Before analysing Mukherjee’s novels citically, it is important to survey and review the critical works on Bharati Mukherjee and her fictional work. The present chapter provides a general review and assessment of critics on Mukherjee's fiction. In Bharati Mukherjee: A Perspective, Sushma Tondon examines her three novels entitled Tiger’s Daughter, Wife and Jasmine. She also analyses her collections of short stories entitles Darkness and The Middleman and Other Stories. She concludes that in her novels Mukherjee has made a concerted effort to conceptualise the image of the immigrants. She portrays the immigrants who assert their claim to an American identity by struggling heroically to reinstate themselves successfully in a new cultural space. Some of Mukherjee's characters strive to find a niche and get for them a second chance to build their lives on the alien land. As an artist in immigrant tradition, Mukherjee tries to redefine the process of migration in a novel way. As shown in her later novels, immigration for some of the post-modern and post-colonial characters is an opportunity to redefine their own identities. After analysing all her fictional work,

The concept of space is very relevant in the study of diasporic communities. Cultural otherness, generational and cultural alienation from their ethnic community leaves the Indian diasporic women trapped in a space between the culture of homeland and that of the host country. They lack security and emotional support from their family and the isolation leads diasporic women emotionally and economically dependent on their husbands to the problems like depression, loss and nostalgia. Lahiri’s The Namesake, is a cross cultural multi generational story which examines the cultural conflicts, pangs, aspirations and dilemmas of the Indian immigrants who find themselves in between the native and host cultures. Namesake is the story of Ashima Bhaduri, a student in degree class who becomes Ashima Ganguli after her betrothal to Ashoke Ganguli of Alipre. After marriage they shift to Boston. The book opens with Ashima Ganguly who is upset, homesick, spatially and emotionally alienated from her ancestral home, trying to recreate the taste of her favorite Indian snack, thereby trying to reconstruct her past. She thinks of her past with nostalgia of her home and spends her leisure in reading Bengali poems, stories and

Once upon a time, she was a wealthy woman in Bengali, theere, she feed the poor on festival days. But after came to calcatta, she did not have any wealth, even, she does have good food to eat, wear dirty clothes and sleep on the old newspapers. Lahiri used ,some metaphors in this story, cocunut trees, cattle, rosewood and women with saries. Using metaphors described about not only person and also thing. She has given a plase by the Bengali people and every day, she sleep unter the letter box. Bengali people of those appartments give her food and other items but still, they considers her “as a refuge” and she consiter her herself also “ an outsider”. She feels herself, she has no place in the world. She faced double trouble, that is, she is not Indian and also belongs to the lower caste. According to Gayatri C.Spivak, the caste system of India is worse than “racism” of other countries and calls both India and United states “bad, but in different ways.”(13)

Depiction of marriage in Indian novels is a recurrent theme and it is the element in Indian writing in English which gives it a typical Indian sensibility. In this connection Meenakshi Mukherjee in her work, Twice Born Fiction (2001) observes, Among some hundred and fifty novels published in the last thirty

Through Ashima, the reader can relate to the emotions and feel about culture, alienation, and homesickness of the immigrants (Lahiri, 22). Ashima is traditional and misses her life in Calcutta and thus finds it difficult to settle down in America. Ashima feels like a foreigner because she cannot relate to the new culture and does not seem to make friends in school. Her life as an immigrant gives Ashima a new point of view that her children do not know about because they were born and bred in America.

Nature’s beauty is a work of art. Its compelling nature is being destroyed day after day by humankind. We need to learn to protect what we take for granted every day and what’s left of our earth. Although, our earth is continuously losing its picturesque beauty it is no longer full of lush grass, crystal clear oceans, and an abundance of animals. However, my connection towards the earth is powerful because I wish to cherish its beauty, live in faith that the earth will remain, and to remember the connections I made with the earth. Earth will not destroy itself but, humankind will. Thus, making the ending of humankind and nature inevitable unless we take actions now.

Unaccustomed earth is a book written by the Indian Bengali American author, Jhumpa Lahiri and was first published in the year 2008, this is her second collection of stories, the first being the Pulitzer-winning Interpreter of the Maladies. The book is made up of a collection of eight beautiful stories, all based around the relationships of love. The first 5 stories are independent of each other while the last three are intertwined in a way they form a trilogy. The last three stories speak about the lives of Hema and Kaushik who are from Bengali – American origins, it speaks about how their destines are intertwined even after the passing of time, which eventually ends in tragedy.

The novel aims at projecting the ethical aspect of Indian immigrants in Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut novel The “Namesake”. In the nineteenth century the immigrants were migrating to the west as indentured labourers but now they migrate for the prospect of career building and profit making. But in both the cases culture plays a very important role in their life. In their socio-political liminality and marginal statues, the immigrants enjoy life in economic subjugation but have an emotional emancipation in their contra acculturation. In the super structure of America’s multicultural society they have cross-cultural experiences. This helps them to reconcile between their inherited and acquired selves for consolation. The immigrant Indians in a